The Escapee Superpower No One Talks About: Smarter Decisions, Faster Success

Brett Trainor (: 00:01

Hi Magda, welcome to the Corporate Escape-y podcast.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 00:05

Hi, Brett, nice to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Brett Trainor (: 00:09

My pleasure. I'm super excited for this conversation and maybe not our traditional cause a lot of time we show use cases of, know, escapee journeys, but this is you're going to help us be better escapees or if we're still in corporate, how do we make that transition a little bit easier? So that's, that's my teaser for, for the episode today, but maybe to get started, just share with the audience a little bit about your background and what you're working on today. And we will then we'll dig into it.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 00:38

Thank you so much, Brett. So my background is I'm trained as a psychologist to work in industry, like I was a psychologist, and I did my PhD through Wits Business School. And the way that I got into the PhD route was I got so curious because I saw how emotions derail decisions in corporate so many times, and not only in corporate, also in startups, just in so many places in life.

And so I dug in and started my research journey on that. And that's where I am today, actually, where we took that research further and developed a whole program, a micro learning platform to support other people so that we can scale this knowledge that it doesn't only sit in ivory towers so that everybody can have access to it on helping us to...

be less biased when we make decisions and the biases that trip us out through life, where we actually, you know, become overconfident or we take too much risk or we follow the old decision rules of the previous context when we moved into a new context and we lose our objectivity, oftentimes triggered by our emotions and then it cost us dearly in business, in life.

Brett Trainor (: 02:03

Yeah. And that, again, that was part of what drew my first, think it was Michael Haynes that may have connected us and long time listeners know Michael's been on the pod a number of times, think four times maybe he may be the record holder. But I mean, I think it's what, why this is so important. One, I'm curious about the psychology of anything, right? Of why we do things or don't do things. And, you know, started with sales, but then

As I started to get deeper into the escapee journey, right? In corporate a lot of the time, and even in life, if you're in corporate, a lot of the decisions are made for you, right? You do work, you do these things, but it's usually part of a plan or a program or somebody else's program. But what I found when thinking about escaping and working with a community full of folks that are across the spectrum, still in corporate, want to get out, but just can't wrap their head around it to the folks that are out and how to do better.

One of the things that we're now faced with is decision making, right? Even though we've done it, but no one's really ever taught us, right? Is there a good way to do this? A better way of doing this, right? We've got our biases, definitely have emotions that are mixed into it. And one thing we'll talk about later in the conversation is, you know, the chat GPT, how, I mean, that's even dumbing down decision making even more because it's making it for you. So, but before I take us too far down one of those rabbit holes,

You know, maybe how is a, somebody in corporate thinking about making a decision, you know, how do we approach that? I mean, it's not a great question, but I think you know where I'm going with that, right? With the decision making. How do we make better decisions?

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 03:33

I really think you spot on when you say in corporate there's oftentimes a structure within which we decide. So we don't have to think of everything that's also on the periphery and it's a known context in many cases. Obviously if you worked in startup it's different but for corporate for the most part a lot of

Decisions are made upfront and you follow the rules. So you make decisions within the structure of rules and of a group of people who've worked together before. So you kind of know the boundaries within which you can decide, which makes it easier. But when you switch to starting to build your own business, you have to make decisions about everything. You actually run into what we call decision fatigue.

Brett Trainor (: 04:29

Yeah.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 04:30

because you have to make so many decisions every day about who should I partner with? Who should I hire? Is this the right idea? Does it fit the market? So there's many things that some of them are actually outside of your area of expertise. So you're now on a very uncertain level as well. So that trigger our emotions even more.

and our emotions is what triggered basically these decision biases. So if you're aware of this, it's really helpful, especially if you know which emotion triggered which bias. So it requires you to become even more self-aware about what trips you up and how does that bias play out. For example, if you get angry,

Brett Trainor (: 05:14

All right.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 05:24

or annoyed or frustrated, it's all in a continuum, so on that level, you're inclined to become overconfident and take too much risk. Now just think of what that could mean to you.

Brett Trainor (: 05:34

Interesting. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 05:38

Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking even back in the real world when I was still in corporate, but I knew, I mean, I was frustrated, burned out. My wife, you know, I've told this story. It's like, what the hell's the matter with you? Like everything on the surface seemed to be good, right? Good job. Family's doing well. Everything you've seen, but something was just off. And I think about the decision-making process of, you know, corporate kind of quit on me and do I go back into corporate or am I going to go on my own?

