Become a Writer Today

Writing Memoir, Making Big Decisions and Bonus Time With Author Brian Pennie

April 15, 2020 Bryan Collins
Become a Writer Today
Writing Memoir, Making Big Decisions and Bonus Time With Author Brian Pennie
Show Notes Transcript

Will it make our boat go faster? That's a question Great Britain's 2000 Olympic rowing team asked itself every day prior to winning gold in Australia.

For a writer, your boat might represent writing a memoir and publishing it, landing a new client or launching a course. So when faced with a decision about to do more or less of, frame it around the boat question.


This is an idea Irishman Brian Pennie speaks about regularly. The author of Bonus Time, Pennie is also a PhD student of neuroscience, lecturer and a recovering heroin addict.


In this interview he explains:

  • How he overcame his heroin addiction
  • Why he decided to write a memoir about his painful personal story
  • How to make decisions faster
  • What his writing process looks like
  • And lots more.


I started by asking Brian how he overcame heroin and started writing a memoir.


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Thanks for listening!

Bryan Collins:
So, Brian, it's great to talk to you today and great to talk to another Irishman as well. You're actually living not too far from me, about an hour away. And I believe you are currently in the final stages of getting a book ready. But before we get into the book, maybe you could start by giving a bit of an introduction, who you are, and your story, and you how you got into writing and publishing the book Bonus Time.

Brian Pennie:
Brilliant. Thanks, Bryan. It's great. Well actually, I think we're only 20 minutes away from each other. It's very close. I'm in [Banchardstown 00:00:36]. But yeah. So where to start? It's a long story, so I'll give the summarized version of it. So, I spent 15 years of me adult life up until I was 35 years of age as a chronic heroin addict. For 15 years, I was a chronic heroin addict. And really a very functional addict for most of that part. And really, what I tried to tell people is a lot of people can't really relate when I talk about myself as being a heroin addict. But I was a very functional heroin addict.

Brian Pennie:
And what I used to tell people as well is that drugs were not my problem. I had a of childhood trauma in my life and operations when I was a kid, when I was a baby, and alcoholism in the family. And for me, growing up as a kid, it was just stress and anxiety. I would just always have this state of fear and agitation in my life. And I came from a pretty disadvantaged area, a very working class area, with a lot of drugs. And I started dabbling in drugs. And I found heroin at 16, 17 years of age. And it was like I found the solution to life. And I got caught up in it. Thought I was too clever to be a real addict. I got caught up in the whirlwind of self-deception and lived for 15 years as a heroin addict, much of that not believing I was a real addict. And then basically, me whole life fell apart the last few years of my addiction.

Brian Pennie:
So, to cut a long story short, when I was 35 years of age, I was nearly dead. Let's call a spade a spade. I was nearly dead. My body was giving up. And I stopped functioning. I lost every relationship in my life. I lost my job. I lost my health. I lost everything. So it was really time for me to sink or swim. And that was the first time in my life I actually sought professional help. When I couldn't get into the detox facility or any detox facility, any that were available wouldn't take me for insurance risks, and I would have been prone to seizures because I didn't have the drugs in me system.

Brian Pennie:
So I ended up doing detox at home. And I wound up having a seizure, a full-blown convulsive seizure. I bit mmye tongue, a bit split down the middle of my tongue, ended up in the hospital. And I'll never forget, I had an awakening moment in the hospital where I thought I was brain damaged. It was like the world didn't make sense anymore. Words didn't make sense, concepts. I was looking at a fire extinguisher on the wall. It was a red fire extinguisher. To me that night, it wasn't a red fire extinguisher. It was just like, I knew the word "red," and I knew the word "fire extinguisher," and they didn't go together.

Brian Pennie:
And I remember thinking, oh my god, you're brain damaged. Game over. And I was waiting for this panic attack that used to haunt me all my life to come over me. Well, it never did. And I realized that that was a pivotal moment in my life where I just stopped fighting with my own mind. I surrendered to life, and I just stopped fighting. And a couple of weeks after that, I got into a detox facility, I got off drugs, and then I just had this perspective shift. My mind went very, very quiet. And I'm forever grateful for whatever happened to me in that detox facility. And I switched addictions, I like to say. And I just became addicted to learning, and I went back to college.

Brian Pennie:
And in the six years since then, I went to [Minut 00:03:47], where you're from. I got my degree in psychology in Maynooth. I got addicted to learning. I'm a college writer now. It's not really addiction. I was driven to learn about Buddhist concepts, psychology, psychological concepts, thinking tools, and just really baring myself. And I've gone on to do a PhD. I've done a PhD. I'm now in Trinity College. I lecture now in Trinity College. I have a lot of really good things. And I got into writing and blogging. That's how I met you, within the group, and it's really just gone from there.

