Phillip Fernandez: Inspiring resilience, leadership, and a winning mindset
My name is Phillip Fernandez, and I live in one of the most liveable cities in the world, Melbourne Australia. I have accumulated over 30 years’ experience in the FMCG market working for multinationals in Australia & New Zealand with strong exposure to France, UK, USA and Asia markets in General Management, Human Resource Director, and Sales Director roles.
Currently, as a Founder and Director, leadership and executive coach, winning mindset strategist and keynote speaker I assist leaders in honing their skills, discovering their limitations, and creating space for their employees to take ownership, produce excellent outcomes and build a healthy culture.
My wife and I started life with very little but we both had drive and ambition with mutual goals and vision. We travelled overseas because of my overseas positions, and our children had the opportunity to study in various schools overseas. This gave them an incredibly open–minded view of the world. They are all remarkably successful now in their chosen careers and we are still a very tight and close family.
I lost my passion back in 2006 in Melbourne Australia when I was in a National Sales Director role and later moved up to a GM role. I knew I needed to re-invent myself. It was extremely difficult to give up a highly paid position and the so-call security of being in paid employment. One of the hardest questions I encountered in my life was to have enough courage to leave the secure corporate life of working for an international company and start my own coaching and training company. Am I willing to put my family’s financial security at significant risk? Is my ego clouding my thinking?
I learnt incredibly early in life that if you want to be an entrepreneur you should talk to entrepreneurs that are doing it. I researched for about a year prior to my exit from corporate life. I spoke to various successful entrepreneurs who came from similar situations. But in most cases, they started a lot younger in life and had been doing it for quite a few years. They gave me positive feedback and encouraged me by identifying my talents and my ability to contribute at a much higher level in life by helping others to believe in themselves and success in their chosen profession.
I employed a lot of people in my time and some moved up into top management positions in various companies. In friendly discussions they advised me that it is not safe to pursue my dream and very few make it so I should not try it as they have thought about it themselves and it is not a wise decision. They even gave me a lengthy list of reasons why I would fail. They were very risk averse. I respected their advice and knew that we are all different and some of us prefer to have secure, paid positions.
With my passion, and determination and thank God, my optimistic cheerful outlook (which I had all my life) I took the plunge. Life is too short and precious… I also understood that to start a new dream from nothing was a daunting and scary proposition. I left the corporate world at the end of 2006 and in February 2007 I commenced building my own business.
Unfortunately, a month into my new venture, I fell ill with an auto immune skin disease, and I ended up in Royal Melbourne Hospital in July of 2007 for two months. I also discovered that what I had was exceedingly rare and the ratio was one in one million, so I was special! When I was finally released in September of that year, I knew that I had nothing to lose as my life was already threatened and I had conquered it! I came out with regained insight and a fire in my belly, my disease was still with me at the time, but I can control and manage it with a close discipline of steroids and auto immune medication, healthy diet, exercise, and an incredibly positive mental attitude.
I then slowly got myself back into the rhythm of things and in October 2008, I founded Wizards Business Consulting and branded it as a Business Coaching and Training Company. I realised my talents was in people performance and engagement and so I started to write management & staff development programmes and then went out to promote and sell the concept in the marketplace. I brought on various other entrepreneurs into the business under the one banner. It was successfully received, and I started to recruit new clients. From then I knew that my mission in life was to assist people in raising their self-esteem, being the best they can be and contribute positively to society.
I faced my own demons and survived the 2009 GFC and my business took a beating as I was still trying to find my feet and make a name for myself. It was a very scary, disheartening time in my life and one that tested my vision, purpose, focus and passion. Through networking, writing articles and online presence I got my name out there as the people performance expert-the Human Strategist. I have worked extremely hard to get to my status and most of my business has been through word of mouth and my credibility and integrity. I now travel Australia, Business Coaching, Training, and doing keynote speaking. I get results because of my passion and enthusiasm hinged on practicality, humour and storytelling in my speaking engagements, training workshops and keynote presentations.
My other business associates were also affected and so we all went our own separate ways but have stayed connected to this very day. Most of them have gone on to create their own successful businesses.
My professional corporate background is in Management and Human Resources but over covid lockdown, I completed my Masters in (NLP)Neuro Linguistic Programming and a Master of Leadership. This has given me a further edge in the understanding of Leaders and human behaviour to drive personal performance. So much so I have become a sought-after speaker and trainer with forward thinking companies who really place value on their people.
