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Finding Sanctuary
Hills Sanctuary House (HSH) - https://hshl.org.au/
Finding Sanctuary - your dose of insight into how we think and feel; and how you can find safe haven in your daily life. We get together with experts to chat about all things mental health, getting insights and understanding on the why's we do what we do.
Finding Sanctuary
Patrick Coorey - Formula for Success: Hard Work and Determination
Patrick Coorey is a seasoned professional with nearly 30 years of experience in the high-octane world of professional motorsport. Starting from humble beginnings in Coffs Harbour, Australia, his passion for racing and engineering drove him to the pinnacle of motorsport, Formula One. Despite an initial setback when his team ran out of funds, Patrick transitioned into Formula E, where he thrived as a championship-winning team manager. His career has also included roles such as design office manager and overseeing special projects, showcasing his versatility and dedication to innovation within the industry.
Key Takeaways:
- Passion and persistent hard work are crucial to achieving long-term goals, even in the face of adversity.
- Failures and setbacks can lead to unforeseen opportunities that align better with personal and professional fulfillment.
- Effective team management in high-stress environments relies on understanding individual needs and leveraging collective strengths.
- Embracing challenges and stepping out of one's comfort zone are essential for growth and advancement.
- A strong work ethic and a positive attitude can drive success, regardless of circumstances.
Notable Quotes:
- "If you're passionate about something, if you find what you're truly passionate about, you'll motivate yourself." - Patrick Coorey
- "All these hurdles that come up against us… they're not hurdles. They're actually the learning experiences that are absolutely essential." - Patrick Coorey
- "The hard work was a big thing. We learned a lot and it certainly got me a long way." - Patrick Coorey
- "I love the idea of doing something that feels a little bit scary… that's where growth happens." - Patrick Coorey
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0:00:00 - (Patrick Coorey): Having spent five minutes describing my career path from getting from my high school classroom all the way to Formula One and achieving my dream within the year being in Formula One, the team ran out of money and failed. And after all those years of trying, I felt like I'd had the carpet pulled out from under my feet. It was absolutely gutting, absolutely devastating.
0:00:30 - (Debbie Draybi): Welcome to Finding Sanctuary. Our shared conversations into how we think and feel and how we find peace and comfort in daily life. We get together with experts to chat about all things mental health, getting insights and understanding on the struggles of life. What happens when your biggest dream becomes your greatest teacher? Today we meet with Patrick Khoury, whose journey from wanting to race Formula One to becoming a championship winning team manager shows us that sometimes the path to our sanctuary isn't where we first looked for it.
0:01:06 - (Debbie Draybi): So welcome, Patrick. Really excited to have you join us. I know you've got this incredible career that's been close to 30 years now in professional motorsport, a world I don't know that much about. So I'm really curious, very curious about your work and what led you there. And I'm really excited that you're joining us to talk with us around this. So welcome.
0:01:26 - (Patrick Coorey): Thanks, Debbie. It's a pleasure to be here and thanks for inviting me.
0:01:30 - (Debbie Draybi): And I also should pause for a second because I have a co host joining me today, George Curie. And for our listeners who don't remember George, we did an episode on AI we did over a year ago now and we did promise we'll have George back on and we've just modelling how a guest becomes a host and we're going to test that out today.
0:01:50 - (George Khouri): I just want to say thank you to Patrick because, you know, you had to travel, you know, 10,000 kilometers from the UK for me to become a host. So thank you very much. I've been trying to get into this hot seat for a while and it's only taken 350 episodes, but I'm here, so thank you, Patrick. On a serious note, thanks, Deb. And I really looking forward to chatting with Patrick today as well.
0:02:10 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. So, Patrick, let's have a chat about where it all started. I mean, Formula One.
0:02:14 - (Patrick Coorey): Well, from when I was a teenager, Formula one was my dream. When I discovered what it was and started watching races on tv, it just took my imagination and it inspired me. I guess I was about 15 years old when I watched my first Formula One race living in Coffs Harbour, and it just seemed a very long way away from the world of Formula One, which was pretty much In Europe and mostly based in England.
0:02:41 - (Patrick Coorey): I wanted to get into racing as soon as I could. My brother and I bought a go kart and went racing go karts at our local track. I was okay as a driver, but my brother Peter was a lot better driver than I was. So I kind of backed off from the driving, and I would be the mechanic. I would prepare the go kart and he would drive it. And then we had a lot of success. And I got as much satisfaction from winning a race doing it that way as what I did, as if I was driving the go kart myself.
