Empowered Midlife: Strategies for Personal and Professional Growth

🚀 Redefining Success at Midlife: A Conversation with Dino Tartaglia Are you rethinking freedom, lifestyle, and purpose in your midlife years? Dino Tartaglia, a powerhouse business strategist, joined Emily Bron on Age of Reinvention to share his incredible journey and wisdom:✅ Transform challenges into opportunities by uncovering the “elusive obvious”🌍 Gain new perspectives through travel & immersion🤝 Build communities that drive growth and fulfillment.

TIMESTAMPS:
03:48 Dino’s Journey from Engineering to Coaching
06:59 Founding Success Engineers and Target Audience
14:03 The Importance of Travel and Cultural Exposure
18:54 Relocating to Portugal: A New Chapter
28:07 Advice for Midlife Entrepreneurs

Whether you’re starting fresh or considering entrepreneurship, these insights provide a practical roadmap for reinvention. Ready for the next step in YOUR journey? Tune in to the episode now!

Listen to Part II of the podcast episode here:

Watch Part II of the interview here:

Emily: Welcome to another exciting episode of Age of Reinvention, redefine Freedom, lifestyle, and Purpose, and Midlife. I’m your host, Emily Bron, and today we have a truly inspiring guest with us. We have the privilege of speaking with Dino Tartaglia, a seasoned strategist and visionary known for his unique blend of technological expertise and entrepreneurial spirit.

Dino has dedicated his career to helping others engineer success. As the co-founder of Success Engineers Company, Dino has transformed countless lives using innovative methods like narrow linguistic programming. Building strong, supportive communities. With over three decades of experience spanning engineering, consulting, and business coaching, Dino transforms the landscape for over 1000 businesses, helping them strive by focusing and what matter most.

Dinner is here to share some invaluable insights on personal growth, reinvention, and finding purpose in midlife. Get ready for enlightening conversation, the promise to inform and empower you to leap into your midlife transformation. Welcome, Dino I was looking forward for long time to meet you in my age of reinvention studio.

Dino: It’s an absolute pleasure to be here. Emily, thank you for inviting me.

Emily: I am happy. And I have a list of questions. Dino, you’ve had incredibly diverse career journey from electronic engineering to becoming a successful coach. What inspired you to shift gears and dive into the world of coaching and did you arrive at your coaching chapter and reinvention after 50?

Dino: Oh, good questions. Good questions, Emily. Okay. So the inspiration, I guess it was more a natural evolution. So I started life as a young engineer. In the, eventually the oil and gas business traveling the world and, and doing what I did in troubleshooting. So I was designing systems and then troubleshooting systems, and then I started finding that the problems with the systems were people all the way down.

So it was the way that systems were implemented, the way they weren’t being run, the design of them, there was a flaw that always went back to the designer or the design team. So I, I started getting quite good at troubleshooting people issues and issues created by people unintentionally, generally, and and systems and processes.

So the whole thing started to move into business transformation as it’s called now and business improvement. And I became a, what was then a six a lean and a Six Sigma black belt. Now Lean Six Sigma. I got into all of that. I really loved it, found that I had a bit of a talent for it. But my leaning into understanding people and the tend tendency to do what I call complexify instead of simplify their environment and their situation was where most of the problems were.

So we ended up solving the wrong problem. And from that, I started, me, I started mentoring other people and troubleshooting businesses directly and got into the consultancy business in, in, in terms of troubleshooting businesses at that level that then naturally led to small businesses as opposed to the global businesses I’ve been dealing with.

So the sort of GEs, the general Electrics of the world and companies like that, that have been working with suddenly became the mom and pop almost the corner business, 10 staff or whatever. Then in 2016 having been away for a long time from the uk, I came back to the UK and bumped into an old friend of mine called Simon Hartley, who’s a world class sports psych.

He was involved in elite sport. I met him when I was sponsoring a rugby player at my local rugby club at Newcastle Falcons, just when the game went professional. And 16, 17 years later, we bump into each other and he’s gone from being a very young, fresh faced sports psych in elite sport to a world authority on world class mindset working in Olympic programs, taking all of that, thinking into businesses.

And he’d written six books. So I read two of his books and I said, mate, seriously, we’ve gotta get our heads together because I have some ideas around business models and critical thinking skills and troubleshooting, and the mindset piece, what we call mental gain. We could fuse that together. And I know that a lot of small owners could really do with that.

It turns out that as we started Success Engineers, which is what came about in 2017. That we struck a chord with middle aged people, mainly so people like ourselves. Si Simon at the time was in his late forties and I was in my fifties. And and we found that mainly women, surprisingly, even though we have a male brand, because we thought our audience would be male, most of our audience ended up being female.

We’re 82% female now, and mainly these are women in their generally late thirties, early forties through to their mid sixties. And the vast majority are in the late forties to late fifties. Now a lot of them aspire to do what I ended up doing, which is traveling the world and working remotely, which I’ve done for many years now.

But they, they still have family nearby. They’ve got grandchildren or still children growing up. A lot of ’em are single mothers. So we didn’t really speak to the immigration or the expat community, although we do have some. But predominantly what we did do was open doors in terms of thinking for a lot of these women and the men.

’cause we have a fair number of men in our world to start thinking differently about what their definition of success was. Because a lot of ’em had really narrowed the frame and they were thinking very literally, very narrowly very thinly about just earning the next buck, about keeping their heads above water, about having a bit of an impact on the world, but not really doubling down on what their purpose was what their vision was, and also understanding that there were other things in life that were possible for them which might mean even if they’re anchored to the uk for example, in our case traveling a bit more and experiencing other cultures more frequently than the traditional two weeks, holiday abroad.

So that started changing the dynamic started changing their aspirations and then what I call, what really, what matters most, what actually matters most. WMM that started to come into focus for them as, what, enjoying life, taking a leaf out of the Italians book, for example, the Portuguese book, which is, we don’t lift we don’t we, we don’t lift to work.

We work to live. So how can we develop that so that that we have time for ourselves instead of constantly being on? So we started to change that dynamic for the people who followed us and worked with us. And really, that largely, that’s what I do know. I help people who are brilliant at what they do.

Maybe they don’t realize it, but I help them build a thriving business around that brilliance rather than trying to shoehorn themselves into somebody else’s idea of what business should be. And that might include, for example, working remotely, traveling, experiencing new cultures, et cetera, et cetera.

