Transcript
(lightly edited for readability)
Getting to know The Guy To Know.
00:00:07 Linda Blythe
Hi everyone. I’m Linda Blythe of Genius2U. And today with me, I have Guy Thornycroft. I feel very honoured to have you here on our podcast Genius2U today. Guy, you’re obviously a Natural Success accredited coach, and I love the name of your business, The Guy to Know. So welcome Guy.
00:00:28 Guy Thornycroft
Thanks Linda. Good to be here.
00:00:29 Linda Blythe
It is, isn’t it, Fantastic? So as always, we had a little bit of a conversation before we got going on our podcast today, and one of the things that really stood out in our conversation right from the get go was you talking about the evolution of your working life, where you started and how are you actually ended up at this stage being a Natural Success accredited coach and looking after some incredible people in our community.
Where did Guy Thornycroft start? The Downside of Hotel Management.
00:00:54 Guy Thornycroft
Life takes such extraordinary twists and turns, doesn’t it? I think at the beginning you can never imagine where you’re gonna end up and what you’re gonna end up doing. You find your way trying to work it out and trying to find what works for you.
I ended up in in hotels in Scotland really by accident. We were just travelling and I ended up being offered a night manager’s position in the hotel and love the hotels, by the way. But its 70 hours a week and never meeting the same people again.
Occasionally you get somebody coming back two years later or whatever it is, staying in the house saying “oh, we stayed here.” But you know when you’re dealing with 180 people a day, they come and go and you never get to know them. So you give and you create an experience for them, and then you’ve got to repeat it again the next day and repeat it again the next day and repeat it the next day. Like it never really tied in.
you can never imagine where you're gonna end up
and what you're gonna end up doing
Life oriented financial planning – helping people achieve their dream lifestyle.
So I moved out of the hotels into financial planning, but I learned my financial planning from quite an extraordinary source. They were doing financial planning in a very different way, which was very life orientated, very much lifestyle orientated and finding out and extracting from people what it what was the life they wanted to lead, how did they want to be in the world, and what did they want to achieve, and where did they want to go and what did they want for their family and then finding ways of affording that.
So using a piece of software that did lifelong cash flows and really allowed you to play with scenario A, scenario B. And when do you have enough? Really addressing that issue of what is enough and finding that people are often a lot closer to achieving the lifestyle that they wanted than they imagined they had to be. Which allowed them then to obviously spend more time on the things they love.
Moving to Australia to teach Financial Planners.
So that was very rewarding. But I had the option of either staying in Scotland and carrying on doing that as a financial advisor or moving to Australia and to sell the software that we’d been using. That was an opportunity really to move from a cold climate to back to the warm climate having been brought up in Africa. I’ve I missed the warmth and the dryness.
00:03:17 Linda Blythe
Bit of a difference there!
00:03:19 Guy Thornycroft
Just a bit of a difference. So then spent the next 10 years trying to teach financial planners how to do this this different way of being far more open and explorative with clients rather than going “Give me your money and I’ll invest it. And then you can spend it on anything you want.”
00:03:39 Linda Blythe
And I’ll just take my trailing commissions.
00:03:41 Guy Thornycroft
“I’ll take the commissions on the way through; Thanks very much”. But you know again that was moving further away from dealing directly with people. Yes, I was dealing with financial advisers, but I was never seeing the impact of this lifestyle service that they were offering. They would report back and say “having fantastic success and my clients love it” and that was very rewarding. But one step removed really from making a difference to individuals.
00:04:09 Linda Blythe
So something was missing again.
Stepping into Natural Success and coaching individuals to build a life vision
00:04:11 Guy Thornycroft
Something was missing, yeah. And then coming across the Natural Success work and feeling a huge affinity to stepping back into truth and ultimately returning to dealing with my own clients as a coach.
00:04:32 Linda Blythe
Yeah, and helping them to build a vision on all levels of life and then watching them step forward into that.
00:04:39 Guy Thornycroft
Absolutely amazing. It’s the most rewarding and wonderful fulfilling work that I’ve ever done.
00:04:49 Linda Blythe
Amazing. So you mentioned that you grew up in Africa and you grew up on farms and things like that. So tell us more about that Guy, cause that’s fascinating.
Back Story - Africa, Boarding School and Music
00:05:01 Guy Thornycroft
Zimbabwe was home for me, or Rhodesia. Born in Rhodesia and raised until the name changed. And that was home and my parents were born and brought up there as well. And my grandparents on one side as well.