0:03:07 - (Patrick Coorey): And that kind of set me up a bit, and I guess aligned me with the engineering side. I was always down that path. I was always drawing pictures of race cars. But I figured out pretty early on what I wanted to do, and I wanted to be an Engineer in Formula 1. The only thing I had to figure out was how was I going to get there? That was going to be the big journey. So I went to Sydney University. I did mechanical engineering.
0:03:29 - (Patrick Coorey): A key thing I did at the time was I went out to Eastern Creek, spoke to a load of people in race teams. Someone was kind enough to say, oh, yeah, you can come out. You can help us out with our Formula Ford team. And I was literally cleaning wheels, polishing bodywork, making cups of tea. But I was learning, and I was doing any little thing that I could to help on that path. Very grateful when that team actually gave me a job.
0:03:55 - (Patrick Coorey): We were doing touring cars then, and that was my first start in motorsport. I did a couple more years in Australia with Audi Sport in Down in Albury in touring cars, and then I packed my bag and I went to England at the start of 2000.
0:04:08 - (Debbie Draybi): And did you have a job to go to or you just.
0:04:11 - (Patrick Coorey): No, I didn't have a job. I'd lined up two interviews, one in touring cars, one in Formula 3000. I was lucky enough to get both of those jobs, and I took the one that was the Formula Car 1 because that was the path to Formula 1. I'd done touring cars in Australia. I took the job that I thought was going to lead to Formula one, and in doing that, took a little bit of a demotion. I'd had already been a race engineer in Australia. That's the job that I wanted to do.
0:04:37 - (Patrick Coorey): So I went back to being a data engineer because I needed to learn. I needed to learn about cars with slick tires and lots of aerodynamic downforce. After a couple of years, I was promoted to race engineer, but I still had my Dream. I still had that target in my head of wanting to get to Formula one. It was pretty tough, and it took quite a few years because I guess the job market in Formula one, in all the years that I was trying, was pretty bad.
0:05:03 - (Patrick Coorey): Few teams went under, and the market was kind of full of Formula one qualified engineers, and they were the ones who were getting the jobs whenever jobs came up. It was very difficult. You know, Formula one teams like to employ Formula one experienced people, but I never gave up, I must say. I changed teams. I went to another team called Caterham Racing. They were a junior team of a Formula one team, and I managed to make the jump finally in 2014, and I got my job in Formula One. I achieved that goal, that goal that had been with me since I was a teenager.
0:05:38 - (Patrick Coorey): It meant a lot. It was a really big deal to me. When you dreamt about something that felt like it was a million miles away and you make it there, it's absolutely fantastic. It's the stuff that dreams are made of, I guess.
0:05:52 - (Debbie Draybi): That's incredible. And so how long did it take from when you first started to. When you finally reached your dream goal.
0:05:59 - (George Khouri): Of giving away your age?
0:06:01 - (Patrick Coorey): So you're going to give me my age? Yeah, that's not a problem. So I had my first job in Australia in motor racing in 1996, and it was 2014 when I reached Formula One. You know what? Years later, I found out through various people that if I'd have just gotten on a plane when I got out of uni and went to England and tried for a job, then I may well have jumped straight in. Been able to jump straight into Formula One then, because Formula One was in a real growth period in the late 90s, but in the early 2000s, and when I was trying to get in, the bubble had burst. It was really, really difficult.
0:06:39 - (Patrick Coorey): So things might have been very different. But, hey, it happens as it happens, and you deal with it as it comes up, and you do the best you can at the time.
0:06:47 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah, it sounds like even though you went in there during a really difficult time, you kept at it and you kept trying and you didn't give up.
0:06:55 - (Patrick Coorey): Yep. Never give up. If it's your dream, why would you give up on your dream? You just want to keep going.
0:07:00 - (Debbie Draybi): So for our listeners who are, you know, starting a path that's tricky, and they're having to navigate lots of obstacles in the way that you have what's, you know, what's some advice you'd give them around staying on the path and staying Motivated to keep going.
0:07:15 - (Patrick Coorey): If you're passionate about something, if you find what you're truly passionate about, you'll motivate yourself. So I guess the key is really finding what you really want to do. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a race engineer. I wanted to be work in Formula one. If you're not quite sure about what you want to do, then I imagine finding the motivation to do that is really tricky. Attitude plays a big part.
0:07:38 - (Patrick Coorey): If you know what you want to do, you're passionate about it. But let's say things aren't going so good if you're in control of your attitude. And you can turn your attitude around and say, well, okay, this hasn't worked out so well, but maybe I've learned something from. From it and the path between where you are now and where you want to be. It's not a straight line if it's taking you left of that path or right of that path.