But having a business that wraps around that rather than them trying to fit into some of the kind of model that just doesn’t work for them. So the coaching came about as a, almost an organic evolution. And mainly because Simon said to me, ’cause Simon is a world class coach, and again, I say world class with the understanding of what that term really means.

I, I find in a lot of circles, Emily world class is abused as a term and it means a bit good, but world class for us means that you are at the top of your game on a world stage sustainably. So over time, and Simon is a world class person working in a world class environment because that’s, his business is called be world class.

Those are the people he deals with people who want to find the edges of the potential and stay there. So he said to me mate, you, you keep saying you’re not a coach. ’cause I, I. Said for years, I’m not a coach. I’m not a coach, I’m more of a mentor. I tell people what to do ’cause I can see I’m a troubleshooter, I can see what’s wrong.

I tell ’em what to fix. And he said, I’m hearing from a lot of people that you’re a damn good coach. And I would agree with him. Start calling yourself a coach. So about four years ago, I started saying I’m coaching. Because I thought I’m not gonna argue with a man. He know. He knows. So I became if you a coach,

Emily: coaches are different from different angles.

Yeah, exactly. And I’m speaking lately with many different coaches, and even the name might be the same. They have different approach because, and different personalities.

Dino: You’re absolutely right. But I think for me, I was a coach. I just, I fought it because I, I’m not formally qualified. I’m very qualified in, in many other areas.

I was a chartered electronics engineer, for example. But in coaching, I don’t have any qualifications. But other than the life experience and the business experience that I’ve got, but there was a world class coach saying to me, I and many other people who are at the top of the game, see you as a really good coach.

Start calling yourself a coach. So I stopped fighting it.

Emily: You described yourself as a technologist, entrepreneur, and evil genius. Why evil?

Dino: I I never fit in, into corporate is the truth. I was always a troublemaker because I was never happy with accepting a lot of the things that make, that made no sense to all many of us, not just me. So I became a bit of a disruptor and a bit difficult. And somebody actually gave me the term, an evil genius because I could fix things.

But I made it difficult for a lot of people that just wanted to take the easy path, shall we say, and just do what they were told, even if it made no sense. And I challenged it. So I brought that into the business. When I started building businesses and advising businesses, I brought it into that.

But it’s a, it truthfully, it’s tongue in cheek. I, I like to, I, I found that I’m very good at connecting people and the right kinds of people. So I’m a good connector and I like collecting beautiful, brilliant human beings. And I find that I can often see an opportunity to help somebody, not directly, but by, by listening to their problem, identifying the problem we’re actually trying to solve.

’cause quite often, most often, people are trying to solve the wrong problem, which is where many of their issues come from. And then connecting them with somebody that I know is gonna be a really good help, but also that they’re gonna be a, at a human level, they’re gonna be a match. So they’re gonna get on.

And I seem to have a good skill in, in that. So one of my areas of brilliance, if you will, I don’t really like the genius term. It is tongue in cheek, but one of my areas where I kind of shine is that I can see an opportunity to help somebody solve a problem by connecting them with a person that, or a resource that will help them when I know that I can’t, or I can’t do the best job for them that, that could be done.

For example, I’ve just had a conversation with a coaching client and he’s talking about investments with a fair pot of money. And whilst I’m very good at that, I have my own investments and I’m pretty skilled. I have a friend who’s phenomenal at that and I know he’d do a better job. So I’ve just connected him with Damien with my friend because and step out of the way because that’s a better solution for him.

So in that regard, that’s another area where, if you want to use the term genius, although I would definitely not use the term genius, but where I’m skilled. I can do that. So I guess I’ve recognized that over the years that I’ve got some strengths and I play to them, and these are two of the areas.

But the ability to see the problem that needs to be solved very quickly is definitely an area where I’m very strong.

Emily: Excellent. Like for me, you are not evil. You are just genius of networking and engineerings and new ideas and implementation of it. Another aspect of your life you lived in worked in 23 countries on five continents and visited 114 countries.

How has this extensive travel and exposure to various culture shaped your perspective on business and coaching?

Dino: I think I’d answer that by saying it’s shaped my perspective on human beings, because ultimately, all of this is really just about human psychology and then understand having an understanding of people.

Then we get into how business can help that individual how technology can help that individual, how engineering, if you like, in terms of processes can help that person. So how connection can, and communication can help that person. So for me, it comes down to the human the person in front of you and whether or not you, they have a problem that you feel you can help ’em solve.

So I when I’ve traveled I’ve learned that a lot of my assumptions and preconceptions were wrong. And, the, that old adage travel broadens the mind. It sure as heck does. So for me, the more countries that I, and more cultures that I’ve experienced, the more cities that I’ve lived in, the more things that I’ve done with people where I’ve had to learn.

How to adapt to their way of doing things or l learn how to teach them how to adapt to my way of doing things so we get a collaboration that’s happened in all of the countries that I’ve visited and all the countries I’ve lived in. So it’s helped me, I think understand that slowing down, that taking time to think and to reflect, to not jumping to conclusions and making assumptions and knee jerk assumptions.

These are things that travel has really helped me with such as and that’s really been the education that I’ve had at the the, because of the benefit, if you like, of having me exposed to so many people who’ve taught me that my thinking wasn’t really as accurate as I thought it was. So travel in that regard has literally I.

It’s really it’s expanded my mind. It broadened it has expanded my horizons. It has educated me in the false assumptions that I’ve made. It’s helped me think more deeply, more widely, more effectively about how to handle situations that were difficult and challenging when the young me would’ve just pushed back and tried to force an outcome.

Now I find I’m a lot more conservatory and a lot more helpful, shall we say so, and travel has done all of that.

Emily: My question was a little bit based on my personal, not so extended, but experience that people do business differently in different cultures. Like the same ideas or behavior should be wrapped different way because of cultural specific, say in Asia, even in Mexico versus how it’s done in Europe and in America.

Like different style, different even codes I would say of networking and doing the business. What can you tell? And I understand it’s what you mean by saying yes about experience living in country. So you need to live some time in order to get it.

Dino: Interesting. I would agree at a corporate level, I think in terms of getting into companies and beginning the process of establishing a relationship.

