Episode 75: Abingdon Watch Co-Founder, Abingdon Mullin: Niche and Grow
I love that resilience is part of this podcast because my next tattoo that I'm getting here in a few weeks is all about resilience. It's a willow tree bending, and one of my favourite quotes about resilience is about the oak and the willow tree. And it says “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must, and it survived.” And I think resilience is about being bendy. Charles Darwin also says this when he was looking through the fossils, and just through who survived and which animals went extinct, and the ones that were not necessarily the strongest, but we're able to adapt to their environment were the ones that survived. And so I think resilience is all of that: it's about bending, it's about adapting, it's about changing course when we need to, it's about survival. And it's not so much about digging your heels in and saying this is the way it must be because this is how I think it is. It's about saying, Well, maybe that's not the way it should be, maybe this is what life has planned for me. So resilience, the next tattoo I'm getting is a willow tree, and I'm going to get it underneath where my watch band sits. And so that's how I treat resilience.
Episode 76: AI Strategist, Mikal Minors: AI Vs Human Development
One thing that is so important that I've learned is that in a world of people looking for the easiest way, in a world where how to get rich overnight is one of the most trending things all the time, doing it the hard way makes you stand out by default. You don't have to be amazing, you don't have to be gifted. You do things the hard way, and that's what makes you exceptional. And that takes you so much further than skill.
And clarify for us what would ‘the hard way’ mean to you?
Meaning if I can go and spend $30 to get somebody to do a thing for me and give me a microwavable solution, or I can learn how to do it myself so that I can give more in-depth solutions to my clients, go spend the time to learn to do it yourself. Don't white label everything. Same way, if a client is looking for me to give strategy and I can do it through ChatGPT, I can probably make the money, but I wouldn't benefit as much as going the hard way, really thinking about their company's issues and producing a quality strategy to the best of my ability. That's the hard way.
Episode 77: CEO Coach Patrick Thean & Author Colin C. Campbell: Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat.
One thing about us entrepreneurs, we're really good, we can get it going to a certain point on our own, but the vast majority of companies globally fail to scale, and they fail to scale because they don't put in the right systems and operations and the owner does not step out of the way. We are our own worst enemies when it comes to scaling and by understanding that, by hiring other leaders to help us scale the business, by implementing systems, and by getting coaching, that's the key.
Episode 78: Private Market Labs Co-Founder Josh Levine: Buy into Entrepreneurship
We started using AI because it was the best way for us to solve our problem. When you think about big problems with multivariate data problems, right? Problems that almost have so many variables and so many pieces that it is very, very difficult for a human to do, and especially for a human to do at scale. That is one of the things that AI is very, very good at. So AI can parse a lot of data, identify patterns within that data, and generate results in a way that might take one person six months to do, and AI can do in a couple of days. And it's truly amazing the capacity, the things that modern Large Language Models can do, especially if you're building around this type of question. So we see a lot of GPT has gotten a lot of press and being able to talk to a chatbot and get it to edit your essay or ask simple search questions.
There are two categories of AI solutions. There's stuff that's kind of cute, in quotes, it's “cute” and there's stuff that is deeply meaningful, and I think that to some extent, some of the chatbot stuff is fun and cute, but doesn't do a lot, at least yet. I'm bullish on it, I think that it has the capacity to continue to get smarter and do more and more things. But for us, we felt the best application of this technology was how do we organise and analyse all this data that is currently in a very messy, very challenging-to-access format?
Episode 79: Founder & Creative Director, Stephan Johnstone: Zero to Hero Building a Creative Business
Balance is super important. I feel like everyone that's on the team is opposite of me in some way. So they bring something to the table because I know my strengths and my weaknesses. So I think that's super important to understand where you are weak and recognise that and then bring on people that complement your weaknesses. Because if everyone on the team thinks the same, has the same experiences, has the same strengths, then there's going to be areas where there's going to be blind spots. So everyone on the team has different perspectives. And I like the fact that when we leave the office or we put down SJD World for the day, everyone goes off, has different experiences, live different lives and then we come back to the table and we all see things differently and can bring different perspectives. So, that's super important to me. And also that everyone's job is flexible. I'm not super strict. Like even the designers that are on the team, I encourage them to do freelance, as long as it's not too much in the office or on my system. But I feel like that's important that as designers, we go out there and make mistakes and then you learn from your personal clients and then you bring it back to the company because that’s how I built myself. I designed a lot as an intern, I interned for a lot of agencies as well. And while I was interning, I was doing freelance work as well. So I think that was super important, because I made a lot of mistakes along the way in my freelance work. So when I came back to the agency, it was, oh, I went through this before. I think that is super important and it's weird because I know working with a lot of agencies they’re non-compete, but backsell your time. Go ahead and make all the mistakes you can and then come back here and you don't have to make those mistakes with me.
