Philip Fernandez is an entrepreneur, leadership & Executive Coach, Winning Mindset High-Performance Strategist, Speaker and Author.
With over 30 years in the fast-paced, high-powered corporate world of multinational companies in the FMCG and Aesthetics industries in Australia, and New Zealand with affiliation to Europe, USA and Asia in senior management and Country Manager roles, Phillip has been featured in the international Motivational Speakers Australia and Motivational Speakers America books. He is also the author of “Extraordinary Leadership for Everyday Managers”.
Founder and Director of Wizard Business Consulting and more recently The Winning Mindset Academy, with a Masters in Leadership and a Master NLP Practitioner (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).
Phillip has channelled his research & philosophy in the understanding of human behaviour and mindfulness to driving personal and business performance with leaders and their teams.
For more details, visit Business Wizard and Winning Mindset Leadership.
Here we sit down with Philip, to know a bit more about his journey as an entrepreneur.
Q. Tell us a little more about your journey as an entrepreneur – how did you get started? What inspired you?
Philip: I never saw myself as an entrepreneur when I started off in corporate life. And so, I spent over 30 years in corporate life, a very blessed and successful career in the fast-moving consumer goods FMCG market, which took me to three countries in my youth and with my family.
Never planned to actually find myself working in a few different countries. But I did start in, sales, and then moved into marketing, general management, and then CEO and HR directorship. Originally from Sydney, Australia, took me through to New Zealand, France, and the UK. And also touching on it took me to the USA, it took me to Asia, I worked for some major brands that were based in New York, and I had to go there for training. So there were a lot of different opportunities and enough to see the world.
However, that company, the last company was in about 17 years. And of course, when they brought me back to Melbourne, Australia, because headquarters was here for Australia. Time for me to come back and after four years, lost my passion, left a very high-paying job and decided to start up my own career in speaking and in coaching, because I met a lot of other good speakers I used to contract and they said, You know, I’d make a great speaker and coach and make more money because I have that people relationships. And one of the things I found in my career was that I had the uncanny ability to employ the right person, get them to take ownership, and then they helped me write the bottom line. I know it sounds easy. It sounds simple, but it’s not. And always, you know, other staff wanted to come to my brand, because it was the fun brand.
We made profits by empowering my staff to take ownership and write their own destiny. And so I took that into my own career and started off jack of all trades and master of none. So in my business portfolio, I had all the things I can do. And people would think, what am I going to contact you for, as I did not seem to hit their specific need.
So I learned very quickly that I had to be completely focused on one area in business and what was that particular area. So I had to do some soul searching to find out, you know, what is something that I really wanted to do? It was obvious it had to be in the people’s arena. How do I work with people? So I thought the industry that I was in, came from the aesthetics industry. So, you know, I work for companies like L’Oreal, which was one of the largest cosmetic companies in the world, right across FMCG, supermarkets, department stores, salons and clinics. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry. And so I catered to that market first and developed material and moved into how to personally self-develop staff how to get them motivated and to take ownership and then moved into leadership at a later date. So virtually, that started my career in starting my own business right and going from there.
It’s evolved over the last 15 years now I’ve been in business and to now moved my model online which I suppose is how we’ve met. I moved more into the leadership space and got more qualifications in that area. A master in leadership, and also a master in neuro-linguistic programming, which is NLP. And funny enough that the founder and a lot of those big companies come from the States.
And I did my schooling with Tad James and CO, which is one of the largest NLP companies on the planet, Tad and Adriana James who from the States, and they’re all over the world. So I did my master’s recently with them online. And so with all of that, actually combining that with my leadership, skills and technical knowledge, I created a very different brand, of how to help CEOs, business owners, and anyone who is in this decision-making process. To start to look at themselves and how they come across and how they can better run a better company have a better relationship with their employees and get the employees to take ownership.