Because for me, business is never transactional. It’s always relational. Yeah. It’s always about relationships. So in that regard, yes, I think you’re absolutely right. If you are doing business in Japan or you’re doing business in China, or you’re doing business in Germany, or you’re doing business in the uk, it is radically different.

No question. Even across the states, different states and different parts of different states can be different, and have their own kind of nuances and rules, no question. However, if you understand fundamentally that your job is to be useful, not to give value necessarily and I might talk about that, that later on, but to give, to be useful and to where you can, to the person in front of you.

Then you start leaning into what they need and also what they want, but fundamentally, what they need. So what is it that in your estimation and their estimation is gonna help them? And then you seek to see whether or not you can be the person who can deliver that. And if you’re doing that, what I find in most countries is the process is the same.

There’s a golden thread that goes through every culture and every country in terms of how you do that, because you’re dealing with a human being and you’re building a relationship. And that, that, in that regard, that really never changes. Some of the nuances change because of cultural, obviously cultural cons constraints or variances.

But the essence of it is the same. I’m here to help you. If I can talk to me that, and that’s how all my conversations start.

Emily: You recently became a British expert in Portugal, opening a new life chapter. How has it affected your personal and professional life, and what kind of challenges have you observed or even maybe facing now despite your such big international business travel experience during your life?

Dino: So I, as a traveler, it and as a oph, I love Europe, although, yeah I love many countries that I’ve worked and lived in, but Europe is, my people are from Italy and Europe is very close to my heart. And I like the variety in Italy, sorry, in, in Europe, that you don’t quite get to the same degree in any other part of the world.

And because it’s so close e everything’s so easy to to move around. And so being, having that ripped from us in 2016 in the UK was a significant problem for me as a European, so I was looking for a way to get I, I need, I wanted to mitigate my tax situation. I have a big crypto portfolio, so I wanted to mitigate that and protect that, but so I started looking at where I could do that.

But I wanted to do that within, within a territory or a region that made sense to me and spoke to my heart as much as anything else. And that gave me options of predominantly Dubai, Malta, Cyprus, and Portugal. They were the kind of front runners. And as much as I love, I got many friends in Dubai, and as much as I love visiting Dubai, you couldn’t pay me to live there because it feels to my European heart, it feels very manufactured.

Now I, for anybody who loves Dubai, great. It just isn’t me. So I couldn’t see myself living there and spending, the rest of my days there. Malta and Cyprus. I wanted to be something, more mainland and more connected. So great countries. Malta in particular I really like. But Portugal was just an obvious choice.

The Portuguese are so open, so friendly they tend not to make assumptions about people, so you can go into a conversation in a pretty open way. They don’t judge the same way as other, a lot of other nationalities do. I find the only downside really with Portugal was is that the language is incredibly difficult, at least for me.

Portuguese sorry, Portugal. Portuguese is not easy. But other than that great country easy to get around Europe, easy to get back home, cheap to live in good weather, it ticked all the boxes. The move was because I’d lived in so many countries and because I’m, at the time, was a single man, I.

I’m not now, but I was it just made sense for me to go and try and, because I have a and I’ve built over the last 10, 15 years I’ve built a remote business. I can, as long as I’ve got a lap, the laptop with me and I’ve got a 4G or a wifi connection and a phone I can work from anywhere.

I point of fact, I did that last year. I did a three month interrail trip around Europe. Visiting 16 countries, which I hadn’t done since I was a boy, a young man, and I loved it. And of course, work got done on the train and it was great. I thought, okay, let’s do it. Let’s go find a place.

Let’s rent a place for a short period of time and give it a go. So I road tested couple of bits of Lisbon for example, and parts of the Al Garv and the Silver Coast. And then I ended up in Porto and something honestly, Emily, something just flicked a switch in me and captured my heart.

I love the city. It’s one of my, it’s now one of my favorite cities. Of all the cities I’ve stayed in, there’s an intimacy to it. It’s not sprawling in the way that Lisbon is, but it’s got it’s got a lot of character and it’s got all of the major facilities you would want. So I decided to commit to spending a year there.

Go for my residency, which I got so I got Portuguese residency some time ago. And that, that was the other thing that made the decision. The D seven, which is the visa that I went for, was very straightforward, very quick, very cheap. Pretty much guaranteed to get from day one. I got it nine months and I was there, so I spent a year.

And then I’ve just literally in, in December last year, taken out a long-term lease on a three bed apartment in a nice area of forte. And I’m putting some roots down there now. I’m putting, I’m making it my base. I. But yeah it was the fact that it was a logical choice initially, and then the heart got captured, if you will, when I went to Porto.

And that was, it. It, it made the decision for me. And now a year and a half, maybe a little bit longer since I started the journey there’s nothing telling me that I’ve made a poor decision. I feel very good about it.

Emily: Why not Italy? Which kind of sounds for me Good for you.

Dino: I’m speaking to you from Austria.

I’m, yeah, right now I’m speaking to you from Austria, the beach of Rome because my girlfriend, ’cause now I have somebody else in my life, is an international artist who lives in Austria, who used to live in Rome. And I’d recently got Italian citizenship. I applied five years ago. I started the application process five years ago for that.

That is a long, it is a long process. I finally got citizenship in January. Yeah, I was, yeah you really need to be patient with the Italians and bureaucracy. But I got it. So I’m going back for my passport in Mar at the end of March, back to the uk and then I’ll formally be an Italian citizen dual citizenship with a, with the UK and two passports, which then opens up my options in Europe because the re the other reason for going to Portugal that I didn’t mention was because it’s in sheen.

It’s possible ’cause there’s the no, no border checks to slide into Portugal because I have residency, I can stay there as long as I want, so there’s no 90 day restriction. But then I can slip out and go to Italy or go to Croatia where my brother lives or go see friends in Germany and nobody really knows or go to my, I have a place still in Warsaw, in Poland and go there.

And I don’t really, unless I get caught. Truthfully there’s not really a major risk. And the 90 days really isn’t a drama. So Portugal, that was another reason for picking Portugal and being inside Sheen. But now that I’ve got my Italian citizenship, of course I’m an EU citizen again, and I don’t need Portuguese residency anymore because as an EU citizen, I’m entitled to it to stay there.