0:08:00 - (Patrick Coorey): Embrace it. Do the best that you can with what you've got, but keep your eye on where you want to get to. If you know where you want to get to, it helps you immeasurably. And I knew exactly where I wanted to get to, so I think it helped me a lot. I guess one of the important things is to realize that all these hurdles that come up against us in the way, they're not hurdles. They're actually the learning experiences that are absolutely essential to get you to where you want to be.
0:08:28 - (Patrick Coorey): There's no magic, there's no easy path, nothing's gifted to you on a silver platter. You've got to do all the hard work in between. You've got to crawl before you walk. You've got to walk before you run, run before you sprint, all those kind of things. There's no simple task there. But appreciate that all those hurdles that are in the way, lack of motivation could be one of them. These are all the things that you've got to get over and that will make you better at what you need to, you know, better when you finally get there.
0:09:01 - (Patrick Coorey): If you don't have those experiences, you won't be nearly as good an end product as what you thought you might be.
0:09:07 - (George Khouri): You speak about motivation. How did you keep yourself at that level of motivation that got you there? You know, what you achieved is remarkable. A lot of people that have come into this sport, a lot of them haven't come, come from Australia because it's not a sport that is, you know, it's not widely, but it's not a sport that's, you know, it's huge. In Australia, they may have the dream, but to get there is is another task. How did you keep those motivation levels high?
0:09:34 - (Patrick Coorey): I just love winning so much that I just wanted to keep winning and doing everything that I could. When on that day, if you get everything right, more than the other teams and you manage to beat them and knowing that all the other teams you're competing against are hugely talented and amazing at what they do, that winning feeling is just absolutely brilliant. When you have a certain amount of momentum, you want to keep that momentum.
0:09:57 - (Patrick Coorey): And I didn't want to give up on that. That dream that I was chasing was still there, very big in front of my face. Because when you're racing in, say, GP2, the category below Formula One, well, you're racing at all the Formula One races. You're working in the pit lane in front of the Formula one teams. My target was there literally right in front of me. Also, at the time when I was working with teams, you'd have a link with another Formula One team. So I was working with Supernova and GP2, we had a link with the Honda team, which became Braun, which became Mercedes. And I'd meet with their engineers, I'd work with them sometimes alongside them in their engineering truck and things like that. I was getting a taste of what it looked like, what it felt like, and I still wanted that.
0:10:44 - (Patrick Coorey): Without a doubt. That's why I never gave up.
0:10:46 - (George Khouri): Yeah.
0:10:47 - (Debbie Draybi): And one of the things I find fascinating, I know we talked in our preparation around your experience working in teams and needing to make quick decisions. You were often given, particularly as your role as team leader, you were having to sort of gather information from across the team and get all this data coming from different angles and then having to make quick decisions. What has that taught you, do you think? What has been some of the big lessons about people and teams and diversity of perspectives coming together?
0:11:18 - (Patrick Coorey): It's taught me a lot because I spent almost 20 years as a race engineer. In that job, you're looking after a piece of machinery and a driver. You're trying to extract the optimum performance out of both of them. When you work on the race car, it does what it's supposed to do. It obeys the laws of physics. Drivers are a bit different. It's a bit more uncertain about how they're going to react and how they're going to perform, as with any person.
0:11:43 - (Patrick Coorey): But the big thing I noticed when I became team manager in the years after, it was just so Fascinating. Trying to get human performance out of completely different individuals in the team. So, you know, you're on the side of things that you might try something and it doesn't always work. People don't obey the laws of physics, so to speak. And trying to get that team work cohesively, trying to give people what they need to do their job as best they can was the challenge. And I found that fascinating because you could have two mechanics side by side. They're doing the same job, they're doing the same everything, but they'd need completely different things to do that job. And I mean the things around that, not.
0:12:23 - (Patrick Coorey): Not what they're actually using. So we did some amazing things. One of the most difficult things that we do as a race team is travel around the world and cope with jet lag and time zones and all that kind of stuff. It's really difficult. So we've done some research with some partners into what are the best ways of tackling that and trying to help people adjust to time zones or do different things around that so you can get the best performance out of them.
0:12:50 - (Patrick Coorey): And it all comes together in the end and you see how much that contributes to the race win. It's not just that car and that driver, it's everything.
