Australia is the first country in the world to have all its Olympic Head Coaches fully qualified as Brain Coaches.
The Australian Institute of Sport AIS sought Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson of the School of Thinking to conduct two SOT Brain Coaching masterclasses at a Summit of all Australian Olympic Head Coaches, of the 20 sports. On completion of the masterclasses the elite level coaches qualified for a Diploma of Applied Brain Coaching DipABC(SOT) and received their Brain Coaches’ Handbook to assist their own Brain Coaching activities.
Australia is the first country in the world to have all its Olympic Head Coaches fully qualified as Brain Coaches.
Do a GBB! That’s the new mantra of the Sydney Roosters, Sydney’s most successful professional NRL football team.
In November, Michael ‘Hewi’ presented a Brain Coaching masterclass on Lateral Thinking and AI. On how to use AI to do x10 thinking. How to ‘Do a GBB’ with ChatGPT, Meta or Claude etc to assist. Here’s some feedback from the Roosters Coaching and Leadership Team …
The Radical Experiment That Taught the World to Think
Long before online learning and AI tutors, a Los Angeles college without classrooms quietly reinvented education. Its boldest project—run by Michael Hewitt-Gleeson and Edward de Bono—taught 40,000 hospital workers how to think better. It worked.
April 1983 Reader’s Digest cover referencing “Seven Steps to Better Thinking.”
The College With No Campus
In 1970, International College launched in Los Angeles with an idea so radical it almost sounded medieval: one student, one tutor, one mission. No departments. No lecture halls. Just pure intellectual apprenticeship.
Each scholar worked directly with a mentor to design a bespoke project—real-world, measurable, and original. It was a university without walls, long before the internet made that phrase fashionable.
Turning Creativity Into Code
Among its boldest experiments was the partnership between Dr Edward de Bono, inventor of Lateral Thinking, and Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson, an Australian systems thinker who turned creativity into data, code, and algorithms.
Together, they conducted one of the first large-scale cognitive-training experiments: 26 New York hospitals, 40,000 participants, and a single question—could thinking itself be improved through structured practice?
The answer was yes. Thinking could be taught, measured, and improved.
The project’s measurable success proved that cognition wasn’t a mystery—it was a design problem.
When Thinking Went Global
Their work culminated in the 1982 book Learn-To-Think: Coursebook and Instructor’s Manual—a step-by-step guide for teaching creativity and logic as trainable skills. A year later, the coursebook became a global sensation when Reader’s Digest featured it in a cover story—“Seven Steps to Better Thinking”—across all international editions, reaching 68 million readers worldwide.
The Legacy
Though International College closed in 1986, its DNA thrives in modern education: mentorship-based PhDs, design thinking, and cognitive coaching.
The Hewitt-Gleeson–de Bono collaboration proved that serious scholarship doesn’t need ivory towers—just imagination, autonomy, and applied rigour. In an age shaped by algorithms and artificial intelligence, their insight feels prophetic:
Human cognition isn’t fixed. It’s upgradable.
The most powerful classroom isn’t a campus. It’s the mind.
Reference: Academic Paper: A College Without Walls
Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson, Founder of the School of Thinking
Neuroscience 101 Should Be Taught in all Australian Primary Schools.
Here’s Ten Reasons Why …
1. *Improved learning outcomes*: Understanding how the brain learns can help students develop better study habits and improve academic performance.
2. *Enhanced self-awareness*: Neuroscience education can help children recognize and manage their emotions, leading to improved mental health and relationships.
3. *Informed decision-making*: By understanding the brain’s vulnerabilities, students can make informed choices about substance use, screen time, and lifestyle factors.
4. *Developing growth mindset*: Teaching neuroplasticity can encourage students to view challenges as opportunities for growth.
5. *Better emotional regulation*: Neuroscience can help children understand and manage their emotions, reducing stress and anxiety.
6. *Improved focus and concentration*: Understanding attention and focus mechanisms can help students develop strategies to stay on task.
7. *Enhanced creativity and problem-solving*: Neuroscience can inspire students to explore creative thinking and innovative problem-solving.
8. *Brain health and wellness*: Educating students about brain health can promote healthy habits and reduce risk of neurological disorders.
9. *Increased empathy and understanding*: Neuroscience can help students appreciate individual differences and promote inclusivity.
10. *Preparation for future careers*: Understanding the brain is essential for careers in fields like psychology, neuroscience, and medicine.