And that opens up a lot of possibilities. So what I suspect that I’m gonna do, Emily, is keep the place in Porto and eventually buy in Porto, because I’m a really, the two of us, Barbara and I, my, my girlfriend and I love the place. Come back across the Rome, maybe end up in somewhere like Sicily, which I love, and spend five or six months getting my Italian sharpened up and experiencing Italy again, because I love the country.

But I have to say that the balance on balance in terms of quality of life Portugal, Porto, for me is a tremendous place to stay. I’m likely to put my, keep my base in Porto, come and stay in Italy. But I’m gonna, I’m gonna spend maybe six months in Italy in a single hit for a while and sublet my place in Porto, then move back to Porto and Con, continue traveling.

That’s the plan.

Emily: That’s genius. No. I know that it’s a good strategy and you navigated all what you could based on your roots. And you still have uk European Union and Italy in all options open after making this double citizenship. Actually, I’m working on the same, but my application to Romanian embassy, like only four years, I didn’t get yet resolved.

But going back to you. What keeps you motivated to learn and grow at this stage in your career in life?

Dino: Great question. I think first of all, and it’s something I’d share with everybody, is people talk about finding your passion and following your passion and all of that. And I, Simon and I both have an issue with that.

I think passion isn’t something you find. Passion is something that appears, it emerges and it comes from your deep sense of curiosity about something where you go down a rabbit hole, you go down a time sink, you just lose time because you’re so engrossed. And travel is one of those things for me, but also helping helping people solve challenges and meet challenges and solve problems is a deep, I’m passionate about that.

So my passion, if you like, is aligned with a big, valuable problem that I solve. And I happen to do that against a backdrop on an environment of travel and working internationally. I don’t think there’s a time when you ever switch that off. So there is no retirement age on, for somebody who’s deeply curious.

Yeah. So for me that, that’s the an, the answer is I keep working. I keep doing what I do because it energizes me. And I get a big kick out of seeing somebody move forwards in their life and knowing that I’ve had some I’ve made some contribution to their story, if you like, into their journey in a positive way.

And for me, that will never change. Now the balance and the dynamic in terms of the amount of work that I do and the amount of time that I take to just smell the roses and spend time with Barbara and travel and visit. Places that may change in time. I’m 60, I just turned 64 the other day, so maybe by the time I get to 67, 68, that will change.

And yeah, life and health and whatever will do what it does. But for now and for the immediate future I work pretty, I put some hours in because I just love it and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Emily: Thank you. What advice would you give someone just starting the business in midlife or trying to change their life in a new way?

Especially if they have brilliant idea, but struggling with the business side of things?

Dino: Great question. Okay. There’s and there’s a fair, there’s a few moving parts to that. I think first of all I’d clarify what I said earlier on about being useful to the person in front of you. I think, first of all, and also what I said about aligning your passion understand what you’re deeply curious about.

Understand where your expertise and your skills are, but don’t think about monetizing your skill necessarily that can work. But really, if you get passionate about solving a big, valuable problem out in the world, so this is a problem that many people have, and you align your skills with that, and you align your curiosity, your passion with that, then you become deeply invested in solving that problem.

Then that gets you through the difficult times and the difficulties of setting up a business and making a business work. So that’s key. Understand also that our job is not to bring value necessarily. This is my view. We, it, value is in the mind of the beholder. So it’s not for us to say that something that we are, we’re offering is valuable.

What we’re trying to do is prove useful or offer something useful to the person in front of us and understand that they have the capacity to extract the value.

So for us I start with and I would say to, to your listeners, understand the problem that you’re trying to solve. Get passionate about solving it. And get good at that. Care deeply about solving it, care deeply about the person in front of you but not more than they do about them solving, solving their problem.

If you will understand that they have the capacity to extract the value from the thing that you offer. And then you can do business, you can build a relationship and you can transact. So that’s a key cornerstone of building a successful business and also doing it in a sustainable way. For me the second thing to, to think about on that basis is being attentive to your business mind and your business model.

I see more businesses fail than I could throw a stick at because the business model is not working. And the business model, very simply, all the business model is in simple terms, is that it’s a way of you ensuring that you get paid for the work that you do. In its simplest form. That’s it. I see people operating.

We can talk about being strategic and about about developing your critical thinking skills and a whole raft and getting your mindset right. All these things matter, but un understanding how to put all of this into a business model and your business mind and develop both of those things and bringing your character to bear on the business.

So this is the level of courage that you develop, the amount of integrity that you have, the level of honesty you bring, except the amount of resilience that you have. How anti-fragile you can become. These things all matter. Stepping into business and understanding that these things are in play these are characteristics that need to be grown and that you need to develop your business mind and your business model that gives you a place to go and something to get.

Most people start businesses looking to monetize their skills with no idea about how they’re gonna do that. And for me, that’s the way of paying. So knowing what you’re stepping into and knowing the things that you need to focus on are really helpful. And all of it, of course, starts with clarity.

Before you do anything, get clear on what it is that you’re trying to do. And again, I go back to what’s the problem that you are trying to solve, that you are passionate about solving? And where is the market for that? Where people want that solution, they want they want that problem solved.

If you try and the old adage is don’t sell what you make what sells. So make sure that what you are offering to the world has that value. They can see that otherwise you’re trying to force an outcome. And that’s, as we said earlier on, that’s never a good thing.

Emily: You mentioned helping businesses get closer to what matters most. You probably already touched it, but can you elaborate more on what this means and how it shapes your coaching strategy?

Dino: Yeah. That was a revelation that both Simon and I about five, six years ago, we started talking. ’cause we’re called Success Engineers and he’s the success guy and I’m the engineer.

That’s where that came from. So we talked about engineering success. So instead of flapping around and flailing around and trying to figure, trying to, figure out and just do stuff and throw stuff at a wall and see if you can make progress, actually engineer the process so that if you do something, it tends to work.

That’s where that came from. Yeah it’s it’s a it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting kind of conundrum ’cause we talk about success, but of course my definition of success is not your definition of success. So we came up with the idea of what matters most because ultimately, and that came from the title of the book, which was actually bizarrely about time management.

And the book was literally called What Matters Most. I hijacked it from there because I thought, God, actually there’s a thing. What somebody’s definition of success is ultimately what matters most to them. Because what matters most tends to be what we focus on and what we do quite often.