0:12:58 - (George Khouri): How did you deal with conflict in the team? Because in everyday society, we've got an opportunity to, hey, let's go grab a coffee and talk this over. You're in the middle of a race, you don't have that luxury.
0:13:10 - (Patrick Coorey): Yeah, that's right. And that's a tricky one. I guess an extreme example is when you're race engineering a car, because the race engineer is the person who's talking to the driver on the radio. It's the only person talking to the driver. And things don't always go to plan, things don't always go right. And it's pretty easy to get a driver on the other end of that radio shouting at you, saying, why on earth have you done that? Why have you guys been pick that strategy? Why have we done this?
0:13:35 - (Patrick Coorey): We've lost the race. Because whatever, anything can happen. So as a race engineer, you're trying to defuse a situation really quickly. The driver's doing something really important, driving at extremely dangerous speeds, and you want to calm them down. And this is where, I guess if you've got any kind of psychology skills in you, you're trying to use them to get the driver's focus back on the race.
0:14:00 - (Patrick Coorey): That's an extreme example, I guess, and that's a really tricky One to deal. It comes a lot down to the relationship that you've built with your driver. And over all the years I was race engineering to work with lots of different drivers of different cultures, of different nationalities. That all adds to your kind of knowledge bank and your experience on how do you deal with this, how do we defuse this situation, how do we get them focused back on that race and try and recover whatever we can in the laps that are remaining.
0:14:29 - (Patrick Coorey): And funnily enough, actually you learn the most from maybe the less talented drivers because you figure out new ways, ways of doing things and you gotta dig deep sometimes to get that performance out of people. I worked with a driver once who was, I'll say it, he was really difficult. He was unbelievably difficult. But gosh, the things I learned from that season working with him, I would never have learned with other people. And then you apply them to other situations and hey, that might make the difference to winning a race one day.
0:14:58 - (Patrick Coorey): All the things we learn over the years, whether it was we learned that when we won that race or we learned that when we lost that race, it'll all contribute to your success in the future. And that's a big part of it.
0:15:10 - (George Khouri): You mentioned, I think a couple of times that you had members of the team from all parts of the world, right? How did you deal with leading a team like that with so many different, I guess, backgrounds, cultural differences, families that they had to deal with in different time zones? And how did you keep everyone motivated and their eyes on the prize, so to speak?
0:15:33 - (Patrick Coorey): Actually, I think it's not that hard. Currently working in Formula E. Formula E is a very high level world championship motorsport. The people in the team are absolute top quality. They bring their motivation, they bring their fight to win with them, they bring all those abilities that they've got and we're just putting them all together, making sure they're all pointed in the right direction. It's, I guess, a privilege working with such a good bunch of people that are, you don't have to turn them around or face them in a different direction. So everyone's aligned and everyone's trying to fight for the same win.
0:16:06 - (Patrick Coorey): To answer your question, it's actually not that difficult because they're all so good and so professional already.
0:16:12 - (Debbie Draybi): What I find fascinating is that change, that shift from working with the machine as an engineer and then, you know, transferring the complex beasts. I can imagine as an engineer you're working with all complexities of working with a car, but thinking about how that translates to some of those skills in engineering to then working with people and not just learning how to bring out the best performance in a car, but it sounds like what you've done is bring out the best performance in people as a collective, not just the driver, but the whole team itself.
0:16:44 - (Patrick Coorey): I think my experience as a race engineer helped me with that, because when you're a race engineer and you're working with the race car, you're working with the driver, you're getting all that experience working with a human being and trying to get the optimum performance out of them. Let's say you're a designer. Your job is focused solely on designing the best possible components for that race car.
0:17:08 - (Patrick Coorey): Lightweight and reliable and do everything that they're supposed to do. But you're not dealing with the human side of it. I guess if you're a mechanic, you're bolting the car together, assembling it, you're doing all the things that you need to do, but you're not maybe working with the driver with the human side of it that much. And a huge part of my job was dealing with the driver. So I think I probably built up those skills over the years, working with difficult drivers, easy drivers, different nationalities, the whole lot. And it's all a really good experience.
0:17:37 - (Patrick Coorey): So when it came to the point where I became team manager and had a whole group of people to work with, I think I'd learned some good skills to help everyone work together and get the most out of them. The teams work so hard. Every single team works so hard. Everyone's absolutely exhausted at the end of a race day. Everyone puts in their. They give their pound of flesh every single day. And across the whole paddock, when you've done that a little bit better than the team next door to you and you manage to beat them, it's just the best feeling in the world. And that's the motivation that we all use.