So Africa was home, and the family had a farm. My dad was a pilot flew cargo planes around the world, 747s, which was great fun, and mum was radio announcer.
I went to boarding school from a very young age and each boarding school was out in the bush. I had literally thousands of acres around us to go and explore and climb kopjes and build forts in the forest, and explore. The bush became really important part of life and Africa is rich with game and all the animals and things like that.
Even the senior school, we actually built a game park and then stocked it with zebra and giraffe and eland and kudu and impala. And as kids, we were part of that -building it, putting in the roads and building the fences and then actually capturing the game and stocking the game park and maintaining it.
So that was the lifestyle. It was this close connection to nature and dealing with animals and basically hunting, fishing, shooting and just being in the bush. Really finding any excuse to be out there. So bird watching and sitting in canoes on rivers – that was my upbringing; my fathers passion.
00:06:49 Linda Blythe
Yeah, like a real connection to country, right?
00:06:52 Guy Thornycroft
Wonderful deep sense of belonging and knowing the sounds and knowing the smells and knowing the energy of what was going on.
00:07:03 Linda Blythe
Well, makes my year 12 chemistry options seem very dull in comparison to going out and creating a game park.
00:07:04 Guy Thornycroft
[Laughs] A Game Park! And flying falcons. We had a falconry club we belonged to, and we all raised hatchlings—goshawks or whatever species it was at the time. It was a peregrine breeding program. Flying peregrine falcons and similar birds… those were beautiful memories. We’d spend hours searching for birds that hadn’t returned to the roost.
It gave me an incredible appreciation for nature—being in the wild and feeling connected to wilderness
00:07:50 Linda Blythe
I think that’s such an important part of our soul calling. Even people who deny “nature” as a thing, still have something inherent in us that seeks connection with it—even if it’s just the plant in their bathroom.
We were out in the bush yesterday, and it was the same thing—that sense of being on Country, being with the trees, being in the flow of the water… just noticing all of that. It’s a rich experience.
00:08:20 Guy Thornycroft
We’re just not isolated beings. We live in an ecosystem, and our place in it is part of our survival. I think the world is evolving toward that realisation. Maybe not quickly enough, but we’ve definitely come a long way.
If you go back to the 1970s, it was all about people, cities, and a kind of hedonistic behaviour. But since then, we’ve made real progress in recognising the importance of forests, animals, and even insects. You know, the importance of bees… The role each species plays in our survival.
00:09:02 Linda Blythe
Yeah, nothing really needs to be taken out of the picture because it’s all there for a reason. Beautiful. And so your love of nature actually drew you to the sea as well, didn’t it?
00:09:13 Guy Thornycroft
Well, Africa… I grew up in Zimbabwe, and it used to really upset me when people would go, “Ohh You’re South African.” I’d go, “No, I’m Zimbabwean.” “That’s South African, right?” And you go, “No, Zimbabwean.” It’s a bit like calling an Australian a Kiwi, you know? It’s like— It’s a bit of an insult.
00:09:20 Linda Blythe
Or like Canadian and American?
00:09:31 Guy Thornycroft
Yeah, that’s right. And the Belgian with Dutch, anyway, we all have our little taboos—the Scotsman & Englishman, you know.
But Zimbabwe was home. Zimbabwe’s landlocked, there is no sea there. So the sea was something very exciting to discover in later life.
And it’s certainly now my passion in Australia -being in the underwater world. Africa has this rich diversity of flora and fauna that isn’t really replicated in the same way in Australia. But the sea does; it has the diversity of plant and fish life – and mammals, even. That really makes it the most incredibly exciting playground.
So free diving and spearfishing have really become a passion of mine in Australia.
Nature and a natural way to meditate.
00:10:24 Linda Blythe
Yeah, it is a wonderful place under there, isn’t it?
00:10:26 Guy Thornycroft
The sounds of whales and dolphins, and coral reefs just teeming with life, and the diversity – every little small rock has got something living underneath it or around it. Or an amazing species of plant or weed. The diversity is just absolutely staggering. The ability to lose yourself underwater – you just kind of forget that you’re supposed to be breathing. Easy to do.
00:10:57 Linda Blythe
But that too is also part of being connected – connected with what’s going on around you – and allowing your body to be held in that space, isn’t it?
