By Violet Li
Clyde North local and auctioneer Andy Reid has just launched his first book last month, wishing to help people build better connections with their vision of success.
The book, named Success Curious, dedicated to his two children, explores the common challenges people face in their careers, businesses, and personal lives and aims to provide tangible and practical steps towards self-improvement.
The author, who spent a lot of time volunteering in the local soccer club, community centre, and business organisation, has a portfolio of high performance and chasing success: Australian auctioneer of the year 2022, director of an auctioneering company servicing more than 130 different real estate agencies throughout Victoria, host of podcast High Performance Humans, and the list goes on.
However, unlike many personal development authors who like to insert their success stories to constantly prove their strategies, Andy tried to be invisible in the book and only showed up when necessary, believing that the book was not about him but about whom he could help.
“I’m the least important person,” he said.
It has been out of a professional habit as an auctioneer.
“You got a vendor whose biggest asset is being sold. You got a buyer who’s making a massive decision in the context of their lives, one of the biggest in their lives. You’ve got a real estate agent whose reputation in future business is relying upon it,” Andy said.
“I’m just out there shouting, having fun, and that’s what puts me into a flow state.
“When I can wire it in my head for it to be about everybody else, I’ll wait. I’ll be spot on, and I will help, and I will help people be successful.”
The Clyde North local admitted that the chase for success sent his mental health into the drain, which was the reason he initially wanted to write this book. He became curious about the concept of success, and after a long time of contemplation, he thought he could now articulate quite well on what he found to help others.
“I’ve been lucky in whatever I’ve been doing in my life. It’s not like I’m the best thing ever. When I’m involved in something, I tend to do quite well,” he said.
“When mental health really got a grip on me, it made me reassess everything, and I knew that I had to change as a human because I was in denial almost.
“It was almost like I had to chase success to make up for how bad I was feeling at times. It was like a papering over the cracks. It was like a band-aid on a broken leg.
“One of the best things I ever did was become a student myself. Understand the chemicals in my brain, understand the dynamics in the background, the psychology around emotion and all that sort of stuff. I just became a massive geek around it.”
During his research, the student was hoping to find evidence to disapprove a lot of commonly known things around success, but only to find out everything out there is correct.
If everything out there about success that everybody knows about is right, why aren’t more people doing it? Andy questioned.
“The easy answer is to tell is because it’s hard. But I disagree. Because all the elements, the knowledge, the theory around being successful has been around since Ancient Greece,” he said.
“But we’re looking at it the wrong way, and this is the biggest thing I’ve learned.
“The problem is not the people. The problem is not that it’s challenging. The problem is the gap in connection between the knowledge and the identity of the human being.”
The book further explores potential answers to the question and other elements of success. Each chapter begins with a question that people ask about success, and Andy tells a story related to his life, backs it up with evidence, and connects the knowledge with reality.
Andy hopes this book can actually help to make every version of success more accessible.
“This book is not going to tell you something you don’t already know, but it might help you feel that what you do know is actually half achievable,” he said.