0:18:11 - (Patrick Coorey): Having said that, we'll all go out for a beer later on and we'll have a beer with the guys in the team garage next door to us and the other garage. They all know we're fighting just as hard and we're trying to beat them, but we're all got the same goal in the end. We just want to win that race. And we all appreciate how hard everyone up and down the pit lane works. It's a great little community, I must say.
0:18:30 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah, it sounds like it's a beautiful community that you're working in.
0:18:34 - (Patrick Coorey): For sure. For sure.
0:18:35 - (Debbie Draybi): I'm wondering, you know, your experience as you Describe your journey and where you began wanting to race cars and then moving on to now what you're doing, working with teams and bringing out not just the best in a race, but the best in people. Did you imagine that that would be be what you're doing moving from racing cars to engaging people, really, and working in the way that you do with people?
0:19:01 - (Patrick Coorey): Earlier on, I just wanted to be a race engineer. I loved the idea of that role. It's a fantastic role that's really central right in the middle of the team, you're right in the middle of the action. It's quite a high stress job. I always loved it. I guess I got to the point where I realised I didn't want to be a race engineer forever. I did want to move on, I wanted to do some different things. Moving to Jaguar Racing gave me that opportunity.
0:19:26 - (Patrick Coorey): The team I worked with before then, I was a race engineer and they were a team that bought a race car from another manufacturer and they operated that race car. Jagger is a manufacturer and we design and manufacture the powertrain and everything ourselves. And that means the team is bigger and has opportunities for other things. So since I finished with race engineering, I've been lucky enough to be the design office manager, heading up our design office for about four years. I was also able to look after special projects and reliability before I moved into the team manager role.
0:20:00 - (Patrick Coorey): So I've been very lucky that I've been able to do a few different things over the years and still be so close to the race team and what goes on.
0:20:09 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah, it sounds like you've had such a diversity of roles and then being able to bring them all together and, you know, come at it from different angles. How's that helped you to think in your current role?
0:20:20 - (Patrick Coorey): It's helped me massively being able to do all those different things. You use experience from every single one of them. And I could give lots of examples where as team manager, I was using experience from when I was design office manager, when I was race engineer, when I was doing this, when I was doing that. You use it all the time. It's all about learning. We just learn and learn and learn and keep using it.
0:20:44 - (Patrick Coorey): When I talk to students who are trying to get into whatever they're interested in and they often say, oh, but sometimes you get pushed sideways and I want to go there straight down the middle, but I'm getting pushed over here to the side. Don't worry about it. Whatever you're learning is great and you will always use that experience when you get to wherever you want to get to. And along the whole journey there, Pat.
0:21:08 - (George Khouri): We all go tell our parents at some stage in our life that we want to be a pilot or we want to be Superman or something, I guess. How did your parents react when they knew that you were serious about pursuing a career in Formula Racing? What part did they play in your success to fulfill your dream?
0:21:25 - (Patrick Coorey): My parents were very supportive. They were fantastic. They helped me a huge amount. But to go back a step and answer the second part of your question, Mum and Dad really taught me how to work hard and the way they did that. So I grew up in Coffs Harbour. My parents had a motel there and Mum and Dad worked really hard every day. Motel work is long hours, seven days a week. It doesn't give you a break, I guess. My brother and sister and I, every day we witnessed the hard work that Mum and Dad did.
0:21:56 - (Patrick Coorey): It's not like Mum and Dad went off to an office somewhere and then came back at 6 o' clock at the end of the day and you don't see what they've done all day. No, we saw every day we saw them up early making breakfasts for all the guests. We saw them throughout the whole day doing all the jobs. And when it was dinner time, they couldn't even sit down for a whole dinner without being interrupted with someone wanting to check in, to get a room or whatever, that kind of stuff.
0:22:19 - (Patrick Coorey): It was very hard work and we witnessed it, and I think that instilled in us, this is how you work hard and this is how you reap the benefits of that hard work. It pays off. So that was really important because I'm a firm believer that no matter how talented you are, hard work will get you so far. And when I talk to students and young people these days, I really try and let them know, look, there's no magic.
0:22:45 - (Patrick Coorey): Nothing will jump you from point A to point B instantaneously. It's a whole lot of hard work. And the great thing is that we're all capable of hard work, so that means we're all capable of getting to where we want to get to. The hard work was a big thing. We learned a lot and it certainly got me a long way. Without a doubt, it was difficult when I left home. For sure, Mum and Dad wanted me to stick around in Australia, but the motor racing industry in Australia is very small, and if I wanted to go all the way to Formula One, I had to leave and I had to go to England.