00:11:08 Guy Thornycroft
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s a way of getting out of your own mind and just letting the mind relax. Because when you’re in observing or awareness mode and you forget yourself, you become totally awake to what’s around you. And I think the mind needs that. We get very tied up with the house, and the family, and the kids, and work, the garden – and all our different activities. And that’s all busyness.
I think that’s what nature does, really – it just allows us to de-stress and download, and just be present for a while. And that is a natural way of meditating. To be aware and present of what’s going on around you, rather than in your own head. And the sea demands that of you. There’s so much to keep you occupied, but you forget yourself.
I think that's what nature does, really, it just allows us to de-stress and download, and just be present for a while.
00:12:07 Linda Blythe
So a beautiful segue here, so everyone can applaud.
Good segue, Linda. But that state of being is also very congruent with how we are as coaches in this work, isn’t it? When we’re in the state of vision with a client, or even receiving their current reality and their bridges – that’s a state that we’re in where we can’t be involved in what else is going on in our world, in our lives, in our family, and that sort of thing.
00:12:34 Guy Thornycroft
Well, talking to you as a former Coach of the Year you appreciate that. It’s all about getting out of your own way, isn’t it. And being present with somebody else allows you to connect to your intuition and your higher self. And that is a skill set I think. Whether you’re a coach or not, this is such a critical skill to develop.
00:13:00 Linda Blythe
Yeah, you’ve got to be able to connect with that sense of yourself that allows for the intuition to be the primary mode of awareness. So things like nature are very promoting of that mode. What vision do you hold for the unfolding evolution for yourself and your clients on that orientation?
00:13:21 Guy Thornycroft
Well, I think the most the most powerful component of this work is that ability to see what you’d love and just to follow that limitlessly.
It’s evolved from “Wouldn’t it be great to have five clients?”, then, “Wouldn’t it be good to have 10 clients?”, “Oh, that’d be amazing.” That’s me making an impact, and I can feel that change from “It could be good to have five clients” to going, “Imagine making an impact on 15 people, imagine making the impact on 30 people. Imagine making the impact on …” The number just keeps going up.
The Evolution as a Coach
Then you go, “Well, what is that upper level?”
And basically, the evolution of coaching for me is: What’s the impact I then have on humanity? What’s my legacy?
And it goes from survival all the way through to where can I take the skills and the confidence that I have in this work, and make a bigger and bigger impact? So it’s finding ways of multiplying it from one-to-one to how do you then start impacting groups of people or communities of people? And I think that’s the question.
My observations, having coached for, what 12, 13, 14 years, is that where somebody thinks they can get to in a single year, by the end of the year, they look back and go, “Wow, I actually did that.” Or sort of 90–95% of it.
A year later, they look back at that target and go, “Aww, That was cute. Now I’m achieving!” And the year after that they do the same thing. That expansion just continues. I think we limit ourselves, but I love the evolution of seeing Well, I’m going to stretch myself to the next evolution of what I can achieve, knowing that in a year’s time, that will look like kids’ play.
00:15:30 Linda Blythe
Yeah, absolutely. So true, so true. And also in that orientation – we were having a chat before about our weekends. We were just nattering along about what we’d done on the weekend, and you got up to a whole bunch of things. I got up to a whole bunch of things. We’re living our hearts. We were living our choices, and it was just like, “Wow, how cool is that!”
Because we didn’t just get to the weekend and go “Thank God we survived the week,” and, “Ah well, we’ll all sit around and watch TV or whatever for the rest of the weekend.” It was full of what really lights us up.
And I think that’s one of the things that we love, and I’m speaking for both of us now – but I love to see my clients living that way, where their life is just chock-a-block full of stuff that they absolutely love. How about you?
00:16:12 Guy Thornycroft
Yeah. And again, initially, clients come in with this idea of, “I want more of what I think I need to be who I am.” And then watching that evolution, and the light coming on, and with it, the passion.
The passion to live more expansively and more enthusiastically. It moves from that sense of, “Oh, this is how I’ve gotta be, so I better be better at that in order get what I want,” to being, “What the hell, we can just actually really enjoy that.”
And I think people who are coached end up living more expansively because they’re open to more possibilities and less restricted by rigid thinking. What comes out of that is a discovery of what lights you up. It’s a return home. It’s a return home to that sense of being excited about waking up in the morning.