Sometimes it we ignore it, but it, so how would it be if we could talk about the process instead of if achieving success as a, almost like it was a solitary act. Something just happens in the moment. Why don’t we talk about the progress that people make towards the things that matter to them?

So we now talk about getting closer to what actually matters most to you. That’s it. So our definition of success and my definition of success is the gradual steady progress in the direction of your goals, your ambitions, your dreams, what matters most. That’s, if that helps explain it, that’s what I mean by it.

And for me, that’s what success is. Success isn’t hitting a target. Success is the steady progress in the direction that you want. And where in the distance lies all of the things that, that make you happy, that make you fulfilled, that give you purpose.

Emily: Can you also explain me as the concept of elusive obvious and provide examples on how it’s worked or you worked with some businesses.

Dino: I’ll give you, I’ll give you a conceptual one if that’s okay. The elusive obvious is it’s like your nose. You don’t notice your nose until somebody points it out and you look at it, with your eyes and you go, oh. And there it is. You never notice it, but it’s in front of you.

Yeah. The elusive obvious is something that is elusive, that you’re looking, you are actively looking for. It’s not a blind spot. Blind spots. You don’t see the elusive obvious is something that you are looking for but can’t find. But once it’s pointed out, it’s obvious because it, there it is in plain sight.

You couldn’t register it, but there it was, like you nose. So an example of this that I give is a little story about a couple of young fish swimming upstream on a nice bright sunny day, having a great time chatting away.

And eventually they passed by an old wizened fish swimming downstream. And he looks at the two fish, and he says, morning boys, lovely day, isn’t it? How’s the water? After about a couple of minutes, they’re very confused, and after a couple of minutes, one of the young fish turns to the other and says, what the hell’s water? When you are in an environment that you get used to, it becomes very difficult to identify things that you normalize around you and you miss things that are obvious as a result. So in this tale, obviously the, there’s never been an a a situation where the young fish had to examine the environment they were in and realized and get a definition of what water is.

So they didn’t, they literally didn’t know. And this is very typical of us. We see things. But we don’t really see them. We look for solutions that are under our noses, but we don’t see them, and we need an outside perspective to help us see the obvious thing that has hither tube been elusive, hence elusive, obvious.

Coca-Cola have got a great expression. You can’t read the label from inside the bottle. You need the outside perspective. That’s, for me that’s, that sums up what the elusive obvious is and why coaches are so valuable and why consultants are so valuable.

Emily: So you helping people, aspiring entrepreneurs to see the obvious or to use their own talents or, knowledge to create something, like why are you using it in business terms?

Dino: He, here’s, you’re right. So here’s an example. This is from a coaching client today in Ireland as it happens. So he said to me he’s talking about acquiring another business, and I said to him, okay. Okay. W why do you wanna acquire the business? So here’s the problem he thinks he’s solving well, I need to I need to bring in additional business and, this other business I’m looking at has already got a client base.

Great. And there’s some additional resources there and some other bits and pieces. Great. So the problem that you’re trying to solve is increasing your capacity sorry, increasing your the amount of business that you’re turning over. Yeah. Okay. Alright. So have you got your own business to a level where you can run a second business?

And he looked at me and went what do you mean? And I said, okay. So one of the biggest problems and failings I see in, in, in small businesses in particular is you’ve got one arrow and you’re trying to hit two bullseye at the same time. Ain’t gonna work. Pushing two boulders uphill. Pick your analogy.

And he went, oh, okay. So what problem should I be trying to solve here? And again, this is not seeing the obvious thing. The obvious thing is that his business needs to be stable and operate with him maybe 20% of his input, not 80% of his input before he can bring a second business in to solve the or to enhance the number of clients that he’s dealing with.

So I said, okay, there’s a couple of ways we could go at this, but what is it you’re actually trying to do? And he said I’m trying to create, I need more income so that I don’t work as hard, basically. So you’re trying to claw back time. Yeah. So the problem we’re trying to solve is that you wanna be less involved in the business.

Yeah. So why buy another business and create more work for yourself? Why not bring somebody in who acts as a kind of as a lieutenant or as a, as a second string or a charge hand? This is a land, a big landscape. Gardening business turns over a couple million. And he said, God, this has come up before and I keep ignoring it.

And we got into the kind of the why he’s been avoiding this. And what he did was he blanked the possibility of this, which is an obvious solution because he doesn’t trust himself to hand control over to somebody else, which is very common with small business owners. So he blanked it and he just could like, like you nose, he no longer saw it and it was in front of him and he went, God, you know what?

You’re absolutely right. I need to do this. Okay. So now the problem we’re trying to solve is how do we find the right person that can take over some aspects of the business for this man and help him run his business such that he can then. Hand a bit more control over, learn to step back a little bit, and then if he wants to go buy another business and bring that in, because that is something he wants to do.

And there’s, there are other reasons for that. So we learn to solve the right problem by, first of all, establishing what is that, what solution he’s looking for that is, has hit two being obvi is, has been elusive, but is now obvious, elusive obvious. And that was the go, hi go find and hire somebody that can actually help you and take some of the load off.

That’s the solution. That’s what we need. There’s the obvious thing that was, that you couldn’t see.

Emily: Interesting. Your profile mentions the unique. Character led business model. Can you describe what this entails and how it differentiate your coaching from as a consultants?

Dino: Oh, great. Okay. So yes, absolutely.

So character led business is a thing that we trademarked some time ago because it seemed, again, obvious to us that this is how you run business, but not the most people. So I start with, first of all, a definition of character because we quite often, I like the idea of shared language, Emily.

So if I say a word or I say a phrase, you understand elusive, obvious. What do I mean by that? Character’s one of those ones that’s very difficult. Sorry. That’s very easy to misinterpret. So by character, we talk about the outward expression of your identity. So our identity. In very simple terms, it just, there’s more to it obviously.

But in very simple terms, our identity is how we see ourselves and how we relate to the world around us, and how we think the world relates to us. Largely, it’s that. And it’s formed from our beliefs and values and our experiences. Character is an outward expression of that. Then you get what most people call mindset, we call mental game, which is the moment to moment decision decision making and behaviors.

Character tends to express itself in characteristics or traits. Mindset is states and I talk about traits before states. So if you wanna look at somebody’s character and their, and how they are and that, that includes characteristics, like their integrity, their courage, their resilience, all of the tenacity, a lot of the big things that drive entrepreneurs to be successful.