0:23:18 - (Patrick Coorey): I come back every year to see Mum and Dad. And whenever I can, I'm sure Mum still wants me to come back to Australia, but I'm really quite settled in England now. Pat.
0:23:29 - (George Khouri): We, you know, we talk about failures in life and we're scared, I think, in the current society to use that word in terms of our kids and just generally, I'm sure there's been some failures or some setbacks during that 25 year period. And talk us through what failure looks like for Patrick Currie and how it's played a role in the person that you are today and the career itself.
0:23:54 - (Patrick Coorey): Well, the biggest example I can think of, so, having spent five minutes describing my career path from getting from my high school classroom all the way to Formula One and achieving my dream, was that within the year being in Formula one, the team ran out of money and failed. And after all those years of trying, I felt like I'd had the carpet pulled out from under my feet. It was absolutely gutting, absolutely devastating. I mean, there are hundreds of people involved and they all felt the same, so. But when you've fought so hard and tried for so long to get to where you want to get to and all of a sudden it's gone, that's pretty tough.
0:24:36 - (Patrick Coorey): That's pretty tough. I think at that point I was very lucky in that I was approached by a Formula E team. Formula E was a brand new category that was starting up. A lot of people thought it was rubbish. A lot of people thought, well, this isn't going to be around in a year's time. We'll wait and see what happens. But I had to take a bit of a risk. I had to kind of jump off a cliff and just dive in headfirst and go for it, which I did.
0:25:01 - (Patrick Coorey): I met the team and they seemed like a really good bunch of guys. I met the driver I would be working with and he seemed absolutely awesome. And I joined a team and had a couple of the best years I've ever had in motor racing. You know, we have setbacks, we have mountains to climb, but if you just get stuck in and get on with it and make the most out of what you've got, it can turn out brilliantly. I've now been in Formula E for 11 years and I love it more than Formula 1.
0:25:31 - (Patrick Coorey): If someone said to me, oh, do you want to go back to Formula one tomorrow? No, I don't, actually. I want to stay in Formula E, it's fantastic. I wouldn't give it up for anything. So I guess I've been very lucky.
0:25:42 - (George Khouri): But is it luck? Is it taking that risk? Is it saying, I guess you reach different parts of your life and pivotal decisions, and you have to think about it. The pros and cons. Is that a process you undertook, you had a family, you know, taking risk when you're single and don't have kids, and it's quite easy because there's not a lot of people relying on you, maybe. But when you have a family and you got kids and, you know, commitments and all those type of things, I think that changes the dynamics of your decision.
0:26:09 - (George Khouri): Talk us through that. Because there's. There's parents that are listening to this and, you know, maybe they want to take a risk. Maybe they're in their 30s, 40s, and, you know, maybe they're not quite content in their job or they want to pivot their career. What would. What advice would you give them?
0:26:24 - (Patrick Coorey): The advice I would give is if you come up against something and it seems a little bit scary, go for it. Because a little bit scary is good. And a little bit scary means that if you come out the other end, you're going to be a better person. You're going to have learned something. You're going to be further up than where you were before. If you take the easy option every time. If you choose a job there, let's say you're in a job and you're learning and you're learning and you're learning and.
0:26:51 - (Patrick Coorey): And you get on top of it, and it's great. There isn't a question anyone can ask me, and, hey, I know the answer to everything. Great. Ride that way for a little bit. Enjoy it. But as soon as you're sitting there, comfortable for a little while, get out. Get into a job that's going to challenge you. Get into a job that's hard, that you're going to learn from, because as soon as you stop learning, I think you're nowhere.
0:27:12 - (Patrick Coorey): I always want to be learning. I always want to do things that feel a little bit scary. Hence me sitting here in this podcast today because I thought, wow, this sounds a little bit daunting, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to give it a go, and I'm going to give it my best shot.
0:27:27 - (George Khouri): You're doing well so far.
0:27:28 - (Patrick Coorey): Thanks, George.
0:27:30 - (George Khouri): We might even get you back on you, George.
0:27:31 - (Debbie Draybi): We might get you back as a host.
0:27:33 - (George Khouri): I'm just a natural. Just taking your long time.
0:27:37 - (Patrick Coorey): In life, you know, you want to go on an upward trajectory, and we want to build on experience and keep going. And there are times in life when you can jump higher up that ladder. And they're the times when you say, right, that looks a bit scary, but, hey, I'm gonna do it. And you come out the other end and you've jumped up further than what you thought you might. So that's the advice I would give. If you're a little bit worried about something, just go for it.
