Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the episode today, we have Elinor Moshe. Elinor, welcome. Thank you so much for having me on your show, it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s a pleasure to have you. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do? Of course, I’m an ambitious and driven thought leader in the construction industry. I guide, inspire and direct future leaders and industry professionals to construct their career and achieve higher remuneration, faster progression and more recognition within their careers. And I do this as the founder of Australia’s first construction coach, the construction coach. I’m also a podcast host of constructing you, where I interview exemplary leaders and industry titans and young guns in the property and construction industry.
And as I was briefly sharing, I just released my third book this week, two of which are best sellers. Younger is the latest release and I’ve also written leadership in construction and constructing your career. Thank you for the introduction and congratulations again on the books, I should say, multiple books. The first thing that you mentioned or one of the first things is that you’re ambitious and driven and I always like to kind of explore why that is the case. So what is it do you think about your personality that you are ambitious and driven? It’s you know, you’re right to pick up on that because when most people may say that, how is that actually translated? What are they pioneered? What are they actually doing? What results do they have in their life? And I have always been that person who naturally speaks the language of ambition and achievement. I’m a high achiever. I have high achievement orientation and yes, I am addicted to the achievement, but it’s more about the journey of actually getting there rather than the outcome itself, because of the character that you build because of what you learn along the way and how you develop as a person in order to set your sights on these goals.
And in a world where people look at ambitious people as you know, like it’s a dirty word or you’re being too this too, that it’s not the case, it’s something to be very proud of and to stand behind and there is nothing wrong with wanting more. I’m naturally a maximalist in different areas of my life. Our society will be the first to pull you back down into your small box and to not have you overreach. So being ambitious and driven is a wonderful thing and my perspective use the term maximalist, I’ve never heard that before. Can you share what that means to you? You want to get the most out of anything do if you set your sights on something will always go bigger. If we, you know, if I want to do something, it has to, for me be the best to the highest standards. Standards and adhering to excellence is essential to what I do as well, because most people are just locked into mediocrity, The standards are so poor personally and professionally, so as someone who wants to maximize its like how can I make this the most optional outcome possible, whether that’s anything from my own vision to what I do for clients in any way since and form, how can I make sure that this is the maximum outcome that I can achieve.
Interesting, Thank you for sharing that everyone’s possibly learned a new word. Well I certainly have anyway, but you said it was about the journey rather than the destination. Have you always felt that way or is it something that you learned along the way? Possibly a mix? That’s a great question. I’ve always realized that when I got to the destination, what really made it worth it was that I stuck it out, even when it got hard, I kept on going, it was those invaluable lessons that pursuing achievement and following my ambition taught me, which all in all makes it worth it. That’s what makes you, that that valuable person. That’s what actually gives you the credibility and the quality of experience. And it’s also about when you do get that outcome, you’ve proven to yourself that hey, I can do this and that’s the real value and the coming back to the ambition and the drive for a moment. Is it something that you sort of modeled as a result of seeing, let’s say, mentors or people in your life that you looked up to or was it?
Um, let’s say just something that you felt internally that you’ve got to do maybe a combination of both? A combination of both. I’ve been really fortunate to have won the parent lottery and I’ve always um you know, they have everything that they have because of their own accord, nothing has ever been given to them, nothing was ever handed out or handed down. So I’ve grown up truly seeing that and what it actually takes and how much more worthwhile it is when you do it yourself. At the same time, I remember my parents, I was going to um parent teacher school interviews and the sentiment from data was Eleanor’s such a high achiever, like I was always that person and I remember that term high achievers even as a really at a really young age, it’s something that I always, I always chose to excel, I was wanted to to be the best and to get the most. So both I’ve seen both and of course my mentor and you know, my, one of the most important people in my life, Ron malhotra, seeing how much he has achieved and how much he is in full expression of his ambition and his drive is of course beyond inspirational and keeps on showing me what’s possible in my career and in my life and for those who are let’s say willing to or hoping to cultivate, cultivate that particular trait in their character.
