Authentic Achievements With Special Guest Andrea Demichelis
From Bestselling author currently writing the forthcoming book Authentic Achievements – The 7 Secrets to Building Brave Belief, Unstoppable Sales, and Turning Your Leaders Into Talent Magnets for Guaranteed Sustainable Growth, this show features interviews with industry leaders and shares advice, stories and inspiration to help you achieve exponential growth personally and for your business. In this episode, I am delighted to be joined by the fabulous Andrea Demichelis, a social entrepreneur who is trying to give millions of people access to safe water. Founder of Elliot For Water, an ethical search engine that uses 60% of profit to finance clean water projects. His goal is to positively impact the lives of as many people as possible while showing how anyone can make the world a better place with just one simple action at a time.
You can find out more about Andrea at https://www.elliotforwater.com/ or / andrea_e4w or / andrea_e4w
If you want to find out more, check us out at www.authenticachievements.co.uk
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Transcript:
0:00[Music] foreign
0:06[Applause] hello and welcome to this episode of authentic achievements where it’s my
0:12absolute Delight to be joined by The Fabulous Andrea demichulis um he’s a social entrepreneur who’s
0:19passion in life is to give millions of people access to Safe Water he’s doing that through founding an organization
0:25called Elliott for water an ethical search engine that uses 60 of profit to
0:30finance Clean Water Products and his goal is to positively positively easy
0:36for me to say positively impacts the lives of as many people as possible while showing how anyone can make the
0:41world a better place with just one simple action at a time amazing I know we met for the first time last week
0:48properly and I was just blown away by your story and what you’re looking to
0:53achieve so thank you for joining me um and sharing your story again for us
0:59no thank you for for inviting me it’s all my pleasure uh bless you so you have
1:04had such an exciting journey and I I love when you took me through a brief last week would you mind sharing again
1:11um so that the people listening can also get the benefit of your insights yeah so the only thing that is within
1:18last week just about your journey so so just so people can understand kind of what what
1:25made you come up with this when did you find your passion and how were you now taking that forward
1:31okay so my journey started in a totally different work initially what I wanted to do was to become a stock broker and
1:38then basically make as much money as I possibly could and retire to product life by 40 years old they live in an
1:44island somewhere around the world and through the beginning of this journey I
1:49decided to move to Paris to actually study to become a stock broker and and start this this New Path but
1:57little by little I realized that that wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do
2:02um what I really wanted to do was to create something on my own and now I’m making the story a little bit shorter
2:08but once I decided to follow my Instagram to follow not my instinct even
2:15it was really The Universe telling me this is Europe
2:21they could have not missed the Sun so I decided to put Faith in that and just drop everything else and and try to
2:28create something on my own but again create something on my own just for the
2:34sake of making money didn’t make sense anymore to me uh I understood that what I really wanted to do was to create
2:40something that could just make me successful and make me Rich on the economic side but I also wanted it to
2:47have an impact in the world I want this company whatever it is that I would have done
2:53I I Envision it like a company that 100 years from now when I not be there when I won’t be there anymore the company
3:00will still be there impact having an impact in the world and or helping other people out so I really wanted to create
3:05something that could do both at the same time and because again uh just getting
3:11rich for the sake of doing it it didn’t make much sense to me at all anymore
3:16um helping alone you can’t do that either because you can only be help so much if
3:21you are not able to sustain yourself so I decided to to to put all the things together and
3:28I created pillows for water and the reason why I decided to go for water is because
3:34water is realistically the single most impactful element that we have in the
3:39world without that pretty simple there’s no life and on top of that when we go into the actual Villages or or into the
3:47real life what happens is that when you give a village access to water then not
3:52only kids and woman they save all the time that they are now spending to go collect water which means the women can
3:58go to work or take care of the families and kids can go to school and have an education but at the same time they can
4:04use water to create agriculture to to plan to raise to grow food an example is