A return to waking up thinking “Wow, I’ve got a whole day, lets go discover it.” That sense of discovery and anticipation – of being delighted by something in the day. You know it’s going to happen so how’s it gonna happen? What’s it going to be about? And watching people come alive then That’s the transformational side; that’s the reward of this work.
00:17:34 Linda Blythe
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When your alarm goes off at 5:00 AM and you find yourself bouncing out of bed in the middle of winter, you’ve got to be onto a good thing.
00:17:42 Guy Thornycroft
You’ve got to be onto a good thing. What creates that? I remember the days of dragging out of bed going “ooooh”
00:17:54 Linda Blythe
But just wheeling back a little bit, what you said about people coming into coaching and they’re often just trying to orient themselves toward fixing what’s wrong with them, and that sort of thing. I have to confess, I’m pretty sure that’s how I went into my coaching.
Even though I had been coached before and all that, I basically fronted up saying, “Hey, if we could just fix this about me,” or, “If we could just work on this bit first.” And letting that egoic orientation try and govern how things need to unfold. And I’m so glad to have had the high-quality coaching that I received, because it was about— “Hey, it’s about your whole Land of plenty.”
It’s about the holistic nature of life, and that all of those things you think are wrong are gonna get taken care of when you’re actually stepping forward into your heart. Even if it feels like the thing you’re doing is the most useless waste of time in regard to what you think is wrong, it’s actually one of the most important things for you to do.
00:18:52 Guy Thornycroft
And have you found that coaching is like pulling at threads? That it doesn’t really matter which choice you’re working on. You can work on music, or you can work on art, and that can be the unfolding of your work and your relationships. Once you find that ability to step out of yourself and step into doing something with passion, it basically has this ripple effect into every other aspect of your life.
And you could always pick any choice at random, or any theme of life at random and once you start taking action towards it you find yourself taking action toward all the other things. And so it’s not necessarily about having to fix one area in order for everything else to go right. It’s the process and the discipline of working towards an aspect of your heart. And then finding that everything else starts falling into place as well.
00:19:50 Linda Blythe
Absolutely. It’s almost like in those actions, you’re declaring “This is what I’m going for. I’m going for my heart, no matter what.” And all the pieces start to line up,
00:19:58 Guy Thornycroft
Life conspires to go, “Ohh, here comes a creator. Okay, right!”
00:20:04 Linda Blythe
Absolutely. I love a description that our friend Ellie Dayton – also a Natural Success Accredited Coach – said to me once. And it was in the context of a group, She wasn’t speaking to me specifically, but she said, “Your choices are like grappling hooks into your land of plenty. And as you work along the path of those choices, you’re anchoring your whole land-of-plenty into your reality.” And I thought Ohh, that is so true. So—eight or nine grappling hooks into my Land of Plenty with my primary choices?
00:20:32 Guy Thornycroft
It ain’t going nowhere.
00:20:35 Linda Blythe
I’m bringing that in every day. So I thought that was such, such wise words.
00:20:37 Guy Thornycroft
Bringing it closer. That’s beautiful imagery, yeah.
Your choices are like grappling hooks into your land of plenty. And as you work along the path of those choices, you’re anchoring your whole land-of-plenty into your reality.
Music and...
00:20:43 Linda Blythe
So, you did mention music. That’s one of the things that calls to you, and you’re involved in. What’s it like? Tell us about your musical side.
00:20:51 Guy Thornycroft
Music.
Well, I got into music at about the age of seven because the school that I went to, the boarding school, insisted that everybody played a musical instrument.
00:21:01 Linda Blythe
For us it was the recorder!
00:21:05 Guy Thornycroft
We had fifes and recorders, we had to choose one or the other, and everybody started on one of those. And then if you showed any talent at all, they encouraged you to take up piano, or clarinet, or trombone, or some other sort of instrument. And we had a very, very Victorian school. After lunch, everybody had to go and lie down for 45 minutes, and as a kid, that was the most excruciatingly painful experience ever. Now I love the idea of an afternoon nap!
00:21:37 Linda Blythe
Ohh, siesta! I like that idea. Every school should do that.
00:21:39 Guy Thornycroft
We had to frickin’ lie down for 45 minutes, and it was more like a punishment. But anybody who played a musical instrument was allowed to go and rehearse. “Ohh, you better believe I’m playing one.”
I ended up playing the piano for a while, and then there was a guy in the school. Stobart was his surname, and he played the oboe. And I really admired him. I thought, “Well he’s the kind of guy I want to end up like. And if he plays the oboe, it’s a cool thing to play, I’m going to play the oboe.” And there was only one oboe in the school. And I got to be the oboist.