If you want to multiply your sales by tenyou have to multiply your WOMBATS by ten!
•
The Course
WOMBAT Theory
Lesson 01:
The future has lots to offer especially in the WOMBAT Economy. If you want to use WOMBAT Theory to help you to multiply your business by ten then a good place to start is with this new little book, called WOMBAT ECONOMY: Creating very clever ideas that people talk about!
It’s what I call a fastbook – a ten times faster read than a normal book.
Just click here anytime and you can read it in less than ten minutes on your smartphone or any other screen.
Lesson 02:
In business, there are two ways to make a profit: decrease costs and increase revenues. WOMBATs are all about increasing revenues. Times ten!
Anything can be multiplied by ten. Just add a zero. In business, to multiply your sales by ten you have to multiply your WOMBATs by ten. To multiply your WOMBATs by ten you have to not only multiply customer value by ten but also customer trust by ten.
There are three ways to multiply your sales by ten: WOMBATS,REFERRALS and REPEATS.
WOMBATS x10
WOMBATs are new clients that have been replicated by your existing clients.
Word Of Mouth Buy And Tell.
WOMBAT stands forWord Of Mouth Buy And Tell. When one of your satisfied clients replicates another satisfied client, that’s a WOMBAT. Trust is the key! WOMBATs replicate other WOMBATs. These are, of course, the most profitable and valuable clients of all. WOMBATs are least costly to acquire. They are the least price-sensitive. They buy more and buy more often. They are more interested in new products and offers. They are most likely to do repeat business. And, they are most likely to replicate themselves creating other WOMBATs for you. Not getting new WOMBATs is a business shrinking hazard.
REFERRALS x10
The second most profitable business comes from referrals. Because they are more likely to buy they are less costly for you to acquire. They are also more likely to become WOMBATs. Based on trust, client initiated referrals have a high lifetime value to your shareholders. Referrals are potential clients of superior quality yielding greater revenues. Referrals are more likely to generate other referrals. Not having a healthy stream of referrals is a business survival hazard.
REPEATS x10
Unhappy neglected customers defect and do not give repeat business. Because there is no trust they are not loyal and they bad mouth the brand to others. They have short and less profitable relationships with your company. Not getting repeats often means not servicing clients well enough. Losing a client doubles the acquisition cost and damages brand reputation.
Lesson 03:
“To multiply your business by tenyou have to multiply your WOMBATs by ten.”
In the 80s the sales culture was: close the sale. This was oldsell. Sales managers would ask their salespeople: Did you close the sale?
Customers dislike oldsell. What cost did this oldsell culture have on customer trust and the reputation of the sales profession in the 80s/90s?
Here’s a 24-second Woody Allen clip that satirises the poor reputation of the 80s American sales culture …
When acting for another, act in the best interests of that other.
Obey the law
Today, in the twenties the sales culture is: word of mouth. WOM is newsell. It is all about trust and value. Customer trust and customer value. The most important thing about newsell is that customers like newsell. They reward newsell by replicating another customer.
Consider, a simple example in your own business.
Just suppose, each year, a single client wombats a new client. That new client also wombats a new client. How would you dollarize the growing value of that original client over 3 years?
The kind of thinking you do in this example is all about the WOMBAT Economy.
Lesson 04:
WOMBATs are new customers that have been replicated by your existing customers. It’s our conviction that any business not focused on getting new WOMBATs every day is not a very wise or valuable business.
When one of your satisfied customers replicates another satisfied customer, that’s a WOMBAT. WOMBATs are people like us. Our workmates. Our playmates. Our neighbours. Our meetups. WOMBATs replicate other WOMBATs. These are the most profitable and prized customers of all!
Whenever you measure and compare existing non-wombat customers with WOMBATs, against the following ten KPIs, you find that:
• ACQUIRE • WOMBATs are much less costly for you to acquire. • PRICE • They are far less price-sensitive. • SPEND • They buy more than your existing customers. • SPEED • They also buy more often. • INTEREST • They are more interested in your new products. • NEWS • They want to hear from you and are more keen to know about your new offers. • REPEAT • WOMBATs are most likely to give you repeat business. • REPLICATE • They are the most likely to replicate themselves creating new WOMBATs. • VALUE • WOMBATs have a higher lifetime value to your business than existing customers. TRUST • Because WOMBATs trust you they are far less likely to defect to your competitors.
