In 1997, I took one of the biggest risks of my life.

I was headhunted to move to Malaysia and join Tanco Resorts after spending years building my career in the timeshare industry. I packed up my life and moved across the world with Carmen, my then-wife, and our baby daughter.

Not long after we arrived, the Asian Financial Crisis hit.

The currency collapsed, cash flow became incredibly difficult and for months the company couldn’t even pay me. I could have walked away- but something in my gut told me to stay.

I believed there was an opportunity.

What happened next became one of the defining chapters of my life.

We built a huge team, recruited hundreds of people in those first months and generated tens of millions of dollars in sales. Over the following years, the organisation grew dramatically, thousands of people came through the business and the vacation club expanded to tens of thousands of members.

But none of that happened because of one person.

I had incredible people around me, including my friend Mark Bingham, and together we completely changed the way the organisation operated.

Years later, the New Straits Times would call me “The Billion-Dollar Man.”

But this episode isn't really about that title.

It's about what can happen when you believe in people.

One person can walk into an organisation and start something...but when you recruit, train, inspire and genuinely care about the people around you, the impact can become far bigger than you ever imagined.

I watched people transform their lives, build careers and create wealth for themselves and their families. That's the part I'm most proud of.

In this episode, I'm telling the true story of my time in Malaysia, the risks we took, the people who helped make it happen and the lessons that period of my life taught me about leadership, belief and possibility.

You can achieve far more than you think - but very rarely do you achieve it alone!

Welcome to the next episode of How to be a Hero in Real Life. I was out on a walk in nature and found myself thinking about a story I’ve never really told properly.

Back in 2014, life looked very different. I’d made a lot of money, I wanted to invest it, and one of the things I’d always dreamed of doing was opening a restaurant.

What followed was a journey involving love, heartbreak, betrayal, rebuilding myself, getting into the best shape of my life, modelling, taking a risk on a completely new concept and eventually creating "NAKED", a restaurant that went on to win Tatler’s Best Restaurant and become known far beyond Malaysia.

But this story isn’t just about a restaurant.

It’s about what can grow from failure, heartbreak and taking risks.

NAKED eventually led to other ventures, including Naked Diablo Tequila and Naked Diablo Airlines, but the journey wasn’t without its losses. Covid hit the restaurant incredibly hard, I continued paying staff while we were unable to open, and eventually, in 2022, we had to close the doors.

There have been plenty of stories, opinions and rumours online about what happened, so in this episode I wanted to tell the story from my perspective and put the facts straight.

Some things work. Some things don’t. We win some and we lose some.

But sometimes the thing that appears to have failed can create opportunities you never could have imagined.

Believe in yourself. Trust your gut. And whatever you decide to build, aim to make it the highest quality it can possibly be!

In this episode, I want to talk about something that has followed me in different forms throughout my life-bullying, criticism and the opinions of other people.

As a kid, I was small, ginger-haired and constantly the new boy at school. My mum had left my biological father because of his gambling, we moved around a lot, and for a period of time she was couch surfing while trying to create a better life for us. I was bullied, I struggled to fight back, and sometimes the only thing I could do was run — so I learned to run fast.

But I also learned how to survive. My mum taught me chess, and by 10 years old I became a school champion. Those early experiences started to teach me something I've carried with me ever since: you can't always control what happens to you, but you can decide what you do next.

Today, the playground looks different. I've dealt with keyboard warriors, online bullying, people trying to tear me down, being labelled controversial and even being blackmailed. And sometimes the people who try to hold you back aren't strangers — they can be the people closest to you.

But here's what I've learned: you cannot build your life around the opinions of other people.

If you have a dream, go after it. If you have something to say, say it. If you want to build something, build it. Be careful who you allow into your closest circle, because the people you spend your life around can have a huge influence on the person you become and the direction you take.

And when the criticism comes, don't automatically see it as a reason to stop. Sometimes it's a sign that you're being seen, that your message is travelling further and that you're inspiring people you may never even know about.

Life is too short to shrink yourself to make other people comfortable.

Be who you are. Go after what you want. Document your journey, protect yourself, stand by your truth — and whatever you do, don't let the bullies, the haters or the keyboard warriors stop you from living the life you know you're capable of.

You only get one. Don't waste it living for somebody else's approval!