4:11the project that we did in Guinea Bissell with a charity called operational well found and what this
4:17charity did with the villages was extremely smart first of all they work with the people to create the part they
4:24don’t just go there dig a while and they leave it’s a long lasting project of Education of collaboration with them and
4:30together with them after the world was built they basically connected the all parts of the
4:37village to water and they had them create a sorry uh vegetable garden Market Garden
4:43yeah they told them how to use the water in a way that could grow the food over
4:50there so now this Village is growing its own food and whatever it is that they’re not consuming they are selling it to
4:56other Villages which means that they are making money and now the money is used to to buy new clothes to pay the fees
5:03for the for the school for the kids and basically from one simple thing you created this compounding effect this
5:09ripple effect that is helping everyone and it’s just got bigger and bigger and bigger because it never stops once you
5:14get the ball rolling then it’s all benefits and it’s all going going forward alone I love that because you
5:21know you’re not just giving them water which is vital in of itself so I mean even if you’re just doing that that’s
5:27vital but the fact that you are also providing um them with the education and
5:33the resources and their knowledge to be able to take that and turn it into something that gives them a sustainable
5:40economy that allows them to um to kind of create a new life for themselves is is what I found like the
5:47most inspiring when we were chatting last week because um very often it stops that we’ve put
5:53the water in doesn’t it which is still vital and still you know needs to be done I’m not I’m not do little in that
6:00in any way shape or form I think the fact that you’ve kind of had the full thoughts to think beyond that and go
6:06okay but so now we’ve met the basic need then what do they need what to thrive
6:11and not just to survive so making that change just just one one quick thing because
6:20a lot of this is also thanks to the child who has worked with us for fun because they are on the ground and they
6:26had 10 years of experience then we just combined because we wanted to do the same type of projects but they are
6:32actually there now at the moment doing these things so it’s
6:38amazing amazing though that you’re doing it in collaboration because for those Charities that they they rely on
6:45collaborative collaboration to enable them to um meet more people and you know you
6:51said it before you know if you can’t if you haven’t got enough money to sustain yourself you can’t help that many more
6:57people because you never need to help yourself the same is so true for Charities isn’t it if they can’t find
7:03ways to collaborate with people or to find different ways to uh to innovate or to find more money they are restricted
7:10in the impacts that they can have in the world so I think they’re you know it’s so crucial that we find those so in in
7:18your journey as you’ve already shared you know you had an initial path yes you knew what you wanted to be and you’ve
7:24got that in your head and how difficult was it to take the leap of faith and
7:32trust your instincts that you should change direction you you want the real story yeah
7:39yeah the real story was that during the period while I was trying to understand which direction should have taken
7:47it was the same period where my mother started teaching about how the universe works
7:53and all this kind of stuff and she gave me this book she gave me The Alchemist which is basically the primary school
7:59for anyone trying to do this type of Journey that’s where you start to start with the actions yeah at the beginning
8:06of the book they they show how whoever wants to go and follow their
8:12Journey usually at the beginning they are out and there are signs that you can see especially if you ask of which
8:18direction to take and I really didn’t know what to do I was when I was doing Finance classes I was getting into like
8:24Gordon Gekko mode completely Wall Street thing and then I was changing classes and I was again switching my mind so
8:32I said you know what let’s give this a try and I
8:38took myself out of the equation and I just asked in general said show me what I have to do and I’ll
8:45just follow through the same morning I will go to school and uh the the there
8:50was a classical about leadership if I’m not wrong and the teachers are doing this start talking about this study that
8:57went out that was showing how different people based on their biology and their
9:03the way they they think or like in physical stuff yeah they tend to go they
9:09are more um how do you say they will perform better in certain
9:15aspects of life for example and at some point we start talking about the people like me was completely out of nowhere it
9:21was saying about people with low blood pressure and for whatever reason that period the doctor told me that I had low