What sort of advice would you give them? I think either people have ambition or they don’t. There are some people who are truly satisfied with just the basics and they have no great aspirations or even just aspirations will stop. But then there are people who have ambition with varying degrees of ambition and that’s also fine. Not everyone wants the biggest and the best. But what does matter in either scenario is what do you want? And when I’m in conversation with many professionals, whilst that may sound like such a simple question, most people don’t know what they want. So it’s not that you should have X company or you should have this title, it’s not about you should, it’s about first and foremost going in here and itemizing and actually realizing what is it that I want and when someone conceives that vision and when they know what they want, then that ambition naturally starts to come into play.
Are you happy to share what it is that you want at the moment, what you’re what you’re striving for? My 3rd book is called Young Guns at Young Gun and I am on a mission driven with this book. The book is not the end, it’s a means to an end. I would love to see an army of young guns in the construction industry and the younger is someone who is the person that I described their ambitious. If it’s not for people’s ambitions, whereas the creation in the world where are people who are going to push boundaries and disrupt and innovate in any way, shape and form young guns are the ones who go against the herd their serial investors. They do not rely on conventional pathways to yield unconventional results. And this is the bigger mission behind the book. So I’m very much duty band and mission driven at the moment to create this army of young guns through the construction industry because if it is not for the young guns who will reject how we’ve always done it this way, which is the construction industries favorite saying that the industry is just going to keep on self perpetuating the same problems.
People will be treating not the root cause they’ll be treating the symptoms and nothing ever changes. Everyone just does a lot of talk. So if there’s something that I would love to see at the moment is many more flag bearers of what it means to be at heart a young gun and I’m definitely building that and getting there. Thank you for sharing that. I have a bit of a, should we say, a surface level understanding of what the construction industry is. So if you were to, I don’t know summarize what your sort of daily activities look like and perhaps what your experience is, What would you say when I was working in corporate, I was working on project delivery. So part of the management team that actually manage the processes, the resources, the systems, the plant, the equipment, the materials, everything that went into actually building a building. So most people who work in construction, you will find them on the project delivery rolls, actual front line and then of course there are the support roles or part of the business, whether it’s operations estimating and that’s part of the head contracting, I think there it’s called something else if I’m not, don’t recall at this point in time.
And then of course there’s all the consultancy fees from engineering architecture which all come, you know, all these different stakeholders come together on a project by project basis. So you deal with a lot of people and even more personalities, is it true to say you’ve got to be a bit, a bit tough, a bit rough around the edges to be in the construction industry or is that a misconception? It is a misconception. Well, it is a tough environment, it’s fast paced and depending on the scale of projects, there’s a lot of risk on the line financially. From a safety perspective it is a high stress and intense environment, but I was still always the person who came to site with red lipstick and you know, and jewelry, right? It’s, I say it’s a misconception because what happened is people will think that they have to become something that they’re not in order to participate in the construction industry and I was that person, I thought that I had to be more more aggressive or more bullish or more something which I am not in order to partake in order to fit in to the construction industry, but because I took that approach, it was way to my detriment and that’s how I started losing my sense of self when there’s all days you should be or you have to be in order to be part of the construction industry when really what we want to see in the industry is more people being all of who they are.
And that’s the power. That’s the strength of people in the leadership, not when they compromise and feel that they have to have to be rough around the edges. For example, just to partake in the industry actually had a similar conversation. The context was actually sales. Um, and the person I was speaking to was essentially saying that there isn’t, you don’t have to be pushy, you don’t have to do things that they say are ethically unethical essentially. And there is a way to be ethical and there is a way to sell in in the way that you’re not, you’re not pushy. It’s like consultative. And the old way of doing things where you have to hard sail for lack of a better term is just something that you don’t have to fit in with if you don’t want to. And this reminds me of that because and it also comes back to your book. So about young guns and about changing, should we say industries based on the way that people used to think it was done.