Again, it sounds simple, but one of the biggest issues in all companies is leadership and employee engagement and the communication gap in between, which is kind of where I spend most of my time now. And again, over COVID, I found out that there were a lot of people that were suffering, from depression, and anxiety, which are part of the mental issues that are going on now. And so I decided to create a not-for-profit company called winning mindset Academy. It’s been going on for two and a half years now. And it’s not winning in the traditional sense of winning, you know, when I say someone the word winning, they think of winning a race or making a million dollars or getting a degree, yes, that’s winning, or buying a lovely home, that’s winning. But winning in the sense of nothing to do with money, it’s got nothing to do with who you are, where you come from, it’s about I’m going to cross that road because I can. And then when I achieve that, I’ve won something. It’s about gaining the confidence to say whatever I want to do in life, I can do it and win it. Alright, so that whole slot is about appealing to anyone in the world. That is suffering, confidence is going through the feeling of rejection- I’m not worthy.
There are a whole lot of things like for example, I come from the wrong side of town, whatever it might be. And so I created that Winning Mindset Academy and became a podcaster. And so I have picked people from around the world who have got come from all sorts of backgrounds. My latest one is someone from the states actually. She’s an HR guru, that’s from Memphis, Tennessee. So there you go. And I have all sorts of different people, sports people, scientists, entrepreneurs, salespeople, wherever and they have all started somewhere, have experienced great adversities in their lives, divorces, bankruptcies, whatever, and have come back out again, and achieved something in their life. And they’ve shared it with my audience.
And I get a lot of satisfaction out of that. And from that, I actually move into the leadership space and winning mindset leadership. Winning Mindset Academy is the vehicle for Wizard Business Consulting, which I founded about 15 years ago. And so I realized that you have to give in order to get. You just can’t take and ask people to spend money with you unless you start giving first. And that’s one of the things I’ve learned in life. As an entrepreneur, as someone that you need for your main purpose, I talked about the purpose of leadership is helping others in their lives and become better. I’m using the leadership space and using the space of mindset, but if I get nothing out of it after a meeting, they still walk away feeling a lot better, I’ve achieved something that day. And if they want to do business with me, fantastic, but you know, it’s very much into the brand, what you leave with people, the space you leave them in is a very powerful, very powerful space.
Okay, so I talked about the seven values of humans from value one to value seven, about where they were, what values they unconsciously live in, that that that allow them to make their decisions in life unconsciously, it’s a very powerful place to be. And that’s part of the learning, which is very NLP based, I’ve put it to my leadership space. So it’s, you know, I’m really only touching the surface here, as you can see. But virtually, that is the space I live in now, which is very rewarding, very rewarding.
And the thing about it, as I always say you know, the interesting thing is you don’t know what’s around the corner and that makes it even more exciting. Because I will say to people also plan to fail. So what I mean is a plan to be ready for adversity so that you can actually create a new challenge in life from that adversity. But you are going to get down? I understand that, but what are you going to do about it? And so, if we can keep asking ourselves those questions, it’ll keep fuelling ourselves, our internal self, to always become better, but you don’t become better without actually involving other people and helping other people.
Q. What are your long-term goals in business? Paint a vision for the future
Philip: You know, if you ask me that, in my career, in my 30s, and my 40s, I probably give you a very different answer to what I’m going to give you now. You know, the tradition, the long-term goal is, I want to get to the next step, I want to be debt free, I want to be I want to have, you know, I want to have this I want to have that would have probably been my answer, then I wanted to be self-sufficient by a certain age. And interestingly, some of those goals happened and some did not happen.
It’s quite interesting, then. But now, where I’m at now that the long-term goal business is a very different one, and it is probably perpetual. In other words, it is constantly evolving for me, right? And some people say, wow, you know, at your age, you should be retiring and enjoying the fruits of life. And I said, What do you mean by retirement? You just tell me the definition of retirement? What’s the retirement in your words, a lot of people say ‘Well, you know, do what you want to do?”