I wish I could tell you I went through a comprehensive or even a basic decision making framework to think through this, but it was really emotionally driven in thinking back, right? That I'm done, I'm going to go do this on my own. I know what they were paying me to do and what they were blah, blah, blah, blah. So it wasn't, I didn't sit down and go map out what it was, right? So how do we, maybe just starting with that group of folks first, you know, what...

What kind of a framework can we put together to help think through, right? Is life outside of corporate right for me and how do we balance, right? The risk and reward and those types of things. Any suggestions or how to even start thinking about that?

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 06:52

I think the thing is, first of all, emotions drive our energy. So we need those emotions. it's not, the idea is not to suppress them or in any way try to not be aware of them and leverage them because that's not energy. The key is to be able to read them and understand what that means for the decisions that we're about to take.

because emotions take eight milliseconds once triggered and the impact lasts up to 36 hours or more. So if it's a really important decision, at least just wait 36 hours. So it's very simple, you can just do that. And then I think it's also to think whether this is a type one or a type two situation.

Brett Trainor (: 07:36

Interesting, okay.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 07:47

Type 1 is you've been here before, you know what to do, just go with your gut and do it. Don't overthink it, because otherwise we're going to take forever. We can't overanalyze everything. It's not helpful. Or is it this type 2 situation where you actually have to think about this is a bit more complicated. I don't know all the answers. If I speak to a few experts, especially since I don't know the territory,

I don't want to rely on only one person because that person's opinion might now bias me and I need to understand what's the difference between fact and opinion in this new world that I'm not familiar with. go speak to more experts. Or if it's a complex situation where nobody has done it before,

you would basically go and say, mmm, let's experiment.

Brett Trainor (: 08:47

Yeah. And again, I think I'm thinking about my own decision-making process where unintentionally, right? I think the type one, type two makes sense. And the other thing I've started to factor in is what's the potential impact, right? Is this a small decision like eat? What are we having for dinner? Or is this going to fundamentally change the direction of my business? It's, you I'm going to put more effort into thought, but

I think a lot of us are guilty, especially I was early on, putting way too much thought into the decisions that just don't have an impact. And even just taking that one little step that shows, this really isn't that important. Don't waste a ton of energy on it, right? I'm guessing you see this all the time.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 09:31

Yeah, and the more decisions we have to make every day, we get tired. So then we start to make mistakes. So it's almost like, park those big decisions to a time when you are rested and when you are in a calm space.

Brett Trainor (: 09:32

Thank you.

Brett Trainor (: 09:49

And I liked the idea of the experimentation because again, that's really what I found with the escapee world is being able to test something. But again, I think it, where I haven't lacked in, you know, this from our, couple of our conversations is having some of that discipline. And when I say discipline, I don't mean like there's a superstructure framework that you're going to put it through this decision-making process every time. But I think.

early on as I was going through the process, a lot of it was just, treated everything as a level one type of problem and the level two type of problem, we put way too much into each of those type of situations. So it was not productive, right? In that sense. So I guess you see a lot of people guilty of this.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 10:35

Yeah, think so too. And I must admit, I wish I had my own tools when I started out, because what we developed is, first of all, there's the micro learning course that you can go through on your own time. So for example, each of these

Decision biases that matter most over course of life and in business. So the ability to be accurate confident about what's fact versus what's opinion, you know, what do you know, what don't you know. There's tools and techniques you can learn to become better at it. So for example, state and check your assumptions.

And it's the good part is it's trainable. But then sometimes on the spot, we're going to feel impatient and say, I don't have time to go through this right now. I want to have the answer now. So for that, we built the AI coach that that's trained in our proprietary information and data. And you can just say, okay, I have to make the decision about XYZ. And then it will

Brett Trainor (: 11:31

Right.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 11:48

answer you it won't it won't give you the answer but it will ask you the questions that you need to think of so kind of different from GPT which is kind of like you've put it well the other day when we said okay that's like having an employee I asked you to do the job and some comes back better than others so yeah

Brett Trainor (: 12:07

Exactly. Yeah. And again, I perfect transition is when I started to think as now I'm running my own business. Now we've got a whole different set of decisions, right? Because I think when you're thinking about leaving, we get bogged down in one, right? If you did like a SWOT analysis or pros and even a simple pros and cons, right? That one con will trump everything else. But if you actually put decision making and work through that, you'll see

Right. The risk isn't there. And I just, again, I don't think I didn't do this. I just was more off the cuff going through the process. And now within the business, right, we had this, conversation the other day talking about the difference between I call it critical thinking or decision-making and idea generation. And that's the, the tool you're referring to is you've, call it a variation of chat GPT.

where it's more focused on the decision making and the thought process and critical thinking, where if I tell ChatGPT, what strategy should I use? It's going to come back and tell me what strategy I should use. Where what your tool basically came back and said, hey, have you thought about this, this, and this? And what does this look like in three months? You're like, crap, I hadn't even thought about this. I think I was getting lazier with using ChatGPT to help push.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 13:15

Yes.