Have you got any further thought on that topic? No, that’s right. And you know, most people, again, I don’t know if it’s similar in other industries, but they say that they operate within a moral and ethical bounds. But then when you actually look at it, they don’t, they will screw, they do, they do shady deals, they cut corners and you can do anything that you want within moral and ethical boundaries. There are really no rules. But that’s exactly right. When you come into the industry, people might see that the top sales people uh, you know, performing or doing things in a certain way, they try to emulate and then that’s when they compromise in their own style and what makes their sales ability really powerful. So it’s yeah, in principle, it’s definitely the same thing. People see what the majority are doing and then in order to fit in, then they compromise on their sense of self and emulate when their power has always been in standing out. Thank you for that. There’s a there’s a good lesson in there as well I think in terms of when you started, how did you get into the industry?
I had the grandiose idea when I did my own graduate that I would be an architect and I would be the person designing the grand structures and realizing beautiful dreams and reality was far from. And whilst I am a creative, not creative and that typical sense of designing and I was looking for different options at the time as to what am I going to do now and I realized that someone is quite structured and process orientated and even throughout my degree I kept on finding myself asking well how is this actually built? Because the people that would do really well in architecture are the ones who had these crazy designs that were great on a computer model but would never actually get built. I was looking for the practicalities, so I found myself in a master of construction management back in 2013 and it was everything at once. It was everything that I was fascinated with come the built environment and I took a lot of joy when I was working on project delivery and fulfillment and it was later on in my career, which you know specific events led me to founding the construction coach.
At what point did you decide that you were going to focus on coaching? Is it as well as construction or in instead of instead of So I, I am responsible to me now, which is what I always wanted as part of my career. But I got to a point in my career where I had quote unquote success by all external metrics, but I was always again looking for more. As soon as I graduated, I started tutoring and those tutoring conversations with me always switch to, I don’t know what to do with my career Eleanor, so what do you do, you start a business around what people come to you for. And even before that I was invited to speak on the topic of careers and the industry and I realized, look, if I’ve had this problem, well I didn’t know what to do in my career, other people are having it, how can I reach more people than a one on one context? So the construction coach just started as a blog and I’m so glad that when I had that idea, I was up till five a.m. That morning registering the A.
B. M. Trying to figure out how to do a website in the most simplest basic forms. And It was seven May 2019, which I announced to the big wide linkedin world that I’ll be doing this and then I didn’t know what it would look like and I quickly started realizing, hang on, I don’t know how to market, I don’t know how to position, there were so many things that I don’t know how to do and I got an invitation to attend a linkedin event and I went and that’s where I met my mentor around the country who showed me the thought leadership model of entrepreneurship and that’s when I truly started to realize that there is a gaping chasm in the development, the career development and the personal development of people in the industry, the more that I kept looking in this direction, the more that I kept expanding myself and I realized how stifling and how suffocating conventional pathways are and that people coming up through conventional streams are simply leaving behind intense opportunity on the table and you wouldn’t actually build a building without data tools, but that is precisely what people are doing with their career and I put down the wrong tools, I picked up the right tools and now you want to bring as many people along with you on the journey, Do you remember when you got your first client in the new business?
Yes, Yeah, yeah. You never forget october when I field My first workshop, so this was 10 people to our workshop and this was huge because it started showing me that, hey, there’s people out there, there’s potential clients, there’s people that I can serve as, so that was incredible, learning how to package how to sell, how to promote, how to deliver, And then it was March 2020 and I did a full day workshop and from that workshop, I had people join me in a mastermind and that first moment when you see people on screen, they’re there for you, they want to learn from you, you don’t forget that trust that they have in you and that deep sense of duty and responsibility and that does truly come when you do have your first your first Yes, and the first, you know, signing on the dotted line and that’s not something that you forget. And it’s still amazing to see those people at my events, they come, they’re still very much part of the community.