9:28pressure so I stopped attention and made the description of the of the character
9:33of this type of people it was like Point by point it was how I am yeah yeah it
9:39was written in red in the in the Blackboard and then he says these people are perfect for to start new companies
9:44being entrepreneurs and stuff the moment I asked they wrote me they brought me the answer with our red pen on the on
9:52the on the Blackboard so it can’t be more died than this yeah
10:09just yesterday and saying like you know that bled anything in life it’s that it only makes sense in the rear view mirror
10:15at the time when you when you’re going through it you’re like I wonder why that’s happening or why this is happening and you’ve just gotta trust
10:22the processary except that the timing isn’t yours um much as we’d love it to be ours it’s
10:29timing isn’t always we’ve just got to trust the process and keep going but that takes such a leap of faith to to do
10:37that were there were there moments of doubt oh wow okay uh
10:43not moments of now because as you just said yeah you always make sense when you look backwards and this is something
10:49that I always do every time I have some fears or some the outside look back and
10:55everything even the things that seems to be gone wrong in the past they just match perfectly because then I
11:03can see that this led to something else with LED to something else I don’t believe in consonances anymore and it’s
11:08just in just so perfectly match that is impossible that yeah it wasn’t supposed
11:14to be this way that it wasn’t the thing that I was supposed to do but then see even though I don’t have dabs on
11:22what I have to do it doesn’t mean that it’s not scary from time to time it doesn’t matter because I mean I’m
11:29betting everything that I have all my life my future all the choices that I made until now I made them with
11:37um the goal of making this something so I I worked in bars I did Barman I did
11:44all the things that I had technically nothing to do with because
11:49I decided that this is what I wanted to do so taking the the classical path
11:54would have been would have taken away some of the energy that I could have put in my company and
12:00obviously sometimes it’s scary because what if it doesn’t work or yeah but what if it does and even if it doesn’t work
12:06the journey that you go for the things that you learn the way you grow as a person is it’s still worth it anyways
12:12and at some point it doesn’t even matter if you make it or not make it important is how you go through it and the journey
12:19to go on and and then obviously when you start you have to accept that you may or
12:24may not succeed but it’s the way you approach it that matters and the way you live the whole life that that is what’s
12:32important I believe so yes it’s very yes it is but screw it that’s what we do so
12:37I love that because yeah I can’t remember who’s quote it is but uh it’s
12:42always struck a chord with me which is it’s not the destination that’s important it’s the journey
12:48um because it’s the journey that is where you get the growth and I think you know and if life’s taught me
12:54anything it’s the um everything in it is either a lesson a blessing or both so when I’m in the moments where I don’t
12:59feel blessed I look for the lesson because that’s where the blessing usually is yeah yeah learn something
13:05thank you um you gain a new skill or you gain a way not to do something all of which gets you closer to what it is you want
13:12to do um you sometimes you need things that you
13:17don’t even know so that’s why you go through certain
13:23things so that you can learn and you can go to the to the next step and as long as you don’t learn It’s Gonna Keep On
13:29Coming Back and coming back yeah and I’ve definitely learned that one it’s like you’re not learning the
13:35lesson it keeps coming back come on I can hit you again it’s like no make it stop now I’ve learned I’ve learned but
13:42you do have to yeah I think you have to go um through the pain to grow through it
13:48so you can’t just leave it to one side you’ve actually got to look at it and go why your water am I being taught here
13:54what am I supposed to learn what’s my what’s my takeaway because if I don’t get the takeaway it will come back and
14:00give it to me again because as my nan said what’s meant for you doesn’t pass you by and that goes for lessons as much
14:06as lessons exactly and it’s funny that you mention it because I was thinking
14:11about a few weeks ago actually I was thinking about it all the time this past few months
14:18the things for as funny as it sounds the things that are most grateful of
14:25are the those periods where have been the hardest and the most difficult ones
14:31and when we were there it’s like super obviously sad and then I
14:38yeah it’s difficult and all that but now seeing who I am
14:44trying to become and why I’m becoming little how I’m evolving I would have never done it without those