Bryan Collins:
Oh wow, yeah. And did you have a daily practice that helped you deal with some of the issues that you've talked about?

Brian Pennie:
Yeah. And I don't like the word rigid, but I would have a very regular daily practice. And so, meditation became a massive part of mmye life. So mindfulness, I was introduced to mindfulness in the detox facility. And me PhD is in mindfulness, and I practice meditation every day. So, half my morning routine would be meditation, 10 minutes meditation, visualization. I always visualize me goals for the day, visualize me goals going forward. I have a gratitude practice in my life as well. And I actually have a very structured practice of inner child work. And inner child work, so a lot of people think it's a bit of a fluffy concept. But some of it's been really healing for me, because I had so much trauma in me early life.

Brian Pennie:
For me, sometimes I just visualize my inner child, the child that was traumatized in his life. And even the infant me who had an operation, a big operation without no anesthetic, because back in them days, they didn't have anesthetics for infants. They didn't think infants experienced pain, believe it or not. And I just cradle that kid, and I visualize that kid, and I cradle him and let him know everything is going to be okay. And it's a very healing process, visualization process for me. But I do it every single day. Before I get out the house in the morning, I do enforce that every single day.

Bryan Collins:
That's a great start to the day.

Brian Pennie:
Great start, yeah.

Bryan Collins:
You've turned a lot of your experiences into the book Bonus Time, which is out later this year. How did you find writing the book? I mean, you probably had to go through your past and work through some painful experiences.

Brian Pennie:
Yeah, I did. It was funny. For anyone, if they ever read the book, people think the book is about addiction. It's about different things. But the book is really about self-deception. I say in the book, I was a master of self-deception, and I could cross any boundary by telling myself another lie. And that's really what it was about. And when even I got clean, I was never able to take people's perspective. And when I got clean, I was still struggling to take people's perspective. It was like addiction is like a me, me, me, or a very self-centered world. And even when I got clean, I wasn't really seeing the world from other people's perspective. And I certainly wasn't feeling the pain that I caused other people, especially mmye family.

Brian Pennie:
So when I wrote the book and interviewed my mom and my sister, people I deeply harmed the most in the addiction, I really felt the pain that I caused them. And it was an incredibly healing process for me and for them. And the relationships have really just been built from that. It's been a constant process, writing the book. I'll get an amount of joy when it's actually ready.

Bryan Collins:
I can imagine, yeah. Some people say writing is a little bit focused on the author rather than his or her subjects.

Brian Pennie:
Yeah. That's interesting. And especially a memoir. Yeah. It's the feedback I got of people as well. And especially in the self help circles, the personal development circles, they were saying, well, you weren't really giving messages to other people. I think because it was a memoir, I was really trying to inspire people to change rather than telling them what to do. Because I think people don't really like being told what to do.

Bryan Collins:
Yeah, which is very popular online. Yeah.

Brian Pennie:
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. It's interesting.

Bryan Collins:
And so, part of the way you make a living now is by going in and coaching businesses and giving talks to people in businesses. So you've been in a lot of high profile companies in Ireland. Could you just explain a little bit how that works and how that's kind of helped you make a living?

Brian Pennie:
Yeah, yeah. Great. And it's really nice, I think, on the Bonus Time thing. So at the start of 2018, I was doing a lot of school talks. And though some kids were listening to me, some kids weren't listening to me. I think the sports jocks and the kids that were doing well didn't think they had to listen to a former heroin addict talk about tools for life. And I remember thinking to myself, if I was ever to reach out to talk businessmen and sports people, and really people that are adored, or glamorous, or whatever their jobs are, and so, people that are seen as successful, if I could speak to them, get their tools for life and share them with the kids, I'd be able to get a better message across.

Brian Pennie:
And that's how this started a journey for me, where I reached out to some of the most successful people in Ireland, inwards and outwards success. And the second person that I reached out to was John Boyle, who was owner and founder of BoyleSports. I think his company's worth over a billion a year. He's one of the wealthiest men in Ireland. And I met John. And it was the second interview that I got in touch with. And John happened to be in recovery in South... he's [inaudible 00:08:50] and was okay with me talking about this. And he was 37 years in recovery. And I remember John saying to me, he says, "Brian, do you know why you're sitting here talking to me right now?" I says, "Because you don't give a damn. You're living on bonus time."