I said you hit the nail on the head because I’m doing exactly what I want to do. I’m enjoying life. And I can switch off after this Hunter and go and have a game with golf, if I want to, you know, it’s what I want to do. But the point is, I’m still contributing to society and to the community. You know, I would be wanting to raise my followers to 20,000 in the next two or three years and that is a long-term goal. Why am I doing that? I’ve got a VA that helps me to do that.
This is because it’s not about saying I’ve got that many followers. It’s about what I do with how am I going to contribute to the global society to the global community. And doing what I just said, I want to do at helping others become better. But in that process, create a more purposeful business for me.
That is perpetual. And working online now, which is so amazing. And from that, of course, WinningMmindset Academy is currently what I’m working with now and with Business Wizard Consulting. They will be there until when I decide to switch it off. But those two arms are powerful. There could be another one around the corner that I’m working on right now, I’m not sure how that’s going to evolve along similar lines, but it might involve a few more other people that I’ve networked with over the years and how, again, the long term goal is, how can I help others become better and go from there? Notice I’m not talking about financial goals. I’m not talking about the size of the business. Because they’re secondary. To me, they come automatically provided that the purpose I’m talking about purpose is critically correct in life. And then some people might say that’s verging on being spiritual. Okay, if you want to call it that. Yes. Because at the end of the day, what is your genuine, authentic purpose?
So when I did my master’s, I did my research on ethical leadership, you know, what is ethics? Is ethics part of being authentic? is, you know, leaders need to make ethical decisions rather than good decisions. And an ethical decision is usually a pretty good decision by coming from a very different angle, you and I know, and I won’t mention any names or leaders or presidents around the world that have made decisions, but one would ask the question, are they ethical? Are they the right ethical decisions to be made for society? And us? And is that combined with a political decision or a financial decision, it does not matter, as long as there’s ethics and authenticity behind that decision. So my long-term goal in business is to foster all that and grow a global community.
All right, that is a strong community where I can actually grow my business in that way. And I have an idea of what the outcome might be. But I’m at a stage right now. Where, yes, I’m comfortable. But you know, I’ve talked about complacency in life, once you start letting the ball drop, so to speak. What else have you got to do? You can’t play golf five days a week. Even though I’m a golfer, you get bored. Alright, someone will say, Well, what a beautiful thing to do. I say, really? I’ve talked to people that are playing golf for five days when they go, and they often say I need to do something else. So a lot of my vision is exactly that for me.
Q. What motivates you?
Philip: Yes. motivation to me, if you look at my Facebook, my personal Facebook saying is, I’m passionate and passionate for life. I’m passionate about life, about liberty. And that is the basis of motivation. It’s about again getting your purpose correct.
And yes, over the last 20 years, I’ve been able to experience motivation and maturity and age, I’ve realized that purpose in life has become a real motivation for me. If I get up every morning, I have a purpose, for what’s going to happen over the next 24 hours. Whatever I might be doing, even though it might be relaxing, or it might be the business focus if there’s not a purpose, and a good reason for what I’m doing, then why am I doing it? And if you can take that out to anything you want in life, as an entrepreneur, you want to take it into business, I have worked with a lot of start-ups. And these are some of the questions I asked start-ups, what’s your purpose? Why are you doing what you’re doing? Is it because you know, three other guys that are doing it? Is it because it’s the trend? Is that why you’re doing what you’re doing? What is the real purpose behind what you’re doing? To me, once we discover that, motivation kicks in.
You know, I say motivation comes with needs. And if you don’t have a need, you are not motivated. For example, I speak to young ones, and they say, I don’t have any money. Yet, when a rock artist comes to town whom they’re like, and it costs $200 per ticket, they will find $200 and go and see that regardless. Now that’s motivation.
I’m gonna beg, borrow steal that money, to get that money to go and see that person. I’m not worried about what happens after that. I’m just, I’m motivated to see that person. So when we are doing amazing things we win when we have a purpose behind what we want to do. And so that was that is what motivates me.
Q. What business-related book has inspired you the most, or, what is your favourite book?
Philip: Well, I’ve read a lot of books in my time but one of the books that have actually inspired me, was the very first book that was given to me by a very successful salesman when I was in my 20s.