When salespeople do not understand the WOMBAT economy and are not servicing existing customers well enough they do not get repeat business and customers don’t replicate. They may even defect.
As we know all too well, losing a customer suddenly doubles the acquisition cost and subtracts directly from the bottom line cutting profits and draining shareholder return.
Lesson 05:
THE WOMBAT EXPERIENCE
Customers like getting unexpected value. They like thoughtful service. They like promises being kept. They like to deal in a relationship of trust.
Customers like the WOMBAT experience and they show their appreciation by telling others – their family, friends, colleagues and so on. This is how they replicate.
Because WOMBAT Selling is a newsell strategy that customers much prefer over oldsell, it produces superior sales results regardless of the product, market or industry.
For example, the following are ten of our recent clients offering a variety of products and services to their customers. They all measured an immediate and increased Return On Marketing expenditure, within one business quarter, after using the WOMBAT Selling strategy in their sales team:
protein powder, drinks and bars
membership organisation for businesses
high end aged care service
health insurance aggregator and other services
online jobs aggregator
education software and services
home loans
bus manufacturer and tenders
investment fund
union health fund
rural real estate.
THE WOMBAT QUESTION
Another example is a client who raised the WOMBAT awareness in their sales team simply by having salespeople ask their customers the WOMBAT question: Did you pass on our offer to a friend?
CASE:In May 2021, 1 in 4 customers said they did WOMBAT (promote their offer to someone else).Respondents to their question in the first quarter were 3600 per month which yielded 900 new sales per month because of asking the WOMBAT question.Customer replication has moved from 43 in May 2020 to 61 in May 2021. The industry standard is 18.
In these cases and many others, their business is going from strength to strength now that they are measuring their WOMBATS.
Lesson 06:
••• This extract is from the book WOMBAT Selling p 35:
Divide Your Sales Team and Double Your Profits
The WOMBAT Test
Because the marketplace is continually evolving, your business strategies must never stagnate. You must constantly be experimenting and testing new ways, different methods, even old ideas in new settings and watching carefully what happens.
Add your wins to your expanding repertoire and harvest valuable insights from your inevitable flops and mistakes. Mistakes, in this context, are good. The only trap is to stand still, marking time.
A business is like a science lab. Every day is a unique chance to use your sales team to experiment, to test new ideas.
You can try the WOMBAT Test anytime by using this simple four-step process:
1 Divide your sales team randomly in two equal halves (for example, by birthdays: odd days and even days will divide them randomly).
2 Leave one half of the team on their current diet of sales training as a control. Make no changes at all. Put the other half on a diet of newsell.
3 Choose the metrics, in advance, you want to test. Choose the top three key performance indicators you will use to judge.
4 Compare the results after 10 days and 100 days.
Lesson 07:
What are the WOMBAT Daily Questions that Managers ask Salespeople?
In oldsell, the focus is on closing the sale and oldsell managers inevitably ask the same oldsell questions like: Did you get the sale? Did you close the customer? Did they buy? etc. etc.
WOMBAT Selling, quite differently, focuses on growing three profit streams: WOMBATS, REFERRALS and REPEATS.
It is the WOMBAT manager’s job to raise the awarenes of these three streams on a daily basis. The way managers do this is by being sensitive to the nudge questions that they habitually ask their team about their customers every day. Instead of the oldsell questions like Did you close the sale?
WOMBAT managers ask questions like these:
WOMBATS
Did they replicate a wombat?
REFERRALS
Did they refer a friend?
REPEATS
Is this their second buy?
It is well established that the salesperson’s behaviour towards customers matches the expectations of their manager. Salespeople don’t treat their customers any better than they, themselves, are treated by their managers.
The oldsell manager expects a sale (Did you get the sale?) and the salesperson’s behaviour follows accordingly. Customers don’t like this short term grab. They don’t see the value. There is no trust. They say NO. They don’t repeat. They don’t give referrals. They don’t WOMBAT.
The WOMBAT manager expects salespeople to behave in the customer’s interests. To put the customer first. To provide thoughtful service. To create value. To build trust.
Why? Because the WOMBAT manager wants to build the three WOMBAT profit streams: WOMBATS, REFERRALS and REPEATS.
