ABOUT

About Anthony Manly (i.e., My Story)

This page is about me, Anthony Manly, if you’re interested.

Hi, may name is Anthony Manly and the sad truth is that my “about page” has always been blank.

So, after starring at a blank page for what seems like years I’ve decided to go out on a limb, and finally write this page, let my nerdy over achiever flag fly, and hopefully give you a deeper sense of who I am… in the hope that someday when we meet you’ll give me a deeper understanding of who you are.

I’m doing this because…

Telling You Anything Else But the Story of My Journey is a Disservice

For some time now, my about page has been blank across all my group of websites. It has been a page that I’ve always been scared to write and in some respects I wanted it to be a page that I could only show to my family. I wanted it to be the kind of about page that wouldn’t raise red flags to prospects and potential clients.

It was safe having a blank page.

However, I’m going to do something different because in this society ….the so-called “successful people” (at least financially successful ones are usually portrayed as being highly productive, early risers who work hard, have their ducks in a row, get a lot done, set goals, and do all the stuff that Tony Robbins, David Allen, and Peter Drucker say to do.

And not only do I think this portrayal is unfortunate…

...but it’s also 100%, first class bullshit.

In my case, it’s always been better to ignore almost everything and instead focus only on things that give me the most amount of happiness.

Anyway, I really want to drive the point home: Despite what publicists who write press bios WANT you to think, it is complete myth that financial successful people and market leaders have their shit together, have their so called ducks in a row.

So, I’m going to try and something a little different, because I’ve seen person after person tell neat and organized and linear and sensible stories about how their businesses became successful (even thought that’s rarely the way it works out)

I’m doing this because people have been told an outright fucking lie about what creates business success.

So Here Goes

I’m going to share my story with you and talk about some of the stuff that’s worked.

And a lot, a whole lot, of the stuff that didn’t (with the ugly details in there as well… because frankly, I think you’ll learn a lot more from my flaws than from the stuff that worked)

But first, before I take us off to the deep end, let me show you the official fancy bio that everyone expects.

So here’s the official fancy bio

“Anthony Manly is a business coach who, upon graduating with a Bachelors degree at the age of 22 in Biological Science, decided to pursue a role with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

After 5 years with the ATO he quit and completed further studies obtaining a Graduate Diploma of Information Technology and then further being selected by Universities faculty to complete a Masters of Information Technology.

After successfully graduating in the top 10 of his year he managed his own company successfully delivering Information Technology Consulting services. This led Anthony to quickly pursue his second business delivering stock market education. This business was successful until the global financial crisis of 2008 happened which quickly lead to a pivot from entrepreneur to an employee in the corporate banking world.

At first, Anthony, was struggled with the transition from entrepreneur to employee however over time he began to deliver successful results to the corporate projects he was employed to deliver on.

So that’s the clean version. The neat and simple version that my family is supposed to see. The version I was supposed to write

Here’s the longer, more complicated, messy version

Let’s start out with some of the dirt and flaws, because there are a lot of them.

Hmmmm...where to begin

• I can get perhaps, maximum, three things (and I mean, three things) done per day. Of those three things, one is my morning routine, one is creating content for my community and the other is spending time with my daughter. So, if you really think about it I can only get one thing done a day.
• I simply cannot, for the fucking life of me get to bed before midnight. And I really don’t function without a full 8 hours of sleep, although I prefer to.
• I’m about as productive as a newborn turtle that’s attempting to get to the water upon hatching when you remove a few spiritual practices from my life. For example, I need to meditate everyday (and be grateful for the life I have).
• I struggle with a daily schedule and quite often attempt to complete things that cannot be completed in the time I allocate to them.
• I always leave critical things to the last minute in the hope that I produce a diamond out of the rough only to realize I need to extend the time needed to complete the task.
• When I was in high school my peers thought I was an outright uncoordinated weirdo, who was clearly crazy and not in his right mind (the part about not being in the right mind is totally true)
• I am pretty much 100% incapable of doing anything that I don’t find immensely interesting
• It’s nearly impossible to reach me. Not because I think I’m better than everyone else. It’s just like a handicap or something …I’m really bad at responding to voicemails, email messages etc Right now there are over 6000 emails in my personal email inbox about half of which are unread. I want to respond to every single message, but that somehow never happens. (That said, EVERY SINGLE customer email and business email received gets answered promptly by our customer service team, who are highly trained and 100% dedicated to providing fanatical customer service)

Anyway, despite all this, I’ve been blessed to have a company that’s almost growing both in sales and momentum each year, and allows me to live the life I live.

How I Learned About Business and Purpose

I was born here in Sydney Australia and my parents moved to the nations capital, Canberra, when I was about 2 or 3 or something.

I was the kid with the crusty the clown hairdo (bright red hair) and was the tallest kid in every year of primary school. Commonly referred to as carrot top despite my correction to everyone, who referred to me in this way, that corrot tops are green and not red.

In my free time I improved the fine art of picking the plumbs and figs off our Yugoslavian neighbors fruit trees (they had a whole backyard of vegetables), sorting the fruit into freezer bags, and then wondering the streets knocking on peoples doors selling these bags to people at $2 a bag. The profit was swiftly spent on paddle pops and twisties so I could enter the competions to win TVs, computer games etc. Mind you I never did win anything.

I would also pester my mum to continually help me with my homework that I always struggled to understand what it was I needed to do or whatever it was that I wanted to achieve.

While hanging out with my mum she quickly became my hero. She was the opposite of my dad, always home on weekends and she just liked to hang out with my sister and me and do things around the house.

She always appeared to be a simple lady.

But when it came to doing what she loved, helping others with her entrepreneurial spirit, there was no screwing around.

What I learned from my mum was that helping others is the key to serve people and build rapport that can last a lifetime.

What I also learned form my mother is that the greatest impact comes from focusing and improving on one seemingly “simple” thing for a sustained period of time.

But my mum didn’t have to write manifestos about helping others. When I was 14 years old my mum said something that has stuck with me ever since.

She said “too many people are working in jobs they don’t have a passion for… I love listening to people and their life stories so that I know exactly how I can help them and that’s what I know, so that’s what I do”

Somehow when I heard her say this I knew I wanted what she had

Although back then I really didn’t have the language to express it… when I was fourteen years old I longed for the freedom (yes freedom) to focus my entire lifetime on constantly working to improve “one” ever-evolving thing. I wanted to find and work on that one thing that I could do meaningfully and joyfully for the rest of my life.

We all have our own equally and valid definitions of freedom. But as early as fourteen years old I felt deep down that, for me, freedom was NOT a low-hour work week or pulling off unconventional lifestyle design stunts or running a business from a laptop while I travel around the world in a hot air balloon (or anything like that).

Freedom to me, has always been the possession of unquestionable and unequivocal assurance in what I must do. And the complete lack of will power to do anything else.

But for me “Freedom” was a time coming and today I get to listen to peoples stories and help them achieve their idea of Freedom through starting, growing and scaling a business they have passion for.

Thanks

Anthony

p: 0435 954 890

e: anthony@selfmanagedbusiness.com

w: https://www.selfmanagedbusiness.com/