Brian Pennie:
And it was really interesting. It was like I had a second chance at life, and I'm really just putting myself out there. I don't worry about people saying no. The way I see it, if you don't ask, the answer is always no. So I really went out and reached out to lots of CEOs, lots of sports people in Ireland, celebrities in Ireland, getting their messages. And that turned into a speaking career. A lot of the CEOs, they asked me to come into their companies to do talks. And one of them being Bernard Byrne, who was the CEO of AIB at the time. It's one of Ireland's largest banks, for anyone that's not living in Ireland.

Brian Pennie:
And I did a talk in AIB, and he asked all the top execs to come to the talk. And I nailed the talk. And all the branch managers and the executives asked me to come back for other talks in the company throughout the year. That was 2019. And it just launched me speaking career. And now I have a pretty successful speaking career [inaudible 00:09:55].

Bryan Collins:
So the talks that you're giving, are they about your story, what's in the book, or something else?

Brian Pennie:
Hm. It's interesting. So, I'm obsessed with tools and tactics and habits for hacking life. I don't like the word hacking. It's really to develop yourself better, personal growth, and just become a better human being, your own connection and stuff like that as well. So when I first started doing the talks in schools, it was really all about the tools that I wanted to share. But I quickly learned that people want to be inspired. People love stories. People love stories. And what I found was I did five minutes about my story and then 35 minutes about the tools. And the feedback I was getting was in the schools, we want to hear more about your story, what happened in addiction.

Brian Pennie:
So now, even in the corporate world, going into companies, I would probably give 15 or 20 minutes about my story, which is about tools and tactics as well, and then I would give three key takeaways. I talk about building self-awareness, decision-making, connection, and how to say no, how to stop yourself being overwhelmed, lots of different stuff. I teach the neuroscience of addiction and mindfulness. So, I bring in the biology of stress, and emotion regulation, and emotional agility and stuff like that, which goes down great in the corporate industry.

Bryan Collins:
So how do you coach people with decision-making, for example?

Brian Pennie:
So, that'd be really one of me big tools. And it's such an important tool for me all me life, Bryan. And I have a three-step decision-making framework, really. And the fourth step for me was a little tip, a little mantra I heard off a guy called Derek [Sievers 00:11:33]. And it was basically, it's a simple mantra. If it's not a hell yes, it's a no. So if I'm faced with a decision, I'll say, is it hell yeah? And if it is, I do it. If it's not, I don't. It's like a gut reaction. And I love that mantra. It's great for quick decisions, really, really quick. But not everything can be decided on a hell yes and a no.

Brian Pennie:
And the big one that has gone down very well in the corporate industry is another mantra. And it's basically a mantra used by the Great Britain rowing team in the 2000 Olympics. And they basically asked themselves to make a decision, will it make our boat go faster? So, if you're faced with a decision, let's say to go for a few drinks, they would say, will it make our boat go faster? In that case, it's unlikely, so they said no. And I've taken that mantra, and I've developed a metaphorical boat of my own. And it's based on my values, my purpose, and my goals. So this is where it really fits into the corporate industry. I know in the market, the team at AIB really brought it on board, and their metaphorical boat is to be the number one customer-obsessed market division in the country. So they always ask themselves, will it make our boat go faster? Their boat is that goal.

Brian Pennie:
Well, for me personally, and you can adjust this as well, my goals at the moment are this book, me PhD, and me speaking career. And the thinking tools. I'm big on the thinking tools and elevating myself. So that's another big goal of mine. So if I was faced with a decision, and I'd say, will it make my goals boat go faster? If it did, I'd say yes. If it didn't, I'd say no. The same with me purpose as well. My purpose in life, and it's really me mission in life... I have a mission statement, really. It's with a relentless belief that we are what we think. My mission is to show people that change is possible, demonstrating actionable steps from my lived experience.

Brian Pennie:
So it's not all about me speaking and me corporate talks. I charge obviously for corporate talks, but I do school talks for free. And so, if I'm asked to do a school talk, it won't be good for me business, obviously, because I'm doing it for free. But it's part of me purpose, me mission, so it will make my boat go faster. So I say yes to school talks as much as I can. But again, it's not all about my goals, my purpose. And your family and friends come into the equation. And that's where the values piece is key for me.

