Perseverance, Motivators, and Personality Types of Today’s Leaders with Nathan Farrugia

Introduction

Hey everyone, and welcome to make things, make sense. On today’s episode we’re making sense of perseverance with a very special guest.

Today I’m sitting down with Nathan Farrugia, President of Vistage Malta & UAE. Nathan is an Entrepreneur, Storyteller & Author, Business Coach, Record-breaking Adventurer, TEDx Speaker, Vistage owner, NED, Philanthropist, He’s led organisations in technology, education, healthcare and hospitality, as well as helping develop Malta leading service provider in the field of disability and one of Malta’s largest non-profit organisations.

As an endurance athlete, Nathan has completed some of the world’s toughest extreme challenges, raising thousands of euros for charity. In 2011, he ran a million steps to complete a world first marathon by running 27 consecutive marathons in 27 days in each of the 27 European union countries, for which he wrote the book: A Million Steps: Lessons from the limit of physical and mental endurance. He currently runs Xterra in Malta, more importantly, he has a beautiful family.

We met for the first time through my dad, he was building a business and you were to be part of it, he always spoke very highly of you, this must have been about 7 years ago.

A lesson I learned early in life is to surround yourself by the people you want to be, here we are, you’re my Vistage chair, my trainer and someone I can rely on, thank you for being an inspiration to me and so many others and for you time today for this podcast.

Topics discussed

• We speak a lot, and through out discussions, perseverance often comes up, what does that mean to you?
• What’s your leadership story?
• An interesting fact about you is that don’t really feel pain, can you explain that a little?
• I know this has lead to some interesting experiments, what was it like being a guinea pig being compared to astronauts?
• What about the merits of emotional Vs physical pain? Can you overcome emotional pain due to your ability to not feel physical pain?
• This culminates in the ability for you to push limits – what does pushing your own boundaries mean to you?
• How have you translated this into a leadership style? What kind of leader does the absence of pain make you?
• Are leaders born or made? Nature Vs nurture?
• Tell us about the Sahara run
• How do you define success
• In Vistage we use a lot of tools, personality tests, value exercises, etc, which are are some of your favourite tools to use in life and business?
• What’s one misconception people have about you?
• You wrote the book: A Million Steps: Lessons from the limit of physical and mental endurance. What was it like writing your own book?

Quick fire round

First answer that pops into your mind for the following questions:

• What’s one thing you would like to go back and tell your younger self?
• What’s one lesson you wish your kids wouldn’t have to learn for themselves?
• What’s your favourite book?
• What are your values?
• What was the biggest lesson you learned this past year?
• What is something you want to learn next year?
• What’s one piece of advice you’d like to give to our listeners?

Conclusion

Listen in to learn how to find your internal motivation and how to persevere, how to define your values and how a leader in today’s business environment should be like, among many other insights and tips!

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