Brett Trainor (: 13:33

And when you open my eyes back to the decision making, I would make a very different decision because jet chat GPT is only going to push me the path of least resistance. You can coach it to say, no, really push back and give me, but it's still going off a framework where I'm the one with the experience and can control a lot of the other variables. Ask my own, myself questions about, you know, exactly that. Have you thought through this? And so.

I'm super excited with what you're building because as I've talked to other escapees, right? That's as a solo business, we don't have that thought partner a lot of times. Somebody that can question and make sure that we are asking ourselves the right questions. Right? So, sorry, I took us down a little bit of a rabbit hole there, but that I think could be a game changer for what we're working on because we don't have, unlike in corporate, you may have the C-suite. You may bring in somebody from Accenture to help you think through.

We don't have any of that. may have a couple of our peers, but they're not going to challenge us the way maybe some of the other ones and help. Frankly, some of these big corporations probably could use going through an exercise like this, where I think a lot of the executives sometimes just think they know what the answer is and they're going to push down. So, so maybe talk a little bit how you came up with the idea to focus on the decision-making. mean, obviously it's part of your background, but versus, you know, the traditional tool.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 14:56

I think what I saw that a lot of effort right now is being placed on making AI smarter. So we are feeding the machine with...

backed by billions, but we're not doing the same for our human minds. And we're going into this whole space of uncertainty and how do we deal with everything? Who's gonna help us? We need somebody to help us as corporate escapees, but also in general in this turbulent time to just think through things and help us to stay objective and help us to make sense of things. That's why we actually called it getsense.net.

because we want to help people to keep their common sense, their common sense more strongly developed. So it's really helping you almost like when you go to the gym, well when you're supposed to go to the gym and you don't go to the gym, like this is to train that muscle of helping us to decide better.

Brett Trainor (: 15:43

Yeah, yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 16:06

Yeah, and again, I'm-

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 16:08

We're so much on autopilot and then you don't really think about, okay, so is this the better way? Is there a better way? Should I do this right now? And especially when you're in unfamiliar territory.

Brett Trainor (: 16:25

Yeah, no, mean, again, I'm completely on board because I think even the more we automate, the more important where you do have the human touch to make that difference. And again, as I'm thinking about decision making within my own business, right, of one, but as we start to work with small businesses, the same thing, right? So we can help them better leverage their decision making because they've got the same problem that we do. And again, I'm thinking part of this is the opportunity for

you know, scapees out there, if you're looking to provide value into the small business space, you know, these small business owners need that critical thinking and right. Yeah. The decision-making framework. I just think everybody takes, I don't say everybody, that's way too broad. Most people take it for granted, right? We are on autopilot. We just make the decisions and go. But if we actually took a second to think back, I think that's going to become even more and more and more important.

because everybody's going take the easy, lazy way out and do the chat GPT and have that. But if you actually thought through it and even using your example of the gym, right? I can go to chat GPT, give me a workout. But if I actually talk to a trainer who knows what one is going to align with my goals and it's going to challenge me, are those really the goals that you want? Is it, do you really want to be healthy or is it, do you just want to look better or is it long? So again, where chat GP maybe someday it'll get to that point where it'll

question you, but most people won't. It'll just say, give me the answer and go. And so part of where I see this going is it's a differentiator for us, right? If we can help us ourselves and then our clients think differently and make those decisions, right? Put it in more of a decision-making process, they're going to end up making better decisions. So I'm a hundred percent on board with the human element not going away, even though the rest of the tools are going to make us

you know, smarter or easier to do business, think it's going to be more important to have the knowledge and the wisdom.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 18:21

I agree and I think after the four decision biases that we need to learn to navigate better for better performance, for better outcomes in business and life. So the four of them are the ability to be accurately confident about what you think you know versus what you actually know. And that one is the gatekeeper. And the second. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 18:45

Yeah. Now let's break that down first because that is so, I mean, this world is filled with, you know, confident people that are not accurate. Right. So I think having the qualifier of accurately confident, because everybody's a hundred percent sure of their viewpoint on everything. And we seem to be getting away from having the ability to change your mind. And I think that's kind of the important piece. So yeah, I just wanted to highlight that the accurately confident, lot of people are confident, it's just not accurate.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 19:12

That's so cool because this is nothing to do with social confidence. This is knowledge confidence. And one of the key things, and that's the gatekeeper by the way of all the other biases, so this is the one to focus on most. And for example, like we said, pride makes you overconfident. Anger makes you overconfident. Fear makes you underconfident.