Brian Pennie:
So I'll ask myself, and my gut is tugging at me when I'm making all these decisions and I'm busy doing things, goal-setting and stuff like that, I'll feel it in me gut. You'll feel it in your body when you're not aligned with your values. And I'll say, right, scan me values. Am I aligned with me values? And some of my values include connection, compassion open-mindedness, sharing, boldness. I love being bold, reaching out to people. So I just ask myself, am I aligned with me values? Are me actions being aligned with me values? Does it make my values boat go faster?

Brian Pennie:
And basically, what that mantra is for me is a tool to make quick decisions based on stuff I've deeply reflected on, me goals, me values, and me purpose. And it's been an exquisite tool in my life, and it's really... I'll give you a great example. So, I got a scholarship for Trinity College, and it was going to be around deep data analysis and coding, stuff like that. And it wasn't my cup of tea. It didn't inspire me. And I remember saying to myself, will it make my boat go faster? And I looked at different things, and it made me goals boat go faster, but it doesn't align with me purpose, because I wouldn't have time to do talks. It didn't align with me values, because I wasn't inspired. I wasn't being bold. And I rejected a 76,000 euro scholarship on the basis of that mantra.

Bryan Collins:
That's a big thing to say no to.

Brian Pennie:
Yeah, it was huge at the time. It's very easy for me to talk about that now because it worked out for me. It was huge at the time. I was going to have to get a part-time job to fund the PhD that inspired me. What transpired was I talked to me professor in the end thinking I couldn't do it, and he says, fine. You can still do a PhD with me and do it in a way that's more strategic that aligns with my values, my other goals in life, and that's what I done. So it's been a very strategic PhD, which allowed me to do a book and still to do me talks, build a speaking career, and I'm in talks with Virgin Media and RTA at the moment to do a potential TV show, tools and tactics to show people that change is possible. And all of that came down to that decision-making framework that I implemented in me own life. It was a tremendous tool for me.

Bryan Collins:
From the people you've coached or spoken to, what kind of decisions are they making that maybe aren't helping their boats go faster? Have you come across any common examples in the business world, for example?

Brian Pennie:
Yeah, yeah. And the big one is, when I got into the business world, usually I talk about wellbeing. And I'm going to do a lot of mental models and thinking tools and stuff in masterclasses I'm developing at the moment. But a lot of me talks so far in the business world have been around wellbeing. So I would really say to people, what is your metaphorical boat? And I said, if you're going to take anything away from this talk, let's say your goal is good mental health. Your purpose is your family. Your family fits your purpose the most. It's having a good family unit. And your values, let's say, is honesty.

Brian Pennie:
And what of families with people in the corporate talks, because they always say to me on LinkedIn and say, oh, that will make my boat go faster. And I've met people recently, especially in the last couple of weeks, I've met people, and they say, well, we were at your talk. I loved your talk. And they say, oh, will it make the boat go faster? And they'd say, oh, I started with that and I was doing great, but then I stopped. And this is the problem with most people. They make a start, but the consistency piece is key. So the decision that they make that doesn't make their boat go faster is this consistent, implemented and consistent practice, whether it's a morning routine... I talk a lot about morning routines, all that.

Brian Pennie:
And people seem to start, but then they seem to stop. They never build in the habit of a morning routine, the habit of meditation, the habit of implementing a decision-making framework that they use all the time. Great intentions seem to fall away. So that's something I'm really working on. How can you get people to stick with the habits?

Bryan Collins:
Yeah. The morning routine is certainly important. And it's easy, I think, to cultivate that habit because you can track it. Harder to track a habit around decision-making.

Brian Pennie:
Yes. Indeed, indeed.

Bryan Collins:
So how would you coach somebody who was struggling with perhaps implementing a decision-making habit or a framework?

Brian Pennie:
Right. So what I do, and I think I got this from one of me clients not so long ago, and I got this from James Clear's book. I don't know if you've read Atomic Habits. Have you?

Bryan Collins:
Yeah, yeah.

Brian Pennie:
Yeah, it's a great book.

Bryan Collins:
Great book.

Brian Pennie:
Great book. And it's really habit stacking, is what he talks about. Now, habit stacking is basically stacking habits on top of each other. And what I did with me morning routine was I got this advice off a guy called Justin [Caffrey 00:18:16]. He's a great guy in Ireland here. And he basically stacks his habits. He brushes his teeth in the morning, and then he does his meditation. So you're going to brush your teeth, so you make that association then with your meditation. So you associate meditation with brushing your teeth, so you stack them habits.