14:51so I mean sometimes I even ask okay give me some more because I need to step up
14:57again so yeah now and I see it’s so true isn’t it because you um
15:03yeah I often think when you haven’t think when times have been tough but I’ve had a friend of mine he said but I
15:09can’t say if you’re incredibly strong and Incredibly stupid in equal measures I’m probably in there
15:16I said but I guess whenever anything’s got too tough for me I’ve looked at what’s the one thing I can do and I’ve
15:22clung to that like the life raft in the messy sea of my brain until the next
15:28thing comes along that I can understand and and just doing a something no matter how small it is
15:34um allows you to to kind of get through to get to the learning doesn’t it but you’ve got to keep doing that and you
15:40put that one four or one two keep going um because you never know what you’re
15:46where that’s going to take you so if you’re interested in so much and have so many interesting things that happened
15:51what would you say is the thing that you’re proudest of so far
15:57yeah I’m gonna repeat myself but I believe that is the journey it’s on and
16:03how I see things right now compared to how I
16:09was seeing things before like for example before I was always more into the ah maybe blending something else or is
16:16this point or that for now I I see everything I see the external world there’s a reflection of the internal one
16:23so everything that happens it’s simply a reflection of what I had inside so I decide how I react to the
16:30things and even if someone bumps into me in the street the first thing that now we think is okay why that person bumped
16:36into the but not like why some of this like what I what was I thinking when it
16:42bumped into me what was I present was I think it’s something else was I thinking worrying about the future or was it so
16:48now everything is is a training everything is a workout because whatever happens is okay why or what doing or
16:56what was I thinking and helps me to go back to the presenting to the present
17:01moment and then obviously is the the fact that you have been able to do our first water project in Dynamics how they
17:08did something a few hundred people there and changing the light with the things so if anything even if it this is
17:16something that I’ve been thinking as well like if the worst thing worse and this thing
17:21doesn’t work and I’m not successful and whatever it is I grew in ways that I could have not
17:27done if I didn’t decided to take this journey and this is something that you can never replace and you can always
17:32reuse the new things and around 500 people they got their life changed forever and that’s not something that
17:39you can put a price on and if the price was four or five years of not making one
17:46hundred thousand dollars per year but be it and it’s not going to be that much anyways but yeah
17:53in the Great Escape and yeah I I love that because I think um
17:59was it Thomas Edison who said I didn’t find one way to make the light bulb I found 10 000 ways not to make the light
18:06bulb kind of got to keep going because um in each iteration it gets better and
18:13you learn something you you kind of you work out okay not to do that again maybe
18:19to do um something a little bit different so what what’s your next big thing for
18:25Ellie Elliot for water the next big thing the main big thing is I really so as I
18:34said I really want as postcard goal to keep water to one million people that’s
18:41what I want to reach as a real real obviously we need to like settle down and start from 10 000 blah blah blah
18:47blah blah that’s the the main the main thing initially then when we go there we’ll see where we are we just we grow
18:54to 5 10 100 the end goal is to help as much as we possibly can but the very
19:00first one is is one million people yeah fabulous
19:06um because it’s I mean what a great thing to be able to track and Achieve as well thinking about the impact that you
19:11will have had on on those people because it it isn’t as you say just just the water so
19:17what what do you think is going to be um
19:22the thing that you take away from what you’ve had what you’ve gone through so far so the
19:29greatest lesson that you’ve learned so far that you’re now putting into practice that’s a good question
19:38well I I think it’s surely the fact that you are in control
19:45and your ident creating what it’s happening to you or or what it’s happening to you it’s happening for you
19:51and that changes everything and yeah it puts you completely in a
19:56different position at the end the way you perceive the word is the way the word is the word doesn’t exist it’s just
20:02the way we live for it we can see both we can see our one horse that for me it
20:08would mean my childhood and my love and whatever it is and for you is just also it depends on how you go through things
20:13and and that changes completely in life even if it doesn’t change up from outside you change from the inside and
20:21it’s I’m gonna quote Harry Potter now from the books uh from the fifth or