They were the original constructors, feel proud of yourself in that moment, definitely because you know, you create something out of nothing, it wasn’t there before until your own ambition, creativity, diligence, resourcefulness came along and you learn how to do the most important aspects of a business which is marketing and selling and this is what you think you’re so much head trash come doing these two functions which are the most important functions in a business. And then you actually reflect and say and you can reflect and look back. I was able to add value to these people that they recognize that they wanted to be clients with me and it gives you so much insight into the customer psychology into delivery. You learn so so much and I’m certainly grateful that they chose me at the time. It gave a lot of confidence. You sort of need that external feedback at times.
Otherwise you don’t really have a business, it’s just a hobby. And if I say biggest challenges, what would you say, what springs to mind for you in the in the new business, marketing and selling, It’s always going to be That will always be the number one priority. And that’s the number one challenge because until that marketing system is not predictable. And even once it is predictable, there’s tweaking you want to reach new audiences, you want to promote different products, different services as you would know, landing pages and and everything from content marketing the whole lot. It’s the number one function and thus will always be the greatest challenge and also the greatest opportunity and any biggest wins that you can think of. I would have to go with the recent and having three books in two years Is not something that I thought I would have to my name of course, if it wasn’t for the work with my mentor, I always thought that I would write a book when I was 60 when I would be 60 and I would have something to say and something to share, but to be a true time.
Best selling author. And just having released Young Gun in a short period of time is something that only when I saw all the three books together lined up didn’t really hit me that I have produced these books and they’re making an impact. They’re adding value to people so I’ll always be proud of that because I’ve also also be also always been quiet the bookish person. I’m an only child. I grew up with books, I grew up with words, they Have the ability to shift your whole perspective, your whole paradigm in 200 pages. So that’s a very special achievement to have on what point do you decide to become an author? It was early on in the thought leadership journey when you would get a lot of people asking you the same questions and you realize that, look, I can’t actually work with everyone in a one on one or group capacity for many different reasons.
So how can I actually reach more people? How can I still give them value and an interaction with me and an insight into my philosophy and also tell them everything that I wish I knew. And of course the podcast is an expression of one part of that message and the book is the other part and as I was sharing on my launch on monday night that I’ve always written my books in a way that you can read them cover to cover, but you can also pick them up where you need them? I never wanted to write, just shall help you read you pick it up once and read it and you got the juice. This is I’ve always wanted to write the books that you can refer to and specifically extract what you need. So that’s it’s again part of the mission to create that impact and change people’s perspectives and common beliefs and that is the most challenging thing in the world to do. But also the most valuable he said that the couple of books are best sellers, I do get a fair number of authors come on the show.
So have you got any thoughts on the actual promotion side of the book? Don’t assume that you’ve written it and you know, its value that other people do. It takes as you know, how many times does someone need to be exposed to something before they even consider it. So, and I’ve been guilty of this the same where it’s on my website or it’s on a linkedin page, people find it No, it’s about constantly, constantly talking about the book positioning the book. Don’t just market it up until launch and then it’s actually for what it needed. The marketing has to continue. And this is something that when you’re I’ve been guilty of that New book, you job one ball and then you have to pick up that ball when you’re wanting to promote the other. So, it’s just having an ongoing promotion and making the book always be relevant to the people. And it’s also a great way when new people come into your community to have that book as an introduction to, to your world philosophy, to what they, what they need to know.
So there’s many different ways for ongoing marketing of any book. And I think that’s what’s key. Otherwise, you know, we put in hours and hours of work into these books and they launched, they achieve bestselling status, but we actually want them to get into people’s hands. It’s good advice because I think you could actually, I think some people would make the decision that, you know, maybe I shouldn’t write this book, if it is the case that I have to promote it ongoing because they won’t. So you might save people some time with that advice regarding your writing process. Have you got anything to share that people say, how can you write three books in a short amount of time and I already know my fault, but I’m not going to be writing that any time. You know, I’m good for now, that I spend a lot of time actually identifying my message, my target market, my brand, my voice, understanding the problems and concerns that people are having.