Based on all my experiences I can honestly say that it is not where you are in life, but it is about how you look at life and how you tackle your own fears and anxieties and how strong is your self-belief. We are in control of our own destiny, and we get the proportionate return we deserve based on the degree of investment that we are prepared to put into our mental state.
My 4P`s of success stands for People, Passion, Performance & Profit. If you have people that are passionate they will take ownership and perform and in most cases lead to profitability.
In today`s business environment, it is becoming increasingly more difficult and challenging to stand out, understand your market, create quality products, and deliver exceptional customer service in larger corporates and small to medium businesses. It is even tougher when it comes to attracting, developing, and then retaining skilled staff who buy into the culture and passionately promote your business. This covers a whole lot of different skills that many leaders, senior executives, business owners and managers find challenging and at times daunting. Over 30% of staff that leave an organization is due to bad management and lack of leadership.
Another survey shows that 57% of clients say that the main reason they don`t return to a business to purchase product or have a service, is because of the indifference of staff? What is even scarier is that each of these clients will tell at least ten people they meet, why they should not go there. Guess what, a good leader does affect the culture of an organization and in turn attracts and creates positive employees that take ownership which in turn retain happy clients.
Yes, it is alarming but TRUE!
Then there are different type of bosses and staff that bring different personalities and values to the business. The integrated network of human behaviour adds more complexity to what seemed amazingly simple when we all had the initial idea of wanting to own a business that employed staff that did what we wanted them to do.
Wizards Business Consulting specialises in identifying the real people issues and obstacles through NLP, Timeline Therapy and Genetic Profiling therefore making it easier to develop and execute simple people systems and strategies that produce results. I ask for Excellence in the Self, and this varies from person to person. This in turn empowers and up skills both Business Owner and staff.
I work on the Causes rather than the Symptom. The causes are the obstacles that prevent us from being the best we can be, and the Symptoms are the KPI`s that we strive to achieve but sometimes find it difficult, because we haven`t addressed the Causes.
This thinking model relates to Sales Training, Management Development, Staff Development, Leadership coaching, Effective communication, and engagement in the workplace and above all personal development. It is all about People Performance through Excellence in the Self!
During covid my business crashed, and I also saw and felt the pain of many who lost their business, lost their jobs and were not mentally in a good state. I decide to create a not-for-profit company named, Winning Mindset Leadership Academy. A platform that brings like-minded leaders together to share their success stories and to also help others to win in life. Some of us relate to winning as being first to the post or closing a million-dollar deal, a beautiful home or expensive car, but more importantly it is about celebrating your contribution to humanity. It`s about how we think in adversity and become part of the solution. Let`s grow this community together so we can all win in life. You also get access to inspirational podcasts, educational newsletters, online leadership programs, corporate mindfulness, and a growing network of like-minded professionals.
I employed a Virtual Assistant and through strategic planning and targeting she helped me grow my LinkedIn followers from 2,000, to over 12,000 in 2 years. We obtained and worked online with some larger organizations in USA and United Kingdom as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Life and society and in particular social media put a lot of pressure on us to become something or someone else that we are not. It is about identifying with the self, rather than the label we wear which is usually our occupation that creates a brand that some of us like and others don`t like.
It is about being true to oneself and being ETHICAL. This in my books is a huge topic in the current economic climate highlighting behaviour and decisions made by world leaders globally. Making the right decision is one thing but is it the ethical one.
I have been incredibly lucky as I have always enjoyed what I did and always worked long hours but never felt it. I would sometimes say in jest that “My work is like a holiday; the weekends are an interruption to my holiday.” The days flew and I would take on the next day with vigour to achieve more. There is an old saying that “If you wanted something done in a hurry give it to a busy person.” The less work you do only leads to boredom and little personal growth. Humans need personal stimulation and that does not come from doing less.
Many of you would be thinking about taking risks in your career and hence your life. There is no black and white answer on this. In fact, it is prudent to calculate risks and rewards; however, it is what you do with the information that is the critical factor. Do you dwell on it, or do you act and make a decision? There are many people in life that are afraid to make the wrong decision. What they don`t know is that the most successful people in life are also ones that have had the most failures. They made decisions, thrived on the good ones, and learnt from the bad ones. The question is that “Are you ready to make a decision and if so, it is usually the right one.”
In Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) we say “Everyone behaves the best they can with the resources they have available and present behaviour that is the best choice available. Every behaviour is motivated by a positive outcome.”
So my advice, is that if you are pondering on a passion, do your research , look at all the possibilities and challenges, making sure that your goal is purposeful and greater than just making money, and then ask yourself, “I am prepared to make the sacrifices, be disciplined and patient to create the life I want”.