20:28sixth books that I remembered when Harry Potter and Dumbledore talking and they were
20:34basically it’s one Harry Potter finds out that he needs to go and fight with
20:40the the villain he felt like he he had he had to go so
20:45he had no choice but then there’s something in the conversation you realize that he actually had the choice
20:51and you wanted to do it and that made it all different because the quote that he says is that
20:57it’s the difference between being dragged in the arena into the arena to fight for a death match
21:04with and going into the arena working tour it doesn’t seem much but it makes
21:10the whole difference in the world and that’s completely true the way you go through things the way you decide to to
21:16to live that’s what is going to make the difference for regardless what happens in life
21:21I love that it’s it’s so true isn’t it our perception is our reality and that’s
21:27why you know if you if you asked two people to describe the same room they’ll describe it slightly differently because
21:33we filter out the stuff that’s not of interest to us um so even though it’s that neither one of you is lying you just don’t see it it
21:40doesn’t come to your Forefront because it’s not interesting or important and that’s why I live as well that you’re
21:46kind of living your life with a curious mind because by Nature we
21:53are quick to move to judgment and that’s because our brains were designed clearly back when we were cave people and we
21:59needed to make judgments pretty quick we were going to be eaten or not and so our brains still go there
22:05um and I try and do something similar which is in every moment try and be curious yeah why do I think that why do
22:11they think that why didn’t I think the other just so it kind of opens up your thinking to
22:17um to be really present to what’s going on because I think often we all run away
22:22with ourselves don’t we we think we’re being present and actually we’re not we’ve either gone back to our past and
22:28we’re hunkering onto something that hurt us or we’re um fearful of something things I would have never exist and
22:34never will exist and well yeah and and you can like actually the only the only
22:40point that we’ve got is right now because the past no longer needs us and the present isn’t promised then the
22:47future isn’t promised the present so so you’ve kind of got us you’ve got to stay in it and it’s it’s easy to say in hard
22:52to
23:08putting actually on the everyday is two different things but you have to try it and you have to to start it and to do it
23:15and if I can add one thing to watch it which is probably where it it’s helping
23:20me the most and when it can be the most helpful the asking why thing is that’s why when
23:27you are getting angry when you’re getting angry when you are getting frustrated or something ask yourself why
23:33then that can gives you all a lot of answers that you you didn’t know
23:39you know before I love that it’s so it’s so true I’m trying that at the moment
23:44with my with my little girl so um she sometimes struggles with some
23:49anxiety and I got this book it’s brilliant uh I use it on myself a lot as well it’s called the whole brain child
23:56and it’s talking about the fact that when inadvertently what we what we do is we
24:02we inadvertently harm our children when we’re trying to be helpful so the minute that they’re having a nightmare the
24:09first thing you do is go oh no no love you’re okay there’s no monsters under the bed um it’s it’s okay and you do it from a
24:16position of love because you care about them and you don’t want them to be scared but I didn’t realize inadvertently what you’re doing is
24:22teaching them to ignore their emotion because you’ve dismissed their emotion you haven’t heard them
24:27um so actually what you’re supposed to do is go well that must be really scary tell me how you feel okay why don’t we
24:33look together under the bed and just make sure there’s nothing there um so we’ll make sure there’s nothing there there is nothing there but it must
24:39have been scary but but are you comfortable now that there isn’t anything because then what you’re doing is validating their emotion and then
24:46solving the problem for them and I was like makes total sense because we didn’t we don’t do that idea it wasn’t doing it
24:52no no it’s okay I’ll give you a cuddle it’s all good um but it makes such a sense but
24:58actually what we’re doing is teaching them that their emotions probably aren’t to be trusted and that’s to what we want
25:03to do is stay connected to them because children when they’re really young they do say what they see I mean sometimes in
25:11the worst way possible way like please just say that now
25:18um I’ll talk to you outside about it but we teach them to to change the way that
25:23they operate and then we spend all of our lives trying to unlearn that yeah exactly so that we can learn to go back
25:31the the other way and it was just it just struck me in what you were saying it’s a similar sort of thing isn’t it having to be