He was amazing. And he saw something in me that no one else saw, he said you can be a great salesman. And in those days, selling was very different to what selling is now. And I know in the States, you know, selling is still big in this part of the world. Yes, it is. But selling in those days was very technical, open, close what’s your attention getter, and all this sort of stuff. Selling now is very different. Authenticity, empathy, and all that comes into selling. And so the focus is not on the selling is the outcome. And then people buy. A perfect example of that is influencers and social media. And so silent selling is around us all now and people are buying because they see a need.
So going back to the question would be that book was thinking Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And now, you might have heard of that book. A lot of people know that book. It’s been around for decades, and it’s been revised. I think it’s its fifth edition right now out there. And so the thing about it is that when I read the book, I literally did what the book asked me to do. And realize how silly I was, you know, it’s one of the things that said, then wherever you go, when you get up and you say to yourself, you know, I feel great, I’d feel happy, I feel terrific. I’m going to take on the world.
Don’t quote me, but it was some of those sayings. Then I look out and it was pouring rain. Alright, it was a miserable day. Who am I kidding, it’s shit out there. What am I saying? I don’t feel good. So when you take it too, literally, it’s not the purpose as it was deeper than that. And of course, once you read the book again, and many other books, you realize that motivation, or what you take out are things it’s not necessarily what you read, is the interpretation of what you read. And that’s more important than literally taking it word for word. So that was my favourite book. And it still is, I’ve met read many other books where that always resonated with me because it was my first one.
Q. What strategies do you use to optimize your performance or mindset?
Philip: A lot of strategies, obviously, have changed in the last decade, because you know, I’ve become an NLP practitioner, as well. So my whole take on performance, mindset and strategies are very much related to that slant.
One of the biggest strategies I use to optimize performance for mindset, which I help others is how we find excitement in things that we don’t like doing, that we’re not excited about that we want to put on the back burner. I’ll do it tomorrow. How do we get enough excitement and it can bring it to the forefront? It is one of the toughest questions to answer.
How do we do that? How do we get excited about working with someone if we don’t actually connect? How do we create excitement? That fuels the passion to actually change the environment in the relationship? It’s a tough one. And by asking myself that question every day helps me in performance and in doing what I have to do on a day-to-day basis in getting my mindset right because this is what I do to help others. Whether they’re a CEO or employee or managing staff, I call it the blank, the blank canvas theory. The blank canvas theory is about if you imagine a painting and it starts fresh, and you start to put colour and to start to paint that in, the final result is an outcome that is not necessarily something that maybe you decided to start with, but the outcome is quite different. Because of the emotions that you’ve gone through that painting, the thought patterns, whatever motivates you to actually create that outcome and the colours that you’re using.
I talk about education and we’ve heard that the more we know, we realize how much we don’t really know, in life, because the more we know, we become more knowledgeable. When we become more knowledgeable, we realize there’s much more to learn. And so how much do I actually know and usually about this it is about this much compared to the universe, right? So once we need to accept that, we can say right, let’s put that aside and start a fresh conversation, a fresh relationship with someone that I need to get to know.
I have asked the question, someone, do you remember the first time you met the person you’re married to now? Or your partner you are with now? Yeah, how long have you been together? Can you remember that first moment, that first conversation? What drove you? It was passion, it was exciting, it was a whole lot of things it was physical attraction, you are going through emotions, that as probably faded over the years. Because you got to know the person quite well. But imagine trying to bring that back out. Whenever you meet someone, again and again, it’s a skill factor, but you do it genuinely. And that’s even harder. A lot of people say fake it till you make it. And I say “Be careful because we can’t keep on faking things in life and just making it “. Are we really authentic and genuine to ourselves?
So I don’t really like that particular saying cause I say how do we create this genuinely? Alright, so we have a modality within NLP, a really strong strategy that I use. Sports people use it now, Olympians use this sort of thinking to be the best in the world. Okay. And so this is the key strategy that I use in optimizing performance and mindset.