0:28:02 - (Debbie Draybi): We often say feel the fear, but do it anyway, just to be able to challenge yourself and get out of that comfort zone. And, you know, I think your life story has been incredible in that you've pushed yourself and you've create new limits and you put yourself in new positions that maybe you weren't even originally trained to do. You said you're in leading a design team, but you're not a designer. I think that's incredible that you've been able to have such a diversity of roles and to contribute in such an incredible way. Cause each one brings a new perspective and new opportunities.
0:28:37 - (Patrick Coorey): I do think I'm very lucky in that respect. And I've enjoyed all the different things that I've done. Some people like to do one thing and be, say, a subject matter, expertise. I like the broadness and all the different things to do. Maybe I get that from my dad, who did quite a few things over his working life. My dad, a couple of months ago turned 100. I mean, he worked well into his 90s. He had a number of different careers.
0:29:04 - (Patrick Coorey): He started out as a hawker, traveling around New South Wales and southern Queensland with his brother. They had a truck, they were selling clothing and drapery and things like that. And he did that for 18 years. Then he changed completely and went into construction again with his brother, but a very different industry, and did that again successfully for about 16 years. And then he met Mum and they ran a motel together.
0:29:30 - (Patrick Coorey): So again, hospitality, another completely different industry. And then after that, property management. So I really like the idea that he's done so many completely different things over the course of his life. I think the diversity is a great way to go. I love it.
0:29:45 - (Debbie Draybi): What a beautiful example of, you know, what he modeled for you and how that then translated into this incredible career that you've built. I'm wondering for parents out there who feel stuck, perhaps in a career that they chose, but now realise it's not for them, or things have changed or the economy's changed and they're forced into sort of new jobs that they're not quite ready for. What advice would you give them when they're sitting in that space of discomfort? And unfamiliar and are struggling with that transition.
0:30:17 - (Patrick Coorey): I think being passionate about what you do is really important. I'm very passionate about what I do. I can't imagine what it would be like working in a job that I wasn't fully passionate about. So if I was in that situation, I would do everything to figure out where do I want to be and then do everything I could possibly could to get to that place. And I know there's always practicalities and money comes in and the mortgage comes in and the everything, all the responsibility comes in.
0:30:44 - (Patrick Coorey): But being happy in your working life and waking up in the morning and going to your job and saying, oh, I love going to this every day. How lucky am I that I get to do this every single day? That's a big part. You know, we work for so much of our lives. If you can align what you love with what you do every single day, how amazing is that? I think it's worth giving it everything you've got to try and get there.
0:31:10 - (Debbie Draybi): I'm really picking up on your passion. It's very contagious. And I know you've mentioned you've been lucky quite a bit right now, but I just want to note that I think you're incredibly humble because you're very hard working and it hasn't been luck at all. It's been your passion, your hard work, your drive, your ability to see failure as opportunities for learning and to keep going.
0:31:34 - (Patrick Coorey): I'll readily admit I'm not the cleverest person in the team. We've got some real geniuses in our team, honestly, we've got some amazing people. I wasn't the cleverest person at university, but I do know how to work hard and I know where I wanted. I knew exactly where I wanted to get to and I know that I want to win races. And if I'm the last person walking out of the office at 9pm at night and the next day I walk in, I'm the first person in at 7am I know how to work hard and I know that that will get me results.
0:32:03 - (Patrick Coorey): So you don't always have to be the cleverest. Hard work will get you a very long way.
0:32:08 - (George Khouri): I love the message, right. It's so important, especially for young people today. Two parts to my question. What would you do differently and what does a hard day of work look like?
0:32:20 - (Patrick Coorey): What would I do differently? Okay. If I'd have up sticks straight after university and risked it, gone to England and tried to get a job in Formula one then and there, I may well have And I may well have ended up working for my dream team, like McLaren or something like that. And that would have been great. Would have also have meant that I probably wouldn't have met my wife. So I don't know if I'd trade that. I wouldn't. No way.
0:32:46 - (Patrick Coorey): No way. So things work out. So I guess I don't want to say no, I wouldn't do things differently because if you get it right, great, you got it right. If you get it wrong, that's fine. You learn from it and you move on. And we just keep walking ahead in life. We don't walk backwards. So, yeah, no, I'm not going to change a single thing.
0:33:05 - (George Khouri): Perfect. And the hard days work. What's that look like?