Episode 80: Advocate, Lawyer, Mom - Amanda Baron: The Bullied Kid, Turned State Prosecutor
And it was a cafeteria filled with thousands of kids, and this one particular kid would start with little cracker bits and then it ended as full apples he would throttle at me in the middle of the lunchroom, to the point where I was eating my lunch in the bathroom stall like you see in the movies. So all of these things obviously shaped who I was and now as a mom and a woman, I didn't really understand the magnitude of why I wanted to be a prosecutor, to be the voice for those who perhaps weren't confident enough to give that voice to themselves. But now obviously it's very clear, because even as a mother, I want to be able to give my kids that voice, but also be the voice for others that they see wrongdoings being done.
So I had weight loss surgery at 17, I was the 24th adolescent in the country to have the gastric lap band. I lost a lot of weight and had a very big following and at that time there was a lot of talk about bullying. If you recall, there was one high school or college student in the US who unfortunately took his own life off of a bridge. There was begging from the media for people to talk. But at that time, social media was not prevalent. Maybe MySpace was around during that time, I don't remember but it certainly was not and so I had my surgery and People Magazine followed my story. They did a very large spread on my story and then it got picked up from a few other television shows, Good morning America, Today Show, The Neil Cavuto Show.
Episode 81: Leadership/Lifestyle Coach & Corporate Trainer, Jessica Lightbourne: Thrive, Survive or Die
Imagination can be an asset or it can get in the way. So what I mean by that is, our thoughts create our reality and our thoughts create the way that we show up in the world. And so if we are thinking, I am resilient, you'll behave in that way. And if I'm thinking I'm not resilient, I'll behave in that way as well. And so the imagination can either create anxiety or it can create passion and wonder and excitement. It's probably one of the most important tools that we have as human beings. And it's probably one of the most important things that we have to become resilient. It's certainly one of them. There's such a mind-body connection and scientists are showing us daily how so. How much we are beings that create our reality in our bodies through our imagination. It affects everything. It affects whether or not we're stressed, whether or not we're thriving.
Episode 82: Psychologist & Author Dr. Marie-Hélène (MH) Pelletier: Plan for Resilience
Part of what a habit is, it is you've decided in advance of something that you would do on a regular basis, hence it becomes a habit. And so, one powerful aspect of it is you're removing the decision in the moment, because you've decided earlier. So there is an aspect of proactively deciding, planning, and all this. Part of what I'm saying is, it's almost like going a bit beyond this. It's adding the strategic aspect, meaning the choice of action that I will take is decided in advance. So in that sense, it sounds like a habit, and it is in some ways. It also has a bit more adaptability to it than sometimes what we associate with a habit. So now we're tying it to the context, it's not just, oh, it's a habit, you should do everything you can to maintain it, and again, that rigidity feels like it's heavy and not realistically sustainable in many of entrepreneurs' lives that can have so many demands in so many ways. So yes, element of habit and adaptability to it.
Episode 83: Executive Coach & Author, Fabrice Desmarescaux: It's urgent to slow down
I get this objection from everyone when I say, ‘You should think about taking a retreat. At this point where you are, given the issues that you're facing, I think it is urgent to slow down and take a step back.’ And the question I get is, ‘Well, how can I take a step back when I'm deep into the weeds and fixing problems all day long and trying to keep things together? I barely have time to do everything I need to do every day. How do you want me to take off for three weeks and go into a monastery in the mountains?’ So the first realisation is that we don't need to take three weeks to retire to a monastery. We don't need to shave our head. We don't need to wear robes to find some measure of enlightenment. The slowing down could be slowing down for a very short period of time. It could be for one hour, for two hours.
Episode 84: Fractional CFO Ben Risser on Vision, Faith & Financials
If we're talking about net profit, net profit does not equal cash flow. And that's kind of an accounting mystery that people who aren't familiar or very knowledgeable in accounting, it's kind of like a black magic. It's like ‘I had a great month of net income, but my bank account is struggling. What happened?’ And just understanding what are the activities that are happening on the balance sheet that are stealing all your cash because you can have a profitable business but be incredibly cash poor and those are decisions, those are things that you should know before you encumber yourself with debt or any kind of obligation that's going to take cash from your net income, because ultimately we want to get to the point where the owner can start paying themselves if we're talking about a startup. And so really, profit and cash balance, there's a lot that goes on between the two.
Episode 85: Author Sussi Mattsson: Extraordinarily Resilient from 8 years-old
I do believe that one thing that absolutely changed direction was when I asked myself the question, “Do I need to be happy ever after or just happy now?” And that was absolutely the turning point for me that I didn't need to see the whole staircase - what's going on with the company, I have one company in Sweden, I have another company in the US, I had my daughter, I was a single mom. The whole package. You don't need to see the whole staircase, just focus on being happy now, instead of happy ever after. And that was something that clicked for me at least, that if I can just be mindful and present in each and every day and make the most of that and be happy now, then I got a lot of happy days. So my track record was a lot of happy days. So I think that is a good question to ask yourself, that sometimes we are so focused on the future that we are forgetting to be happy now.