I didn’t start with a book. I spent months and before every book that I put out, I spend so much time in observation and reflection and making sure that the book is as perfect of an extension of my philosophy and my person before I put it out there. So I spent a lot of time getting the foundations right. And when I what I see is most people they start with a book, but they don’t know what to write about because they don’t know what they stand for and that’s what makes it much more difficult. But when you know what you stand for, when you know who you are, when you know who you’re speaking to, that doesn’t become such an issue anymore. Of course, every book has to solve a problem. So once I’ve observed and I start seeing patterns and commonalities in people’s experiences in the industry and what people are saying. And then look and piece that all together and think what’s the actual problem here? What are people missing? What conversations are being had? And when I start to get clear on the problem, I go look and I and I want, you know, I look on amazon and the like and I see if there are any if there is any existing literature that has already covered anything like this.
And when I clearly see that there is nothing out there, I say that’s my opportunity. And I first start with the introduction, which is my way of putting together my problem statement and why I’m writing because it’s not for me, it’s not about me. So I have to be very clear. So I spend a good period of time in the introduction. And then of course I have to plan because that’s how you hit writers blog when you don’t know what you’re writing about. So it’s always doing that, planning that research everything that I want to convey. I don’t necessarily write in a linear fashion. It’s more these are things I want to write. Sometimes I piece it together. Sometimes I can just float. Then I come through and I do the research and quotes and anything that I want to add and highlight. I get it around 80, That’s where the tedious highlighting and revising and grandma and you read the same sentence again and again and you don’t even know if it’s english anymore. And then once that’s done and I’ve had enough of editing, it goes to my publisher and the journey of officially getting the book out there begins.
Congratulations on three books. How long does it take you to write a book start to finish? Would you say the first book was a days. So what happened was Melbourne just went into lockdown. All plans were canceled. There was nothing to do. I didn’t have clients. Then At the start of 2020, I already started planning the book. So I had a skeleton there. So I said, if I’m not going to write it now, then I don’t know what will happen. So the first book was eight days, the second one took, it was also had contributors. There was a compilation filtered through my own experiences and philosophies and principles come leadership. That was around 15 months. That wasn’t one that I would write. I it wasn’t a book that I would sit and write in one go. It was done in a very, you know, paragraph by paragraph. To some extent. I had big spurts and then I had very short bursts and halfway through the book, my energy was just blocked.
And no matter what I did, there were no words coming out and then the hiccups along the way with that and young Gun happened when I just transitioned out of corporate, it was a big life change And I knew that I wanted to start writing my next book in 2023. I had no intention to do to this year and I wasn’t sleeping because the routine and I’m naturally a night person and the title came to me, I said it was younger and then I started thinking all these things that I would want to tell someone who’s just starting an industry. And then it was an a to Z guide that probably took 26 letters. So Let’s say anywhere between 26 to 40 days to, to put that. But it was at night that was a book that was solely written during the insomnia hours. It’s impressive stuff. And also I would add the eight days is a record for all of the people that I’ve spoken to. So full day 10, 12, even 14 hour days, like long days of just sitting and you know, 5000 words a day that was my target.
And I would not, I would not let myself not get to 5000 in terms of you said that young guns sort of advice for, for younger people looking to get into the industry. If you could summarize perhaps a couple of things that you would share with people as a result of writing the book, what would you share? That’s why I had to do an ADa said guide, There’s just so much, there’s key letters in there of course are all important but a is for ambition. A young gun is not a young gun. If they do not have ambition and they do not pursue that ambition, That’s what actually makes them stand out when most people are content with the basic 95 during the absolute minimum. Yet expecting the absolute maximum young guns are an expression of what they want to achieve. The change that they want to actually see in the industry. We see that manifesting in people starting companies associations contributing back into the industry. It doesn’t matter how it looks like, but they’re not just doing a standard role, standard input, standard output.