25:38um very conscious about making those choices and being kind to yourself when
25:43you get it wrong and you have wandered off into the future and you’re like it’s okay you know I’m a human being I’m
25:49gonna go I’m gonna do that occasionally but at least I’m doing it consciously I’ve recognized it and then I can get
25:54myself back on track I think the word that you just said is one of the key ones like constantly doing as long as
26:02you’re as conscious of what you decide then you can do whatever you want because if I otherwise
26:08you are just a slave of your own mind which is just a tool it’s not we are not
26:15our mind our mind is as you said before it’s designed to just thinking we are not and every single thought that we
26:22have it doesn’t say anything more than us than the way my peer grow on my face so it
26:27the moment that you do you choose consciously then again you go back to being in control because whatever
26:34happens you decided that you wanted to do it and you can take
26:40you you’re going to accept the reward and the and the and the price because every action has an award and there’s a
26:45price and once you are doing it consciously then we accept both and we are free we are free to do whatever we
26:52want if there’s not something that we don’t want to do and we know that it’s going to cost us
26:57a job or whatever it is or or even just a friend or I don’t know what
27:03we chose to do it ready to pay for the price because we do it we did it
27:08consciously and because we knew that on the other side there was a rewarded for us was better than they had whereas when
27:14we just do it like this we go through life without even knowing what we’re
27:20doing then any decision it’s just it just puts you in this strange
27:25position of yeah yeah like a victim to life don’t you know
27:31yeah I I um so suddenly just yesterday I said I live my entire life with asking myself
27:37the question what’s the worst that can happen and can I live with it um and if the answer is yes it’s worth
27:42the risk um because you’ve worked through what’s the worst that could happen like and I
27:48the what I explained to him is I remember the first time I had sax somebody and I went through in my head
27:53you know what’s going to happen well they could kill me but I don’t think they’re going to do that it’s not that good a job
27:58offend them that much um they might punch me in the face without be painful and it’d be a bit embarrassing but I’d live
28:05um and then on the other side was it the right thing to do yes did the person you know have what they’ve done created
28:11greater risk for everybody else in the business yes it had so it was the right thing to do and I could live with the
28:16consequence and if it went horribly wrong um and I guess in that moment it’s just my way of helping me manage that piece
28:23that’s going you made the choice and I made lots of really bad choices over the years but I made them and yeah I will
28:31acknowledge those and say yeah I made a bad choice I made a bad choice that was the best choice I could make from what I
28:37could see at the time but hindsight’s a beautiful thing 2020 Vision with it and
28:43I hadn’t foreseen that this would happen um and for that I will acknowledge it I
28:49will apologize for it I’ll own it and I’ll fix it because I think that’s all we all we can do isn’t it is to kind of
28:55keep iterating and keep keep moving forward yeah one percent I love it I could
29:02literally talk to you um but I’m conscious we’re getting to the time so how can
29:09um obviously we’ll have all of your details in the show notes but how can people um get in touch and get involved
29:15with what you’re doing uh well on Instagram and Twitter it’s Andrea and
29:21underscore e4w with the four other number and then
29:26obviously you go on a look for water.com sign up to the newsletter or use this Challenge and now we are rebuilding it a
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29:52actually I have lived every minute we will make sure obviously in the notes below and that we’ve got all of the
29:58details for you to be able to connect with Andre I’m looking forward to staying connected as well and having our
30:04next conversation but if I could ask you to leave us with one last piece of advice what would it be oh
30:12one advice uh
30:22I don’t know if I’m the best person to give advice but I could just probably probably again the
30:29same thing that we were saying before take control of your life right in the in the sense of no no no no no this
30:36sounds like a like a phrase in a chocolate bar don’t take control of your life take
30:43control of your mind whatever it is outside start going inside instead of going outside the
30:50moment you start going inside is where the outside will change start from there and then things will change
30:56amazing I love that Andrea it’s been an absolute Joy thank you so much and I
31:02look forward to next time until then take care thank you very much [Music]