Brett Trainor (: 19:20

Right.

Brett Trainor (: 19:28

interesting.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 19:39

So this and that's part of what we teach. So okay once you know your emotions how to also know what they do to your decisions. And so the one part is the knowing and then the other part is learning the tools to navigate that within that bias. And one of the key ones in accurate confidence and appropriate confidence is

Brett Trainor (: 19:51

Yeah.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 20:07

state and check your assumptions. And it's hard to do. It's easy to say but it's hard to do. Like what are all the assumptions I'm actually just standing on?

Brett Trainor (: 20:14

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 20:21

What's that old saying, trust but verify type of thing? Interesting. All right. So that's what, what are the other three biases? Okay.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 20:24

That's a well put job.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 20:31

risk to appraise risk accurately.

And the third one is to create decision rules that's appropriate for your context. And a lot of people actually, myself included, until I really went and studied this, confused values with these decision rules. Values we're not touching, that's your values. They're mostly there for life.

Brett Trainor (: 20:59

interesting.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 21:05

But decision rules is in business you can decide no capex. And you can decide if I want to be as efficient as I need to be I'm gonna cut all the waste until I have to put 10 % more back at the end. That's another example. There's multiple examples. You have to make those up for yourself.

Brett Trainor (: 21:27

Yeah.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 21:31

in a way that's suitable to the context because what we do is we often we have them we all have them we may or may not know it but we all have them so so so to bring that into your awareness and then challenge yourself and say are these the best rules for the the situation because when situations change

Brett Trainor (: 21:42

Yeah.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 21:55

you need to adapt your rules. Otherwise you're playing to the old rulebook in a new game and then you lose. So you're winning and with rules that will help you make decisions quicker that's appropriate in your context. And the last one is the ability to stay objective regardless whether something is framed positively or negatively. For example

Brett Trainor (: 22:04

Yeah.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 22:21

If you see something that says 80 % fat free vs contains 20 % fat, which one are you going to buy?

Brett Trainor (: 22:30

80 % fat free just...

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 22:32

It's the exact same information. So we are so prone to be swayed by how things are phrased and we don't really cut through the noise and listen for the fact. So those are the four that's really important.

Brett Trainor (: 22:40

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 22:49

Interesting. Yeah. And I think your point is one thing that I've learned, you know, because I started my quest for learning again after the age of 50, right? It just, because I think part of the thing in corporate is you just, you just get into a routine, you go through the motions, you do this. And, you know, the one thing I did to break out of this was start a podcast. I didn't even know what a podcast was. So this is literally the first thing I did while I was still in corporate. And it was the hardest thing to do was to hit record for that first time. Right. And

But then that just started this quest for learning of, right, because then I started to have authors and folks like you on the podcast, which made me learn about it before having on. They wrote a book, I read the book before, and all of a I read more books in a two-year span than I had in last 20 years combined. And it just re-energized. But the thing it taught me was I didn't know anything.

I have to 30 years in corporate, I thought I knew everything, but it just, it became a reality that I really don't know as much as I thought I did. And every time I think I have something figured out, you know, I've learned something new. so putting this, this type of a approach or a framework, you know, it's right for you just makes sense. And I still have to check myself more often. Again, I really wasn't doing it until we started chatting. And then I'm like, you know what, this is a gap in what I'm doing. I get lucky sometimes, right?

we make the right decisions, but would that have saved me in some other places if I actually would have put some critical thought and took this two steps further, right when I was making some of the decisions. So again, you don't have to overanalyze it, but go through the process.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 24:24

Yeah, and it's interesting. mean, my team and I wrote this and we still make mistakes too. It's literally like going to the gym. You just have to keep at it. yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 24:38

and find what works for you, right? Because back to your point on the decision rules, you don't have to do it for every decision you're going to make, but the important ones are, again, what you may not know are important. So put some thought behind what are going to be the important decisions around it. And, you know, again, as I've gone through this journey, there's been multiple instances of these types of learnings, right? Because when I left corporate, all of I had my entire schedule to myself and I was responsible for doing it.

