André Alphonso

Surviving two near-fatal health episodes may have pumped new life into André Alphonso’s heart, but it’s his new approach and never-say-die attitude that have had the most powerful impact on him and the people around him.

‘André, cough! Stay with us Andre, stay with us! Cough! Cough! André, you have just descended into critical, and we’re trying to save your life.’

“I still get goosebumps when I hear that voice,” André adds.

It was a loud, almost screaming voice piercing through the organised mayhem as nurses and doctors worked to save André Alphonso’s life.

At the time, André recalls, “The doctors and nurses were scrambling around frantically and I had no idea what was going on. My bed was tilted at an angle, I was almost upside-down as they tried to get my blood pressure up again.

“People were running around everywhere, pushing stuff into me, injecting me with stuff, barking instructions, it was chaotic.”

The voices come back again – ‘Don’t go to sleep! Prepare the defibrillator, his heart’s about to stop’.

At that point, André thought, “Is this it? Was that my life? In those moments when you make eye contact with death, strange things happen, because in that moment I knew I was not dying because I hadn’t lived my truth.”

This incident occurred in 2015 when André was fifty-seven. He’d been admitted to hospital for a routine procedure to get a stent put into his artery, but it went horribly wrong when he started haemorrhaging internally. It was his second near-death experience after a major heart attack nearly claimed him when he was just forty-two. This time it had such an impact that it changed his life forever.

It was time to take a serious look at where he was and how he got there as well as where he wanted to go. The realisation for André at that time was that “this is the second half of my life and it’s going to be one of meaning. I’m going to turn up the volume and help people to be the best version of themselves they can possibly be.”

André Alphonso is the founder and Managing Director of Ariel Group Australia, a company specialising in corporate training; helping professionals improve their communication skills.

In short, “we work on their self-belief and their ability to influence and inspire others.”

André believes the biggest problem facing most people is their lack of self-belief. He maintains most of us walk around wearing masks which hide who we truly are, and that affects our ability to have an impact on others.

While recuperating from the shock of his hospital episode, André thought about the masks he had been wearing, realising he’d begun wearing them even as a child.

In truth, “I had a privileged childhood as a young boy in India; we were a middle class family living in a nice part of Calcutta. My parents wanted the best for me and that included education, so when I turned seven they marched me off to boarding school.”

That boarding school was a two day steam train ride to the Himalayas, and after the initial shock of being so far away at such a young age, André grew to enjoy it.

Happily, André notes, “as a child you adapt quickly. One of the most amazing things was the view from my classroom window, looking at Mount Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world.”

His parents delivered another surprise a few years later when they decided to emigrate to Australia and Sydney’s North Shore. André’s classroom view went from one of the highest mountains in the world to one of the finest harbours in the world.

The view wasn’t the problem. At the time, “I was the only brown kid in a totally white school, and there was a bunch of idiots who decided it would enhance their masculinity to push me around, and that really affected me.”

It was the first time André had been bullied and it was the first time he started wearing a mask.

Given the situation, “you learn the way to survive is to become invisible, and I tried that for a while when I was about twelve. When I turned fifteen, I decided it wasn’t in my DNA to be invisible. I thought, ‘I’m going to do something about it’, and I did.”

As a result, “I learnt to play the guitar and together with a few mates we formed a band, and that was cool. I started to fit in.”

Lying in his hospital bed forty years later André realised ‘fitting in’ came at a cost; the real André Alphonso was still masked.

The mask had re-appeared when he lived out his own Ferris Bueller moment. André was nineteen, and working at the Water Board. “I fell madly in love with a girl called Sandy. It took me a while to ask her out and when I did I was amazed she said yes.

“She was stunning and I was this long-haired dorky guy. A mate’s father owned a Mercedes and he said ‘why not take her out in Dad’s car?’. She lived in Bankstown and I should have known better, it was a total failure.

“I showed up trying to be this guy in a Mercedes just to cover my own vulnerabilities. That was a mask.”

During the hospital incident in 2015, as André’s heart began to beat more strongly and his recollections became clearer, one final masking moment he remembered sealed the deal. He knew the second half of his life would be dedicated to unmasking as many people as he could.

Looking back again, André recounts, “In my twenties and thirties I moved into a very successful corporate career, I rose to the dizzy heights of a senior executive position in a Fortune 500 company; I fell in love with my career.

“All those feelings of worthlessness I felt at school were now covered by my career. I put on a career mask and in doing that my marriage became an inconvenient truth. It failed because I fell in love with my job.

“In retrospect, it was a terrible price to pay; it was unforgivable. The impact it had on my thirteen year old stepson and my two daughters, who were six and eight at the time, was just not fair. It broke my heart, literally. Not long after, when I was forty-two, I had my first heart attack and it almost took me out.

“After my marriage break-up I had to reinvent my life and I was attracted to consulting, because it was another mask to put on. When I joined an international consulting company it was the most direct way of recognising self-worth. They’re paying you for you.”

Andre took to consulting like a duck to water and life became markedly better for him. “I loved consulting and was very successful at it and I rose to become the Managing Director of that consulting company, Forum Australia.”