Q. If you were to write a book about yourself, what would you name it?
Philip: So the book I wrote a few years ago, was “Extraordinary Leadership for Everyday Managers”, and it was hard to come up with the title. But I met up with some people who, you know, help other people, authors, speakers, and coaches write books.
So, I took the course with them and finally came up with this book. And with the help of them, wrote the book, and used my own experience, and what I’ve known, and I did it in 12 hours. Obviously, not all in one hit. But when I put the book together, and it’s a 48-page book, it’s a powerful book. And it’s about a three-hour read. Also created an online book out as well.
I didn`t plan to be an author, because that’s a whole different set of skills. But the whole purpose of the book is to give you credibility and help as a professional speaker and a coach. So I wrote the book and why I picked that title.
Because, again, I wanted to appeal to the everyday manager, right? You know, I did not consider myself an extraordinary leader or manager at that time, leadership was something that I didn’t actually enter my world or take up a leadership coaching role. I was mainly speaking and engaging and similar topics about being a good manager. But it’s amazing what that book has done for me.
Over the last five or six years, a few people around the world have bought the book. Yeah, that’s fine. If I had to live off the book, I’d be a pauper. It’s not about how many books you sell is about the fact that you see in that book and the purpose behind that. I’ve thought about doing another book it’s not on my priority list right now.
Because I’m doing these other things which are taking time so basically, that book was a little about myself my experiences what I’ve learned and in the management business world and it was based on my corporate life which I now am taking into my own personal business, entrepreneurship and as a leadership coach. Winning mindset strategist is the title that I come under. And yes speaker and author but those are the two main titles that I worked on.
Q. What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made?
Philip: You know, investments have different meanings, you know, investing in tangible investing in property, investing in homes, or investing in people investing in yourself, there are so many different forms of investments you know, if I’m really being very, very deep and spiritual, you know, the biggest investment in life was getting married to such a beautiful woman and having an amazing family and cultivating that, and we’re all still together. You know, that would be the top list of my investments in life.
But putting that aside one of the biggest investments I’ve made, I mean, yes, I’m not going to talk about the tangible side of it. Because that is too obvious, too boring and too shallow. The real investment is the decision that I made in the transition between corporate life and becoming an entrepreneur, but going through the hard yards of jumping to the unknown, and at that time, I never actually saw that as an investment. I saw that as a challenge. I gotta admit, there was a lot of ego in there, to show the world how fantastic I was. But that all came down, like a crumbled house a couple of years later. And I had to really put my ego on ice and really become a real entrepreneur. Because three years after I started the business, I wanted to close it all up. It wasn’t working.
You know, one of the scary questions was is who wants to invest in me and pay money for my services? You know, that was the biggest question, the most daunting question that I asked myself. You could always hide in corporate life under a company in a very hard position because it was never your money. It was never your brand. It was always under the brand of the company.
Yes. Easy said and done. When you’re it, you can’t hide under that. That became a daunting question. And when that wasn’t working, it became even worse. So, the biggest investment was to really decide to re-educate me and relearn new things in life and at the age that I got into becoming an entrepreneur. To, re-educate and reinvest in more courses, leadership or NLP and learning more about online social media. I became very uncomfortable in going into these places.
And I found that by investing in those areas, which was daunting, I never knew what the outcome was going to be. Behind those investments, I had to have developed and what I really realized was that I have to have a purpose and the reason for why I’m doing it. And so, you can understand that these things happen unconsciously. When I decided to have that I found that those investments paid off over the last 15 years, which now has allowed me to go back to making investments in other areas that I didn’t have the ability to do when I first started out in life, you know, investing in stocks and other things. But it that would not have come about if I didn’t really embrace the real investment that I had 15 years ago
Q. Where do you see the future in your niche/industry 3-5 years from now?
Philip: I see this niche is going to get even more niche. All right. I want to talk about online because the world is online. You and I will not be talking if the world wasn’t online. That is a given. All right. So that is not an issue anymore. That is the way people have accepted to do business.