And so I picked up the oboe at about the age of 8, 9, 10 or something, and that’s carried on.
Bagpipes!
I’ve carried on playing that in a variety of bands, and I currently play in the concert band on the Central Coast. We perform three or four times a year. But that is also a component of the work in many ways because; you, as a single instrument, it sounds okay. But when you put it together with a cacophony of all the other sounds, and you end up with a blend that you could never achieve as a soloist. It reminds me that this is about being engaged in life with others, and that others play such a critical role. Whether it’s family, whether it’s community, whether it’s clients, or whether its our Natural Success community.
Part of community is a real critical component, and it delivers that depth of pleasure that we don’t get when we play alone, and have to do it alone. And so, sitting lost in the sound of an orchestra is something absolutely profound. I absolutely adore that. Then the other instrument that I play is the bagpipes.
00:23:33 Linda Blythe
Ohh, you’re one of those guys! Nice.
00:23:36 Guy Thornycroft
I’m one of those guys. And again, that came a bit later in life. But you know how these extraordinary coincidences happen, you know, when you follow your heart, just extraordinary things happen.
I was at a 21st birthday party, and a piper came up through the forest, around the pool, into the marquee, and by the time he got there, I was in tears. I was emotionally moved by it. And I said to him—because he was four or five years older than I was, but I knew him through the family—I said, That’s it. I’ve gotta learn those. I’ve gotta learn. And he said, Well, you’re going down to Grahamstown, and Grahamstown has South Africa’s preeminent piper. And I’ll give you an introduction.
00:25:22 Linda Blythe
Yeah, theres certainly a hauntingness to their sound isn’t there. It’s just there. It sort of really resonates in the body, doesn’t it.
00:25:29 Guy Thornycroft
I’ve watched people stand up and dance. Who haven’t stood up and danced for years. I’ve watched people just breakdown and cry. It moves them, you know. Music is a very powerful medium of connecting people to their thoughts and feelings for sure.
A word of Advice from Guy...
00:25:46 Linda Blythe
What a great story of unfolding in your journey. Love that. Very nice. When the student is ready, the path will open up. Now, we do have a lot of people who listen to our podcast who are either creating a business, about to create a business, or they’re already in business. They’re in some form of evolution with it – moving it into something else. What would be one word of advice, or one thing you wish you knew before creating the business you’re currently in? Something that has led you down this path?
00:26:26 Guy Thornycroft
It would have to be that failure is okay. Making mistakes is okay. If someone had just said to me, “You don’t have to get it right every day,” that would have made a huge difference. The cautiousness of looking for the right way to do it, of going slowly and seeking advice, spending huge amounts of money on professionals to tell me about structures and processes. You know, structure and process is really important – don’t get me wrong on that front, I’m not advocating you just go at it willy-nilly. But the ability to go out and start. I would have started much more boldly. I would have stood up and said, “Look, here’s what I’m doing” much more loudly and without that terrible fear of rejection. It’s okay to make mistakes, and you know what? I don’t know anybody who’s ever built a business who hasn’t made mistakes along the way.
Often, those moments led to my most profound learnings – and sometimes, my best clients came from situations where things went terribly wrong. The ability to step in and work with them has led to them becoming some of my strongest advocates. It builds bonds. It’s okay to make mistakes. That’s something I wish I’d been reassured about early on.
You don't have to get it right every day
00:27:52 Linda Blythe
Yes, absolutely. And of course, the ego is going to freak out—saying, “No, we can’t do that. That’ll lead to doom and gloom and nothing good.” But as you said, there are often some really amazing things that come from failure. I won’t go into all of mine here, but I know some of my biggest failures have led me to the most magical moments down the path. But at the time, they didn’t feel good at all, but I absolutely would not be where I am now without them.
This is not a cliché—I truly would not be where I am now if I hadn’t made those mistakes in the first place. So yes, there we go. Well done. Well, thank you so much, Guy. It was a great conversation. I’m sure our listeners will have received a lot of gold from our conversation.
You can find Guy on the Genius2U platform under the coaches section. He is a Natural Success-accredited coach and Coach of the Year for 2022.
His business is “The Guy To Know” and we look forward to having another conversation with you further down the track, Guy. I think we’ve got more “Guy gold” to mine.