So ambition is really important. Z zealous. When you go into a typical corporate environment, most people are simply as flat as a pancake, you ask you say good morning and they say good morning and there’s nothing, there’s no there’s nothing you ask them how they are. They’re not bad, not bad. It’s double negative. Everything is a negative. They have no tonality, right? No energy whatsoever, no passion, but simply being an expression and simply being a zealous person of course has to come authentically. And that happens when you are inspired. That already that immediately sets you apart from other people in the industry. So A and Z in combination alone is already lethal. It already sets a young gun apart from the masses and then of course be too why fills and everything else that they need? Thank you for the answer. I love the answer but I have to do this Eleanor how are you?
I’m excellent excellent. It’s a good answer. So I said before that I was going to ask you about your what success means to you. Would you like to share a bit about that? Freedom is my number one value And this is why I am unemployable and I’m proud of that because I always struggled with not being able to do what I want to do when I want to do. I hated having to ask for permission to have a day for whatever reason I hated having to put travel plans around other people’s leagues and I always wanted to be that you know if I want to do something and I want to do it now that’s what I want to do. So freedom is my number one value. That’s when I realized that your success to me is not climbing the corporate ladder. It’s not about having you know the ex salary or hitting these targets. That means nothing if I don’t have the most important thing which is freedom. So success in its universal definition is doing what you want when you want with whom you want, how you want.
And that’s my base level definition but over and above that is if I’m in full expression of myself, if I’m creating the impact and positive influence that I can and that’s part of the mission and driven that I do dedicate myself and what I do within the business to creating of all the values that you choose. Why do you think that freedom is your is your most highest priority? Well, freedom is the collective condition of humanity. Freedom is who we all are. And it never actually makes sense that people would spend 40, 50 years sitting in traffic, going to jobs that they don’t like to pay for things that they don’t like. Two these people that they don’t like. None of this actually makes sense. We are so as as humanity, as a whole, as a human species, we have forgotten our natural condition, which is freedom and why I’ve always been someone who’s quite time sensitive.
I don’t like wasting time and I’m very conscious about what I do and projecting out that, you know how most people have their career and how most people have their life. It’s simply was painful to me. I could not actually project that forward. And that’s when I knew that this can’t be it. I need to create the vehicle which can allow me to live in alignment with my values and to be as self responsible, self reliable and self sufficient as possible. And that’s what everyone, you know, that’s the original condition of humanity, but humanity has fallen really far and people have truly forgotten what it means to have personal and self responsibility. So I think freedom is the value that we all have. I don’t think everyone recognizes that. Thank you for sharing that. There’s a lot of value in there. What’s next for you? The young God Army? That’s my number one focus is, you know, I’m in Melbourne and the last two years we’ve had the most lockdowns, the most canceled everything.
Everyone’s still scarred and healing from this and we really haven’t been able to do the thing that means the most value in our business and also to others is bringing people together and having the book launch was done to this year. And it was just remarkable to have that face to face real time conversation. Actually look someone in the eye when you’re, you know, talking to them and seeing the full range of their expressions and they’re not frozen on the screen. So doing more of, you know, bringing people together is also is going to be really big and of course I’ve got a younger army to build and is that in addition something separate from the book? Yes, yes. Kind of like a seminar or a mastermind type thing. Yeah. Well, you know, already do different types of training programs that support that. But even without the training is to have more and more people embody and represent on ground level what it means to be a young gun and the more people that collectively raise the standard and they do not compromise and they do not relinquish their ambition collectively, the industry can change.
Thank you for sharing. I think there’s a lot of positive stuff in there. Is there anything that I should have asked you about today? I think you did a great job. I have not been asked these questions in quite some time and they were refreshing and straightforward and direct and I wouldn’t have it any other way, so all good. Good stuff. If people want to connect with you or buy the books, where do they go? All books are available on amazon globally. I’m at Elinor Moshe underscore on Instagram and Elinor Moshe on LinkedIn. And if you would like to be part of the young gun army, just search for we are young guns on Facebook and join the community. Elinor, thank you for being a great guest today. Thank you very much for having me.