Businesses now accept to do business online. We can now do coaching and training indeed and talk to all their staff through zoom. Before COVID it was quite different. It’s got to be face-to-face. Where I spent a lot of my time before COVID during 20 to 30 flights across Australia around the country. Qantas loved me.
Just flying from the place doing speaking engagements. doing training engagements and totally exhausted but loving every minute, but the world’s changed. Only fly now, for pleasure. I might do the odd gig here and there. But 80% of the business is done online now, as we are doing now. I’ve more dressed and I’m talking to you now from the waist up, which is amazing. Okay, operating costs are a lot healthier, and the overheads are down. And it’s great. So going back to your question, where do you see the future in your niche industry? I find that the industry that I’m in is leadership and mindset.
Look around the world right now. Look at every part of the world. Look at all the major headlines. And the biggest headline that is coming up is questioning leadership in the world. Whether it be your country, my country, or Japan, look what’s happened there recently. North Korea, China, Russia, you know, leadership was always in the headlines. What values do they have? What are they doing with themselves? Some are creating catastrophes in the world, others are trying to save the world. This depends on what values they come from people agree, or disagree. And the other side of it is the mindset. And a mindset is taken a whole lot of different avenues, you know, from Reiki, to yoga, to psychology to a lot of different ways that people are helping out there in mindset. And of course, yes, I’m in that space as well. But I’m using that in the corporate world, in people working in that capacity in dealing with their own values and mindset.
So that they become better leaders. And so that is just going to get worse. And now there’s a bigger need for that in life. Everyone that I have talked to, says that there’s not enough time spent in that space.
There’s a lot of time spent in the technical space. Technically, as an engineer, for example, I’m good at whatever it might be. But when it comes to leadership skills, there is a lot of upskilling needed. As a CEO, how do I get other people to get motivated? And these are skills in how do I need to look at myself? So yes, this industry is just going to get more niche. And the ones that are in it, have to get better at what they’re doing. To be more authentic, to be more real, to be more genuine and how you approach business and people. Because everyone can come and give you all the technical jargon and all the degrees. But people only do business with people whom they feel they can relate to and be really genuine.
So those are the ones who survive. And in that niche, that’s exactly where I see it in the next three to five years. Now. Whether I’m doing it myself or I get other people doing it. I don’t know at this stage, but that will evolve. And how often I’m doing it again, it’s about that balance in life, which is what I talked about, right? So yes, I definitely see that niche in the industry three to five years from now so it’s not that far away.
Q. What is your ‘one-sentence’ piece of advice you’d like to give to someone who wants to become an entrepreneur, coach, or business owner?
Philip: I had it had a girl from the UK once asked me the same question – only two days ago. You know, can you give me some advice, I only I’m starting off, and I’ve only been in business one month and had a good corporate career. Well, there were about four or five points that I gave.
But if you want to put into one sentence, again, to understand the purpose, you wanted to become an entrepreneur and coach, I can’t think of anything simpler and that is what is your purpose? In life? What is your contribution? Do you know why you’re doing it? This is the first question. The second question is, you probably feel that you’re good at quite a few different things. Please, please, please try and narrow that down to one thing, you can’t do two things first, then narrow it down to one thing. And that’s the most difficult question, you have to ask yourself, back yourself, believe yourself. And then market that one thing, it’s going to take you a few years, whatever you need to do, you need to get educated, you need to tap into the self-talk and people or whatever you need to build in that area. Keep at it, be patient, and stick with it. Okay, obviously, you need to do due diligence.
You need to employ other people, marketers, whatever it might be, find your purpose, understand that what you’re doing is of good intent, and it’s ethical and it’s serving the community. You will find all entrepreneurs, who have decided to network would have answered those two questions and understood that is there a need for it out there.
Then go ahead and do the hard yards but also make sure that you’re prepared to make the sacrifice because it’s not going to happen overnight.
To keep up to date with Philip and his journey, connect with him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