Lesson 08:
“As a rule, paid employees do what is expected of them by their employer; by the questions their employer habitually asks every day”
For the CEO who wants to multiply the business by ten, the revenues from a WOMBAT strategy are generated by the answer to these three questions. These are serious business strategy questions which are forensically asked of WOMBAT managers, by the CEO, on a quarterly basis and reflected in quarterly projections and planning:
• What is the % revenues from new WOMBATS that simply did not exist 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10 business quarters ago?
• What is the % revenues from new REFERRALS that simply did not exist 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10 business quarters ago?
• What is the % revenues from new REPEATS that simply did not exist 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10 business quarters ago?
When the CEO asks these questions the business begins its transformation from oldsell to newsell. The focus shifts from short term to long term. From sales to relationships. Revenues go up. Costs go down. Profit grows, Greater return to shareholders. Greater re-investment into the business. A more valuable business towards … valuation x10!
Lesson 09:
“A WOMBAT replicates each year”
WOMBATs 2024-2025
Your WOMBATs are your satisfied clients who replicate each year. WOMBATs are, of course, your most profitable and prized clients of all because they’re the ones most likely to replicate, creating other WOMBATs.
A focused campaign can help your WOMBATs to replicate other WOMBATs. You can use these questions to audit your growth:
How many WOMBAT clients did you have in 2023?
Who are your WOMBATs for 2024?
What are their individual names?
What was their capital value in 2023?
Can you show the real money?
Do you have a prioritized database of your WOMBATS in your CRM?
What was the EFUx10 sequence for each name?
How has your personal daily system evolved to create WOMBATs?
How did (name #1) refer you to (name #2)?
Do you know the new account names?
Are they identified in your CRM?
What will be your EFUx10 Campaign (for each name #1) to nudge them to refer their (name #2) in 2025?
What is your projection of WOMBATs for 2025?
Project your total WOMBAT capital value.
Can you show the money?
Can you map your WOMBAT genealogy?
DVR your capital growth and update quarterly.
THE WOMBAT BUSINESS AUDIT
Each year you can use these questions to do a WOMBAT AUDIT to help grow your WOMBAT revenue streams and capital. This will increase the valuation of your business and your shareholder return and your funds for reinvestment in the business.
Lesson 10:
“To multiply your business by tenyou have to multiply your WOMBATs by ten.”
WOMBATs are loyal friends of your business. They are a kind of virtual shareholder. They care about your business. They invest their own reputation and relationships to help you grow revenues x10 and create capital. This is because they are …
ACQUISITION COST ELIMINATORS WOMBATs are 45% less costly for you to acquire.
FEE SENSITIVITY REDUCERS They are 28% less fee-sensitive.
BIGGER SPENDERS They buy 47% more than your non-referring clients.
FASTER DECISION-MAKERS WOMBATs also buy 2-3 times more often.
NEW PRODUCT BUYERS They are 37% more interested in your new products.
REPETITIVE BUYERS WOMBATs are twice as likely to open more accounts.
REFERRALS TO REFERRERS They are 49% more likely to replicate new WOMBATs.
LIFETIME CAPITAL CREATORS WOMBATs have a 72% higher lifetime value to your business.
LIFETIME LOYALTY Because WOMBATs trust you they don’t get lost to competitors.
••• These estimates are on the low end. The results may be many times greater.
I trust you’ve enjoyed thinking about these lessons on WOMBAT Theory. You may request a free copy of my book WOMBAT Selling. Feel free to pass it on to your colleagues. Just click and say ‘WOMBAT Book, please‘.
SPECIAL EDITION NOTES:This smartphone edition (5.0) is designed with larger font and less words per page to make it easier for smartphone readers. So there are more pages (415) but much faster to read. This edition is free, so pass it on to others if you wish. Previous editionstitled ‘Sofware For Your Brain’ have been international best-sellers since 1989.
In this exciting book, Michael Hewitt-Gleeson introduces a new way to think about business. He describes the x10 meme – the innovative idea of multiplying your business by 10.
Currently the business growth meme in most people’s brain is 10% per annum. Here the author stresses that the market is changing rapidly and businesses cannot stay the same. The 10% per annum meme is outdated and needs to be upgraded.
X10 is the focus for future thinking and for customer-driven businesses bent on profit share. Using three easy-to-follow tutorials, Hewitt-Gleeson guides you through The x10 Memeplex. Finally, a case study plan helps people to transfer these ideas into their own business practices.
This book will change the way everyone thinks about business. Go ahead. Read the x10 gospel. Infect your mind with the x10 meme. Be like Larry Page and multiply your business by ten!