And you wanna see those in action generally. You look for the long-term patterns of behavior, not the temporary or moment to moment decision making and patterns of behavior. That’s mindset. The so mindset drives behaviors which create temporary, if you like, or mo momentary outcomes or results, let’s call them results.

Character drives outcomes because that’s an over time thing. It’s a long term thing. So we talk about with athletes Simon does this in his professional career as a sports psych, also with business owners about situations where you have challenge. And you need to develop a characteristic to deal with that, or several characteristics.

So it might be that you need to walk away from some business where you are not a good fit. That’s integrity. And if you don’t do that, you gotta work on your integrity. It might be that there’s something that you need to do to up your game that scares you. Courage is the capacity to step towards the thing that you are afraid of.

Bravery is the absence of fear. In our definition, courage. Courage is the ability to step towards the thing you are afraid of while you’re still afraid. Yep. Courage is a big thing. So you want to develop your courage. So you do things that will help you develop that because then you become a more courageous business owner and you tend to do things that scare you more regularly because, and you embracing comfort and you discomfort and you embrace uncertainty because they’re two of the big things that are very different from.

Standard employment. In employment, you generally feel fairly certain. You generally feel very comfortable. Even if you’re not comfortable with the job. You know what’s coming next. In entrepreneurship, you’re at sea constantly. It is uncertain and it is uncomfortable most of the time. So you have to learn to embrace that.

And most people have a high intolerance of uncertainty. So how do we deal with that? We don’t really become more certain. We develop our conviction. That’s levels of courage and levels of clarity and levels of confidence. We become more consistent as another characteristic. So we in character like business, talk about building the business owner through building the character.

Therefore and as such, building the business as a consequence, not build the business, build a person. The reality is it’s a bit of both. Sometimes you need the challenge of the business to build a character. Sometimes you can get ahead of it and develop yourself before you do the thing, but ultimately you have to become the person who’s capable of doing the thing and then goes and does it.

Otherwise nothing gets done. And that’s a character thing. So that’s what we mean by character led business.

Emily: How many years the novice can spend to develop like character. And after then the business matching the character with trials and, mistakes component.

Dino: This is where the CLB, the character led business methodology and our kind of brand of coaching can help to collapse time because we can help people figure this stuff out and again, learn the problem that they’re solving understand the problem they’re solving, which is actually the problem here is I’m not consistent enough.

It isn’t that I need more sales or I need more leads, or I need to put my prices up. I’m actually not consistent enough, therefore this thing is not happening. Yeah, that might be the issue. Or I need more courage because I know that putting my prices up I’m undercharging and putting my prices up scares the hell out of me.

’cause because I think that I’m gonna lose some clients. So we figure out how to help that person take a step towards that thing and do the thing without losing their clients. Yep. So there’s a bit of business mechanics and a lot of character development in there. But you have to first of all, identify what needs to happen to provide the stepping stone towards the solution so they can do that.

And that’s what CLB is all about.

Emily: So there’s a lot of psychology and different other techniques that you are using in your approach. And I know that success engineers has this unique. Focus, maybe not so unique, but for me actually focusing on narrow linguistic programming, NLP hypnotherapy and other techniques, how can NLP help someone redefine the purpose and maybe get business idea, maybe achieve a more fulfilling life?

Is it possible?

Dino: Yeah, it is. The reality is I take concepts from NLP, pardon me, rather than NLP itself and use them. NLP is one of those amazing tools that can be used for ill, or it can be used for great things. But it’s just a tool in a tool bag. It’s not the only tool. And one of the biggest issues I see with NLP is practitioners using it like Maslow’s Hammer, the expression to, to the man with a hammer.

Ev everything is a nail. Yeah. It’s that forcing the thing in front of you to be a fit when it isn’t. So NLP is not the tool for everything but if it’s all you have, then Maslow’s Hammer. So I tend to look at more of the concepts and the ideas of using language and framing to help people.

So taking the best of it, if you like, and coaching that in. And one of the great expressions that came out of NLP that I really love that I’ve adopted into my coaching is the map is not the territory I. One of the things that we didn’t talk about for somebody relatively new in mid, but in midlife looking at, looking at a new business venture changing countries or whatever, is the map is not the territory.

What you think is gonna happen. The theory is not what’s gonna happen, it never is. And the two things that are gonna fight you are time and randomness. Things are not gonna go the way you expect from a time point of view. And there will always be something random that throws a curve ball at your expected happy path.

So you have to develop the capabilities, the capacities, if you like, to deal with that. And there are some aspects of obviously CLB, character led business and how we coach, but also NLP that can help with that. But one of the biggest one for me is understanding that what you are stepping into is probably not gonna pan out the way you expect.

The map is not the territory. The terrain is different from the two dimensional sheet that you’re looking at.

Emily: You also often spoken about the concept. Of tribe within success engineering. Could you elaborate on what this means and how creating sense of community, actually community and support benefit your clients?

Dino: Okay, so another great question. For me it’s all about community. An entrepreneur alone is an entrepreneur at risk. We, again, we can’t see, read the label from inside the bottle. The elusive obvious. There are a lot of solving the wrong problem. People go awry not on the things that they think, which is the, buying a blueprint for business.

Here are the 10 steps to successful business. If I just do the 10 steps I’ll be successful. We all know that’s not how business works. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not that, that the mechanics don’t have value, but we have to make the mechanics work. Nobody’s gonna do that for us. That would be like hiring a personal trainer and get, expecting them to do the press-ups for you and sweat for you.

It doesn’t work that way. Yep. So in, in this context, we have to understand that having, setting the environment around us so that we set it up for success to help us get closer to what matters most is critical. And in that regard, that is the amount of advice that we can get the support that we can get, the help that we can get, the ability to express ourselves and maybe share with other people our own genius and our own brilliance and get some kind of reciprocity set up, a bit of good karma, if you will.

That only happens in community for in, in my experience. So we set up Success Unlocked, which is our community, our success engineers community to help our guys. Through the difficult times and to outfox, if you like, some of the kind of curve balls that fate through at throws at them, but also to celebrate the wins.

Because the other part of entrepreneurship is most people don’t celebrate when things go well. And they also don’t celebrate when things don’t go wrong, which is another. And we could talk for an hour on that. Setting things up so that your business runs the way it should and your life runs the way it should should be celebrated even when nothing dramatic happens up or down.

