Silencing your inner critic begins with understanding where it came from.
My guest today, Colin S.L. Mackie, traces the line from a small Scottish village to the view he holds today from a mountain in Northern Thailand. Along the way: how early influences become inner voices, and the moment a man who had built successful businesses stood up to speak and was terrified.
Colin faced that fear and followed it to its root: words once spoken at him, and the little voice that had been running the show ever since.
Colin shows us something most of us never say out loud: the view we carry of ourselves is handed to us long before we knew we had a choice.
This is a conversation about choosing differently. Not becoming who others tell you to be but becoming who you are to be.
Whether you’re building something, rebuilding, or quietly wondering if you’re “enough”. This conversation offers permission to question the inherited script, and a blueprint for writing your own.
Pull up a seat. This conversation is about to change your view.
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Words Shape Who You Become
Hello, Colin. I thank you so much for taking your time to have a conversation with me today on Change Your View.
I want the listeners to get to know the man you have become and are still becoming. Becoming does not end, it is a continuous evolution.
Colin, you’ve built successful franchises, lived across three continents (Scotland, Australia and now Northern Thailand. Your current chapter is writing books and speaking. During your entire journey, you talk about two uninvited guests that have been with you, Nancy and Rover.
Please introduce us to them.
Your view is about to change.
Listen to the entire podcast.
What reasonates most in my conversation with Colin is that words you speak as well as words spoken at you, greatly influence the person you will become.
Colin says that most of the beliefs we hold today were not ours to begin with. They were given to us—casually, repeatedly, and often carelessly—by people who probably never realized the impact of their words.
My conversation with Colin left me with two takeaways I keep returning to.
First — you have the power to become who you choose to be. The script you were handed is not the final word. You can author a new one.
Second — uncover your own truths so you are clear on what you actually believe. Have the courage and the autonomy to question a belief and ask: was this planted in me, or is it built on evidence? As Colin stated, some of what we carry was never ours to begin with.
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About Colin S.L. Mackie
Colin S. L. Mackie has lived more lives than most people read about. By 19 he was running his first business and out-earning nearly everyone around him; by 21 he owned two homes, two cars, and a workshop outright — practically unheard of for a young man of his time and place. Over the decades that followed, he bought, rebuilt, and sold businesses across a dizzying range of industries, rose from a first-time sales rep to State Manager in under a year, built the largest franchise consultancy of its kind in Australia, and later developed patented devices manufactured for the global market. He has spent the last 35 years helping others turn their dreams into reality — all of it, he says, powered by one quiet talent: seeing the world through the eyes of the many.
But the numbers were never the whole story. Behind the empires and the early success was a harder, more human journey — one of separation, loss, reinvention, and the long work of understanding the voices in his own head. Today, Colin writes from the mountains of Northern Thailand, where he runs an international business, studies the questions at the edge of human experience, and, in his words, smells the orchids. His memoir Little Pond traces the boy he was; his book Little Voice traces what that boy carried into every room for the rest of his life. In this episode, he opens both.