I was so scattered and I was so all over the place that I really wasn't getting anything done because they had everything. But then I over-indexed into basically my schedule down to a 30 minutes and do this. And after a couple of weeks, I'm like, this isn't going to work for me. This is worse than being in corporate. And so I found that happy medium where I can do time blocks. I know what I'm going to do certain things. I build some flexibility. It works better. And so.

One of the things I'm starting to do with this decision making is those decision roles is where do I need to apply these? Where does it make sense? I'm starting to use it with some of my, coaching clients now where we'll go through the decision, right? The more critical thinking of this versus right. So preaching to the choir here on, on what, how that works, but I think it's all part of the journey and the quicker we can put some of these.

frameworks in you're going to minimize you're still going to make mistakes but it'll help you what minimize mistakes make quicker decision or feel more confident decisions how would you characterize that all the above

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 26:10

of the above. It's really because the decision comes before the behavior. It happens in seconds. mean some research say that I mean it's a little bit but some of the research say we make up to 35,000 decisions a day. We just don't always think about it.

Brett Trainor (: 26:17

interest.

Brett Trainor (: 26:30

Right. And so you're saying be more intentional about some of the decisions you're making and think through the decisions that you're making.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 26:37

Just be aware and it's not like you don't have to think about all of them, it will drive us nuts. But we need to understand which ones really matter.

Brett Trainor (: 26:48

Yeah. And how do you do that? What do you have a simple framework that you use to think about what really matters? What's, cause again, I could see you going down a escalating rabbit hole of what is important. And then all of sudden you've spent half a day on stuff that, that wasn't. So how do you, how do you think about that?

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 27:03

Well actually it's kind of... we do have a framework for that which helps because our emotions... we see emotions as a part of our... as information. So the moment that you get emotional about something, you know that it's something that's actually a little bit more complex or complicated.

than what you thought. So the moment that you experience emotion around something, you know that you need to put a little bit more thinking into it, rather than just reacting.

Brett Trainor (: 27:38

That's it.

I'm chuckling because literally I am better at this now, but you know, through the thing, well, I have like that breakthrough, the epiphany Bradley Cooper, when he's in the movie, when everything just seems clear, right? You wake up in the middle of the night, you're like, I got it. You know, the number of times I've bought a domain name because I'm like, this is the way I miss. Cause it was emotional. You're right. was excited. I was energized by it, but then 24, 36 hours, I'm like, huh, maybe that wasn't exactly what I thought it was. So I do.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 27:51

Yeah.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 28:06

You

Brett Trainor (: 28:09

again, unintentionally now take time after I get super excited about something and not just race to it because it may not be that grand idea that I thought it was if I would have put some, know, let things cool down or calm down.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 28:22

Yeah, so when we... That's so beautiful because once we get excited, we become overconfident and take too much risk. And we do want that. That excitement drives us. It's fine, but then just have those decision rules in place so that you know that you will use that energy that the emotion gives us, which we need to propel us forward, but that you would use it wisely.

Brett Trainor (: 28:31

Thank you.

Brett Trainor (: 28:39

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 28:49

Yeah. And again, just make better decisions. Because I think, again, there's so many different variations of what we can do with these solo businesses. like I and I did take your advice at the time that I was excited for the first time. Like, yes, decision making. This is going to be a key component or critical component of a solo business, both with us and our internal clients. But then I had to take a breath and again, make sure I'm like, am I just excited by the idea of this? Is this really just a gap in my life? And maybe everybody else has already got this figured out.

And no, I think it's, it is a big opportunity as the world just gets more and more generic and AI and, you know, cotton sense. How do you break through it's, you know, challenged and critical thinking. And obviously not everybody's going to be on board with it, but I think, you know, it can be, it's going to be a differentiator. Again, some people will want easy. then this, what we're talking about, they probably turned off already, but if they're thinking about one, how do I get out and make better decisions and not

your point not take the emotion out of it but channel that emotion and take a step to say hey do I need to think through this a little bit deeper because I am excited about it which is you know I never even thought about that so like I I've got my a few of my notes now to start incorporating but that's the beauty of this learning and you know we're gonna get better and we're gonna make better decisions as we go through the process

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 30:12

I am super excited about this because I think this is a blind spot for many, of us. And it's something that we don't get training in.