You don’t have to you don’t have to, wi win a, a gold medal if you like, and you don’t have to hit the pits of hell to be really upset or to be really happy. The reality is if the business is ticking along nicely and money’s coming in and you’re enjoying what you do and you’re having impact in the world every so often, you should celebrate that.

The fact that it, that is working and working well, people tend not to do that. So we help our people celebrate the big wins, but also the normality. And again, community’s great for that.

Emily: How you create community, do you mean online or for example, you were relocated recently to Portugal.

Does it change something for you in speaking about community?

Dino: Not really. So I have two communities. I have the community I carry around with me, if you like, which is the online community. So Success Unlocked is an online community. Running on Facebook at the minute will probably be changing that soon enough.

And then the offline community, which is the people that I know, the people that I care about, the people that care about me. And a lot of, there’s a big overlap. Yeah. So I, wherever possible I like in-person meetings and I’ll do that. And and I create events along with Simon, where we can bring our people together.

For me, there is no substitute for being in the same room with somebody and feeling their energy. But we have the online community, which is the, which is my, our tribe that I carry with me, if you will. So I have both, and I think both are equally valuable.

Emily: Did you find new social circle in Portugal or you don’t need it with all your own communities already created?

Oh,

Dino: I’m a, I’m an old fashioned guy. I came, I’ve been around in the world long before the internet, so in person is my first choice always. So yeah, the answer is yes. I have friends in Portugal, I friends in Porto, I have friends everywhere. When I was on my integral tour last year, I met people in various countries that I’d only ever met online and we arranged to meet up in their city and have a coffee or have lunch, and it was glorious.

Emily: So what key strategies do you recommend for ma maintaining resilience you mentioned and motivation during personal reinvention and relocation, especially for those who navigating. Significant life changes at midlife,

Dino: right? That’s a lot. Can you just feed me that again? ’cause that’s a heck of a question.

I wanna make sure I get it right.

Emily: Okay. Yeah. Key strategies, I, I have this, it’s actually a standard question at the end of each interview. Providing advice for people who are on the brings of changes. And as you mentioned it’s very important to maintain resilience motivation for people especially who do it first time at midlife, coming to the significant changes as relocation or reinvention in professional life direction.

Dino: So how does some, essentially summarizing that, how does somebody develop a strategy that’s going to lead them to where they want to be? If they’re midlife and they are, and particularly if they’re relocating. Yeah. Okay. So again, I think we start with clarity. What do you want?

What makes you happy? What lifts you up? Where does your sense of purpose come from? What you know, do you wanna have impact in the world? What does that look like? How does that feel go to the end of that journey? Stephen Covey, God rest him a genius man said, start with the end in mind.

I tend to take it a little bit further and say, start at the end. Figure out, envision what the end looks like. What is, what matters most to you? What does success? What does that look like? What does it feel like? Go there, be there. And then come back to where you are. So that’s your point x if you like where kind of Mark X.

Marks the spot, where the treasure is. Figure out what you want. What do you want this to be like? What do you want it to feel like? What kind of experiences do you want? What kind of money do you need for that to work? So what’s your number? Yeah. Get all of that dialed in, then come back to where you are, your point a.

Now you have eight to x, A gap appears and the job then is to learn how to close the gap. And that’s where your strategy comes from. The being at the end, kind of end of the journey, which is really just a horizon. It always moves, gives you a true north. It gives you some of your aim at and gives you direction.

I. And where you are gives you a starting point. And then we build our, sorry for mixing metaphors, but we build our kind of yellow brick road brick by brick. So strategically, you know where you’re going, you know why it matters. If you are, you’re doing this as a business, you know why that matters to the, to your market because you need that as well.

And now you’ve got a place to go and something to get, and you begin the journey in the right direction instead of heading off in the wrong pla the wrong direction, which is what most people do because again, they just try and monetize their skills and try and earn money and replace the job that they’ve come from, which is the way of paying for most people.

Yeah. So you get strategic by going, okay, where do I want to go? Why does it matter? What does that look like? What does that feel like? What does that have to in terms of a number? What does that look like financially? Okay, so now I’ve got that. That’s a place to go on, something to get, I’m over here.

What’s the gap? Why does the gap exist? The gap exists because I don’t have the skills, I don’t have the mentality. I’m not that business owner who can earn that amount of money and have that kind of life. Okay, what do I need to do to become that person? To become that business owner, to create that business.

Now we start and to head in that direction. Now we begin to form a strategy, and that’s our plan, and then we execute the plan. Nothing, not easy, never easy, but very simple. Is that in any way, shape, or form helpful? By the way,

Emily: I’m listening to you and thinking about my personal experience and what you mentioned before, and I would add that you need be flexible enough.

To discover that what you envision at the beginning, it’s not how it’ll work up in real life when you relocate, it’s conundrum, and to realize that it’s not your fault or failure of method. That it’s normal. It’s very hard, by the way, because you had the vision. You put all yourself and you realize.

You relocated. It’s not what you were prepared to, it’s not your vision that you may be, held for a number of years. And now because all is changing and lately it’s changing so drastically that you lost at the moment you landed. You found yourself in a new environment and how to marry this vision with new reality.

Dino: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. But again, we go back to the map is not the territory. What you think will happen will not happen, but you still need to place a place in the distance to aim for or else you’re directionless. So again, remember my vision of point X is it’s on a horizon, which means it moves.

Yeah. So you head in that direction. One of the mistakes that I think most people make, because most people are not goal driven, they’re not target driven, they’re challenge driven. I. Is they see people who are goal driven, who smash goals and targets all the time, and they think, oh that’s the way that, that’s what you need.

The goal is a fixed place, a fixed thing to go after. But really for most of us, a goal is a goal doesn’t set a destination. It sets a direction. So all we’re after is, where am I headed? So I’m not going left, I’m not going right, I’m going straight ahead. Great. So how do I stay on the path and how do I know that I’m moving closer to the thing that I want, even if it keeps creeping away like a horizon.

And for me that’s the key. And it starts again with clarity and with understanding that what you think will happen is not what will happen. Which is exactly to your point, Emily. And of course, as soon as you move abroad, you understand that it’s never what you expect. It never quite works out the way you think.