0:33:07 - (Patrick Coorey): And the hard days work. Oh, well. So I like to start early. I like to get into the office early, you know, usually when other people aren't there, because that's actually when I get the work done. My particular job in that I'm kind of a. I don't know, a node point where a lot of people come to me and ask for stuff. And when that happens, well, my work just stops and goes out the window. And you end up helping a lot of people over the course of the day. And then it'll get to about 6 o' clock when people start to leave, and then I can start working again on my own stuff. So if it's in the factory, there's a lot of logistics and organizing kind of jobs to do.
0:33:43 - (Patrick Coorey): There's seeing various people and meetings. When it's at the racetrack, it's early starts, late finishes. There's a lot of running between our team and the customer team that we supply. In Formula E. There's looking after the people and giving the people what they need to do their job, making sure people are in the right place at the right time. There's a lot to it and I really enjoy that. The broadness of the responsibilities.
0:34:09 - (George Khouri): Is that the work ethic that you had from when you were 15.
0:34:13 - (Patrick Coorey): I'm not sure what work ethic I had when I was 15. I did all right in high school. Oh, look, I did well on the things that I loved doing and that that played through to university as well. So if I was doing something in uni, let's say we were doing, I don't know, learning about air conditioning engineering, I really wasn't that interested in it. But if we were doing aerodynamics, that I could apply to a race car, well, I absolutely loved it.
0:34:35 - (Patrick Coorey): So I was a bit selective, maybe.
0:34:38 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah, well, Patrick, it's been incredible to share with you this story. I wondered whether there's anything else before we wrap up that you'd like. The key learnings that you've had along the way. You've shared so much with us already, but I just wanted to give you a chance if there's anything that you wanted to add.
0:34:53 - (Patrick Coorey): There's kind of five things that are important to me that I think are important if you want to be successful in whatever you choose to follow. Number one is ability. You got to get that ability. If you want to be a pro footballer. Well, you need to be able to kick that ball as well as anyone can possibly kick that ball. Get yourself the ability. The second thing is determination. And your determination needs to be even greater than the ability that you have, because the determination is what gets you there to your goal in the end.
0:35:24 - (Patrick Coorey): Be passionate about what you do. I love what I do, and I'm passionate about winning. And hopefully I'll keep winning because that passion remains. If someone's passionate about what they do, it'll get you to that success that you want to achieve. I also think that attitude is really, really important because they're not always good days. We have a lot of bad days along the way, but we are totally in control of our attitude.
0:35:49 - (Patrick Coorey): And we can have a bad attitude, or we can turn that around ourselves and say, I'm going to have a positive attitude and I'm just going to move forward and not let this particular hurdle stop me. And underpinning all that is what I've spoken about a lot already, which is hard work. We're all capable of hard work, whether it's studying for an exam or doing whatever. Get your head down, get stuck in. If you're passionate about it, you'll get there.
0:36:13 - (Patrick Coorey): You'll get to where you want to get to. And I think those five things have certainly helped me. And yeah, hopefully that's a little bit of advice to help people along their way to whatever their success is.
0:36:25 - (Debbie Draybi): George, did you have anything before we finish?
0:36:27 - (George Khouri): I'm just gonna take those five ideas and write a book. So that's getting there just in advance. But thank you, Patrick. That was fantastic.
0:36:34 - (Debbie Draybi): It's been a beautiful conversation. I really appreciate you joining us. And there's been some wonderful reflections. And Patrick's story really reminds us that finding Sanctuary isn't about avoiding disappointment or avoiding failure or fear. It's about, you know, facing them. It's about discovering purpose in unexpected places. And sometimes it's. Our greatest contributions come from not achieving our original dreams, but from helping others achieve theirs. So thank you. Thanks for sharing and it's been a wonderful conversation.
0:37:06 - (Patrick Coorey): Thanks Debbie. Thanks George. I've really enjoyed it.
0:37:08 - (Debbie Draybi): And thanks for George's debut as host.
0:37:10 - (George Khouri): I might make it back here one day. So foreign.
0:37:19 - (Debbie Draybi): I hope this episode has helped you find sanctuary in this exciting journey of life. All of the resources we've mentioned in this episode are found in the podcast Notes. If you need some assistance with any of the topics discussed in today's episode, then please Visit our website HSHL.org if you have any thoughts, comments or ideas, please leave us a comment on Spotify. Alternatively, send us an email@adminshl.org
0:37:48 - (Debbie Draybi): au you& your mental health matters to us, and we hope you get one step closer in finding sanctuary. Bye for now.