Brett Trainor (: 30:20

No, no, mean, maybe in business school, we talked about decision frameworks, but not applying it into our life, not applying it into the decisions that we do or how we make right overall things. So again, if we're in corporate, we really didn't get trained in a lot of this thing, right? It's all risk mitigation, overanalyze everything, don't make any. So it's way over indexed on the other end of you really have to be a hundred percent sure before you take any action. And this is

We may not know what's gonna work, but I think that goes back.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 30:53

Exactly. on some level with all the changes that's happening in the world with AI, geopolitical changes, there's so much more uncertainty in the air. So our emotions get triggered so much more. So this becomes even more critical to make sure that we make the best decisions that we can.

And when you're in a startup and when you have to figure out which direction to go, it even compounds that. So you have to listen equally to the environment and you have to listen to your own voice. And listening to your own voice means listening to that emotion, but they know what they do to you and know how to channel that.

Brett Trainor (: 31:27

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 31:45

Yeah. And get the check, right? Again, with your, the tool you've built that again, it was, cause you had asked me for feedback and I'm like, cause as soon as it pushed back and said, Hey, have you thought about these three or four things versus spitting out the answer? I'm like, yes, this is, it's good. It's going to make me work a little harder, but I mean, it come up with better decisions quicker because it just, it, it's not what it wasn't part of my process, right? Or at least not in any,

what do I say, structured way. Again, everything is a level one decision for the most part and we just go, go, go and we don't take any action at all. So I think this is again, what you're working on I think is super important to help all of us get unstuck and again, make those better decisions.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 32:37

That's why we develop it. really hope this can support a lot of people and save them a lot of heartache and help us all to prosper.

Brett Trainor (: 32:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One step and one decision at a time. I can't, time is really flown and I do want to be respectful of your time. So I know I took us all over the map and I hope, I know, I think people got the core out of this, right? Decision making, think about it. So any, you know, what are, if you're new to this, this new concept, what are three things I'm going to put you on the spot that

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 32:51

Exactly.

Brett Trainor (: 33:10

you know, as you're going through to get started and going through this process. Obviously everybody should go check out all your content and the tools that you have. But even just simply in life, you're in corporate, would you recommend a newbie to say, hey, here's three things to get started.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 33:28

I think the first one is check in on your emotions and know that they give you valuable information. Be aware of what they are and learn how to read them in the context of decisions. And then secondly, master the tools and techniques that exist to strengthen the muscle on each of the four core decision competence areas. And thirdly, enjoy the ride. This is just...

taking us to a new level.

Brett Trainor (: 34:01

Yeah, 100%. If this wasn't fun, then we shouldn't be doing that. one my absolutely one of my rules. And you're right, you do need to enjoy it. But again, I don't know, this is why I just get so energized. So I have feeling there's quite a few folks in our audience that are going to see the same light bulbs going off after this conversation. So Magda, thank you so much for spending some time.

What's the best place if people want to connect with you, learn more about your tools, where's, how can they find you?

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 34:32

I think the best way would be if you go to getsense.net and I don't know if there's a way that you can type it in here, but that's great because they can just ask for a demo and or connect with me via LinkedIn as well.

Brett Trainor (: 34:39

Yeah, I'll put it into the show notes so people can pull it up and work it out.

Brett Trainor (: 34:50

Yeah, I highly encourage you. got some, you your blog posts. There's some interesting, again, I just read the one on the decision making. So as you can tell, I'm excited about the work that you're doing and I'm

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 35:00

Thank you so much and I so encourage you because I think we're going to need those corporate escapists more and more to become job creators instead of job seekers in the phase we are heading towards.

Brett Trainor (: 35:12

Exactly. And it's this week we're doubling down on small businesses, right? So even if it's not so that small businesses need these types of frameworks, if you can master it yourself or at least get good at it, you can help educate business and that's a service into small businesses, helping them make decisions, right? Even if you provide this, right? You do it for yourself, but then all of a you've got an offering into the small business world too. So I see the opportunity. I'm excited about it. We may have to have you come back on.

I'm sure this is going to spur a lot more questions. So if you're up for it, we'll get you on for a part two in the not too distant future.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 35:47

Happy to be with you, Brett, and I wish you well with Corporate Escapees. I think it's such an important service to the world out there.

Brett Trainor (: 35:57

Thank you. think so one escapee at a time, right? If we can keep one person out of corporate forever and create another solo business, we're moving the needle in the right direction. awesome. Well, thank you. Have a great rest of your day and we'll catch up with you soon.

Magda Du Preez, PhD (: 36:12

You too. Thank you so much, Brett.