I thought I was gonna live in Lisbon and I’ve ended up in Porto and I’ve got a very different experience from that. I I thought I was gonna probably retire in Italy. I’m probably gonna end up in port, staying in Porto and not retiring in Italy. But staying in Italy and traveling again you, as you grow your your understanding expands, your preferences change.

So it’s not just that the territory itself changes, but you change as there’s that old expression. A man visits a river and has an experience. Man comes back to the river. 30 years later, it’s not the same river. It is, but the man’s experience of the river has changed. And that’s it for me.

That, that’s the center of it all.

Emily: Thank you very much, Dino. And that brings us to the end of today’s remarkable conversation with Dino uh, Tartaglia. Dino, thank you for sharing your wisdom, experiences, and strategies. And I believe we will meet again and you will again enlighten us with new ideas or vision or how to navigate midlife with all changes we have now geopolitical, economical, social, and I wish that we all will find, we will be clear about where we are going and we will find the direction and help to navigate this journey because I know and it’s not easy.

And thank you again for being with us today.

Dino: Absolutely thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope it was useful for your people. And and they get as much from it as I did. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Emily, thank you.

Emily: Thank you very much.

Dino’s journey from an engineer to a business transformation coach is genuinely inspiring.

Insights about achieving success and building supportive community will undoubtedly resonate with our listeners. We explored the strategies and philosophies which drive success, engineers mission to empower small businesses and learned valuable lessons from Dino’s vast experience. I. His dedication to helping entrepreneurs focus on the elusive obvious provides a roadmap for real sustainable business and personal success.

For those of you already, to take that first step towards reinventing your life and finding your purpose. Remember Dino’s advice, embrace innovation, overcome your fears, and connect with your tribe. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please subscribe, share, and leave a review. Until next time, keep pushing the boundaries.

Of what your business and life can achieve and stay committed to what truly matters most. Thank you for tuning in to each of reinvention redefined Freedom, lifestyle, and Purpose at midlife. I’m your host Emily Bron, and I cannot wait to share more stories and insights to help you redefine your future.

Until next time, keep striving for success and living authentically. Goodbye.

Dino Tartaglia

Founder of Success Engineers

Dino Tartaglia is the founder of Success Engineers, helping coaches, consultants, creatives, and service professionals turn glorified jobs into real, thriving businesses. With 30+ years of experience across 1,000+ businesses in 23+ countries, Dino is passionate about helping brilliant people increase their impact by identifying and eliminating the hidden obstacles holding them back. Known for cutting through the noise with honesty, empathy, and a touch of humor, he’s on a mission to help others get their business—and life—closer to What Matters Most.

Redefining Success at Midlife: A Conversation with Dino Tartaglia

Are you navigating a new chapter in life and wondering how to balance freedom, lifestyle, and purpose? You’re not alone—midlife is often when many of us reflect, reevaluate, and reinvent ourselves. And if you’ve ever thought about starting fresh or stepping into entrepreneurship, we’ve got just the inspiration you’ll need!

In the latest episode of “Age of Reinvention: Redefine Freedom, Lifestyle, and Purpose at Midlife,” host Emily Bron sat down with Dino Tartaglia—a powerhouse business strategist with a knack for transforming businesses and helping individuals unlock their potential. Dino’s years of experience (he’s worked with over 1,000 businesses!) offer lessons that are both timeless and timely for anyone considering reinvention, especially in the world of business.

Let’s dive into the wisdom that emerged during their fascinating conversation.

From Engineer to Empowering Others: Dino’s Journey 🔧➡️💡

Dino Tartaglia didn’t start out as a business coach; in fact, he began his career as an engineer in the oil and gas industry. But over time, he realized something profound: many challenges in business and technology boil down to human factors.

This insight led Dino toward business consulting and coaching, eventually co-founding the Success Engineers Company. His story is an inspiring reminder that sometimes growth comes from listening to your gut, accepting change, and leaning into your passions. Could your personal experiences and observations also point you in a new direction?

How Travel Unlocks Perspective 🌍

Have you ever noticed how stepping outside your usual surroundings unexpectedly opens your mind? Dino has transformed his perspective on business and human psychology after working in 23 different countries and interacting with diverse cultures.

Through his travels, Dino cultivated skills like adaptability, empathy, and patience—all of which shape his approach to coaching today. His advice? Whether travelling abroad or simply stepping into new environments, embrace the opportunity to see the world through fresh eyes. These experiences could catalyze you to approach life or work challenges more holistically.

The Power of the Elusive Obvious 🤔

What if your most significant breakthrough is already hiding in plain sight? This is at the heart of Dino’s coaching philosophy. He encourages clients to uncover the “elusive obvious”—solutions to problems that are often overlooked because we’re stuck in familiar routines or assumptions.

Using tools like narrow linguistic programming (NLP), Dino helps individuals shift their perspectives and unlock moments of clarity. Imagine reframing obstacles in life or business so they start looking less like roadblocks and more like growth opportunities.

Building Communities, Not Just Businesses 🤝

Dino’s mantra is clear: “An entrepreneur alone is an entrepreneur at risk.” Success, he believes, is firmly rooted in collaboration and connection with others who share your values.

He advocates for character-led business models that place courage, resilience, and integrity at their core. By creating strong communities around shared goals, Dino argues, we build not just successful businesses but fulfilling lives.

It’s a powerful reminder that success is less about racing to the finish line and more about steady progress toward what matters most.

Reinventing Yourself at Midlife 🔄

How does this all translate to you and your journey of reinvention? Whether you’re exploring relocation, starting a business, or simply looking for a change, Dino has actionable advice:

• Start with clarity: Determine what you want and why it matters.
• Align with your passions: Find ways to solve big, valuable problems and align them with your skills and interests.
• Seek a support network: Dino’s Success Unlocked community is a prime example—where entrepreneurs can celebrate wins, navigate challenges, and grow together.

A Roadmap for Redefinition

Dino’s insights are like a compass for anyone embarking on midlife reinvention. Whether learning to see the “elusive obvious,” travelling for perspective, or building communities that amplify success, Dino shows that change doesn’t have to be overwhelming—it can be exciting, collaborative, and gratifying.

So, what’s your next step? Whether you’re ready to dive into entrepreneurship or simply explore new horizons in your personal life, take the leap with intention and courage.