Brian Pennie:
So what I was saying to people as well is when you go for lunch, when you get into your car, you think to yourself, will it make the boat go faster? I just say that to people as well, to make yourself present. And I do that myself. Every time I get into me car and I sit down in me car, and I touch the steering wheel, I'll say, right, take a deep breath and become present. So I stack that habit on top of each other. So what I say to people is, take time. Set alarms, is the big one enforced to really get into the habit as well. Set an alarm in your calendar, will it make the boat go faster, every day.

Brian Pennie:
And the funny thing about them is you tend to ignore these kinds of tools. I tell people to settle with their environment. The environment is key, that's what drives your behavior. So put little posts around. Put little reminders for yourself. Will it make the boat go faster? And stack them habits. So I done that great with one of the clients, one of me clients, and they use that all the time. They use that mantra all the time. And they always find themselves asking that question, will it make my boat go faster? I sat down and developed a metaphorical boat with them. It was more around mental health. And the key piece was, it wasn't so much to have it stacking. It was the environmental cues that really worked for him.

Bryan Collins:
Yeah, yeah. I definitely agree with the environment. Yeah, I sometimes put Post-It notes on the keyboard about something I want to do or write about. I know we're on a video here, but there's a whiteboard to the left of the video with prompts like that. Excuse me.

Bryan Collins:
I'm also just curious, what about if there's something wrong with the boat? Let's say you're doing something in your business, and your value is to start a profitable business and help customers with whatever your product or service, but it's not going well. Maybe you should quit. It's time to get off the boat.

Brian Pennie:
Yeah. Well, sink the boat. Get a new boat. Maybe it's not the right boat. I've never actually developed that for somebody before, but I've thought about that myself. And I think for me, self-awareness is the holy grail. If you have no self-awareness and you don't reflect on your actions, reflect on your thoughts, reflect on your values, true self-awareness, self-observation, you might be in the wrong boat. Maybe you are chasing money. Maybe you are chasing things that aren't going to make you happy. At the end of the day for me, it's about fulfillment, about inner peace, and it's about being happy. That's what life is about for me. So are these things that are making my boat go faster going to give me what I really want from life?

Brian Pennie:
So it's really important to reflect on these things as well. I think journaling is really important. But I was very lucky to write an article and write a memoir about my life. And my god, if I wasn't publishing this memoir, I would write it again because of the value I got from that. And I'm not expecting people to go out there and write a memoir just for the crack, to get a bit of clarity in their life. But five minutes a day just journaling on certain questions, like simple little questions, like what do I want from life? And sometimes questions are great. Questions are brilliant. But sometimes questions can be very vague. So sometimes it's good to get very specific with a question.

Brian Pennie:
And it'd be like, what do I want from life within the next month? What do I want from my life in the next year, 10 years? Really focus down. And then we talked about mental models before, right? I know the variation is a great mental model, and it basically means inverting a problem you have, the thinking tools won't invert the problem that you have. Say, right. Instead of saying what do I want in my life in the next month, what do I not want in life in the next month? So it's just really inverting the problem. And that's what inversion means, to turn upside down. And any problem you have, what you want or what you don't want, you can just invert the problem, flip it. Think about it another way. And it's just another way of reflecting on any situation that you have in your life that you want to change.

Bryan Collins:
Yeah. There's a great book, Charlie Munger's Almanack. It cost me $100 to import it to Ireland, but it's full of mental models, yeah.

Brian Pennie:
It's a big book. That's what got me into mental models. And I was looking everywhere for that book, on Audible, and [inaudible 00:22:39] have to pay 100 quid and get it delivered. But it's a great book. I wrote a couple of articles on Mental Models for Dummies. It's a beginner's guide to mental models. Because they are hard to embed yourself within. So if anyone wants to check out my Medium site or me website, I do stuff on mental models. But there's some great books by James Clear and Shane Parrish on mental models. They seem to be coming to the fore at the moment.

Bryan Collins:
Yeah, they're very popular. Yeah.

Brian Pennie:
Oh, very popular. And they are brilliant. Mental models are a great way of thinking about the world.

Bryan Collins:
Yeah, yeah. And you were telling me before we started recording that you're working on your second book, which is pretty impressive.

Brian Pennie:
Oh yeah, I am. It was supposed to be the first book, so that's why I started to switch. So when I reached out, as I mentioned, to all the CEOs and to the successful people... I don't like the word successful. For me, it's in and out of success. So people are successfully happy as well as outward success. I think you need the first one before you get the other one anyway. I think they go hand-in-hand. But when I reached out to these people, and one of the CEOs said to me, "When you're interviewing all these people asking them questions, why don't you write a book about it?" I said, "Wow, what a great idea."