And on the personal side “I found and then married my soul mate and had two more daughters.”

While his personal life was great, there was something still missing professionally. He was at the top of his game as MD of Forum Australia and decided to quit. His strong desire to be an entrepreneur and to be in control of his own destiny found him negotiating with his employer to set up the India operations of Forum as his own business.

“Nobody could fire me now, except me.

“It was a huge risk, but intuitively I knew it was the right thing to do. Making it even tougher; it was 2008 and the GFC had just hit.

“Fortunately, India seemed to be inoculated against the GFC and there was still a growth phase when we arrived. The plan was to open Forum India, a training and leadership business, stay for five years, put a team in place and then return to Australia and run it remotely.”

The hardest part for André was leaving his stepson and two daughters behind. As tough as it was, he knew it was the right thing to do.

André’s belief was and is “to follow your intuition, rather than just relying on the facts.” At the time, “that move [to India] was only for a relatively brief time because we wanted our daughters to finish school in Australia, and that’s just how it panned out.”

As he walked out of hospital with a new lease on life in 2015, André reflected on the masks he had worn, the damage they had caused and how he could turn that around.

“We go through life putting on these masks, living up to the expectations of others, whether it’s girlfriends, bosses or family. That’s my passion now. Because when you’re being pushed around, your self-belief goes down the toilet, and reclaiming that is important.”

André talks a lot about presence in his approach to helping people regain their self-belief. He talks about simple techniques to get under the surface and be authentic.

In André’s view, “every one of us can amplify our presence if we choose, and there are four fundamental aspects we look at.

“The first is being present in the room, not thinking about what has happened or is about to happen, but what is happening right now.

“The second is empathy and how we listen to people. The third aspect is about how you express yourself; how you use your voice and your body to get your message across.

“And finally we work on your authenticity, showing up as the real you and accepting all the screw ups and mistakes you’ve made in your life. When you talk about the adversities you’ve faced and the mistakes you’ve made and what they have taught you as a human being, you are much more inspirational.”

Removing the masks was only part of the ‘aha! moment’ André experienced in his hospital bed. The other revelation came when family and friends suggested it was probably time to slow down.

With the best intentions, “they were suggesting it was time to retire, and I thought that’s just a slippery slope to death. There was a voice inside saying ‘the first half of your life is about accumulation and the second half is about contribution’, so I took notice of that voice.”

Realisation dawned that, “in the second half of my life I could make a huge contribution. I’m probably the smartest I’ve ever been, I’ve got the most experience I’ve ever had, and the most wisdom so why turn the volume down? I decided then to turn the volume up.”

A higher volume meant the lessons he learnt as the medical staff were frantically working to save his life didn’t fall on deaf ears. It ensured the masks weren’t returning and that he would never be bullied again.

To André, “the heart attacks were like being bullied; it was like my heart was telling me what I could and couldn’t do and I wasn’t going to accept that. This was my time to show up.

“I’ve spent my life transforming myself – what I want to do, the businesses I want to run – and the message I want to take out to the world is; how do you transform you?”

The first thing André did was to make a commitment to reversing his heart disease. He undertook extensive research and decided four elements were paramount.

André immediately changed his diet. “I went on a zero-fat, plant-based diet. Then I had to deal with the stress in my life and I did that through meditation.

“The third thing I did was increase my exercise program; nothing too strenuous, just regular exercise. And the last piece of the puzzle was love, I surrounded myself with love.

That has been André’s program ever since and “the unconscious spin-off or consequence is that I have this amazing bloody energy and clarity of thinking. I’m driven to do things and there is an urgency in me which is a direct result of coming so close to death.”

Now, “there’s so much I want to achieve, not just in business, but personally with my kids and friendships. It’s been a true renaissance; I’ve been on this journey to reverse my heart disease and I think I’m pretty damn close.”

ADVICE

André Alphonso climbed to the top of the corporate ladder in his early thirties, a successful consulting career in his forties moved back to India to start is first company when he turned fifty and returned to Australia to start another business before he turned fifty-five. It’s fair to say he knows something about success.

“I’ve learnt a few things over the years and the three tips I would highlight and pass on are grit, intuition and keep moving.”

André believes grit is more important than intelligence; “like that Chumbawamba song ‘you get knocked down you get up again’. It doesn’t take intelligence to get up again, it takes grit. If you’ve got grit you’ve got resilience.

“So I think having grit is really important for business owners, especially because it takes a while to get momentum in your business.”

For André, the second tip is “follow your intuition in this digital age we live in. There’s so much information out there these days we’ve almost discounted our intuition. Start with intuition and then wash the data over the top of it. If you start with the data you’ll never get a great idea.

“Also if you rely only on data there are too many reasons you can’t do something as opposed to finding something you’re passionate about and going for it.”

Finally, André firmly believes “if you don’t move you rust and die. You’ve got to keep getting better at what you do, keep pushing yourself, keep learning. As soon as you stop, that’s it – the end – you may as well pull up your tent and go home.”