Brian Pennie:
So I was collecting tools, tactics, and life advice from these guys, and basically, that's going to be me second book. It's funny you should mention that, because I've been talking to one of them recently, and I'm thinking of a second [inaudible 00:24:07] book, hand-in-hand. So I'll develop me own program, so it's like a perfect second part to the memoir.

Brian Pennie:
And then I might write another book, the tools and tactics that I've gotten from these other people, which I might direct more so towards the youth of today, because I really think the youth today really needs these tools. They're not being taught in schools. Geographical facts, historical facts, this stuff is on the Internet. We can google these days. We don't have to memorize this stuff. These kids should be being taught how to be happy, how to meditate, how to be self-aware. So I think I would love to write a book directed and targeted specifically at kids. So I think that's where I'm going with that at the moment.

Bryan Collins:
That's a good idea for a book. Yeah. Your other book reminded me a little bit of one of Tim Ferriss's books from a few years ago.

Brian Pennie:
Well, do you know what? Funny you say that, because when I was in the class, I was reading Tim Ferriss's tool Tribe of Mentors at the time. And I says, I need a tribe of me own. And that's what set me off on this journey.

Bryan Collins:
All right. Very good. Very good. Now, we were talking, I think, last week, and you had an acronym for your ideal morning routine.

Brian Pennie:
Yes.

Bryan Collins:
Would you be able to just explain your acronym? Because I thought it was quite clever.

Brian Pennie:
Yeah, yeah. So it's MAVIG, M-A-V-I-G. So I did mention earlier about affirmations. So affirmations, it's a simple little thing. Some people aren't big on affirmations. But affirmations work for me. So basically, MAVIG is M-A-V-I-G. And meditation is for the M. Affirmations are for the A. I would simply say to myself every morning, I am happy, positive, energetic, and carefree. I am happy, positive, energetic, and carefree.

Brian Pennie:
Our brains are not as clever as you think. So we nearly believe things. Even if we don't believe we can fill the brain by language. So I simply state about 10, 15 times. Takes about two minutes, less. And the tool part's the visualization. That's where I visualize me dreams, me goals, where I want to go. And it's around this fluffy aspect of I want to win the lottery. I only visualize stuff that I can align my actions with.

Brian Pennie:
So a great example of that is I want to go on the Late Late Show, it's a big show in Ireland, for when I launch me book. And I've been on the Late Late Show 50, 60 times. I've been there talking to Ryan Tubridy and visualizing stuff, being on the Late Late Show. And I got opportunities to align my actions. When I was talking to the book publisher, I was pushing towards the Late Late Show. When I was talking to me agent, I was pushing towards the Late Late Show. And only there on this week, three days ago, I got word from [Gail 00:26:36], the publisher's staff, and I hope when this airs, that I have been on the Late Late Show. But I did get word that they're very, very interested in me going on the Late Late Show. And that's why me aligning my actions with my visualizations is priming me to take actions throughout the day. That's the core part of visualization.

Brian Pennie:
The other part of this is that I is for inner child work, which I discussed earlier, and the G is for gratitude. And literally just be grateful for what you have. It's such an important practice.

Bryan Collins:
Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. We're running a little bit over. There's an app I'm using at the moment called Primed Mind, but it goes through some of those tactics that you describe.

Brian Pennie:
Wow. Well, I'll have to check that out, because for me, it's a primer. A morning routine is priming me to be grateful, to be focused, to be more self-aware, to be aligned with my goals throughout the day. So it is a cue and a primer, yeah?

Bryan Collins:
Okay. So where can people find out more information about Bonus Time or your next book?

Brian Pennie:
Brilliant, yeah. So me website is the place to go. So it would be www.brianpennie.com. That's Brian, B-R-I-A-N, P-E-N-N-I-E. And I'm on all social media platforms. Well, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, [Cora 00:27:53], the big site on Cora [inaudible 00:27:55] Cora as well. So you'll find me pretty much everywhere. It's me name, P-E-N-N-I-E, is great because it's the only SEO for [crosstalk 00:28:03]. Yeah, once you put that into the Internet, you'll find me. And the book will be available for pre-order on the 19th of February, I think, or the 20th. And it's going on sale the 27th of March.

Bryan Collins:
Okay. Okay. Well, it was great to talk to you today, Brian.

Brian Pennie:
It was a super chat, Bryan. Really, really enjoyed it. That was great.

Bryan Collins:
That was great, yeah. Thanks very much.