Episode 86: Author Nick Jonsson: Solving Executive Loneliness
Loneliness to me is when you can be around your friends or family and you still feel lonely or you still feel isolated. You just feel that you are out of place. Somehow you have lost the connection inside yourself. And if you have done that, you cannot connect with anyone on the outside either.
As they say, it's lonely at the top. And the research I did around the book confirmed basically the global numbers also. The people I interviewed, 30% said that they have feelings of isolation in the workplace. And it's natural because you might not have anyone at your same level who you can speak with and perhaps the people who report to you, you need to drive them and you need to keep some confidentiality and then you're working long hours. And so perhaps you don't have time for spending time with a coach or a mentor or having a safe space outside of your workplace. At least that was not the school I was raised with. I had bosses who were just like my dad, “work hard, achieve this”, and they were driving me. They didn't really mentor me. That is all changing in the workplace now, which is great, there's a new way of leadership out there, but that was not the school I was raised with then about 20 years ago.
Episode 87: Martial Artist, Consultant & Author, Karen Valencic: Conflict? Roll with it
I’ve answered questions in a variety of places, “What do you do to help people move along with the change?” and I think the conversation is “How do we get people involved in the change before we actually make the change?” Because I find with people, they don't always have to have it their way, but they would like to have a voice and have it considered. And I also find that sometimes people leave people out of a conversation and they have such brilliant input that's not being heard and that can be very frustrating. And I think that if leaders know how to really bring out the best in those people and really hear them, then you can bring everybody along for the ride and it's not like you're kicking and screaming. And I think the smaller the company is, the better opportunity you have with that.
Episode 88: Serial Entrepreneur Reid Tileston: All In or You’re in the way.
We can call it whatever we want to. We can call it, like Angela Duckworth and call it ‘Grit’ and have a nice academic construct to it. We can call it focus. We can call it persistence, resilience. I like resilience a lot. It is just the most critical thing because failure to me is a building block of success.
And if you have that right attitude and when those challenges come, individuals can move forward. I think to me that is the biggest differentiator from individuals that are successful as entrepreneurs, as business owners, really in any arena of life. So I appreciate that the two of you have this podcast to share that message and just to reinforce that message because I think a lot of people know in their head that it's true, but I think that your message helps remind it in the heart and just to just reiterate, reiterate, reiterate that perseverance is critical.
Episode 89: Innovator & Strategist Leigh Burgess: Does it pay to be BOLD in business?
For me the winning formula would be to not overlap things whether one feels like ‘Oh that's just our day-to-day, we're going to the next level of our website’, it's still a project. It's still a big deal and especially if you have people overlapping. I have a smaller team, a team of five, so doing those types of things can really pressurise your team, so that was a learning I had. For me, the formula is really make sure that you're thoughtful, that you're not just doing it because you think it's X, Y, or Z.
It's therapy. I just wish I would have done it sooner. I don't want to erase the past or erase my experiences or those types of things, but maybe if I could have just done it sooner with all the experience I had, I would be ahead. I think that's the other thing - I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, when I'm supposed to be there, how I'm supposed to be there, and I'm learning lots of things still. So I think that's the one thing that I just remind myself that I'm not behind, I'm exactly where I'm meant to be, and something I always say to people I coach and my clients is, “What's meant for you will not miss you”, and that's not my quote that someone else's, but it is so true. So I chase a lot less now than I did in the beginning and also when I was in the corporate world. I don't do that. I look back now and I can see where maybe I was chasing things in year one, whether it be a client or an idea or funding or something like that but I've settled into it's going to work out, it just is going to work out. And then on certain days you're like, “Ooh, I don't know if it's going to work out”, but yes, it is. And I think you get better and better at that with the experiences you have too.
Episode 90: In-house Marketing Specialist, Kasper Sierslev: 100 Bad Ideas Makes a Winner
Especially when you work with creativity it's a lot about coming up with bad ideas. I always say you need to come up with a lot of bad ideas to have a decent one. But luckily, it's really difficult to come up with 100 bad ideas in a row so if you keep trying and I keep telling you about all my bad ideas, you will eventually pick up something and say, okay that's decent, maybe I can use that. And I think that's really necessary in order to get great work out, is that you can, I don't know if you say that in English, ping pong, play ball with each other on ideas and honestly I think it works best when you're next to each other.
Episode 92: Video Production guru, Rob Glass: The formula for best business videos
The most important thing isn't the camera, isn't the mics, it's not the lights, but it's the audience because if you lose the audience, then everything you've done is immaterial, because no one's going to see it. So the most important thing is the audience, which is why shaky handheld cameras can still work if the audience is engaged with what's the story you're capturing. So that's the first part of it and the second part is, we've got to be honest, we have incredibly short attention spans these days. 10 years ago we used to say it was 12 seconds, but now we think it's gone down to two or three seconds before you, and that's perhaps being generous, before you click away from something or scroll away. So the cold hard truth is this, the audience is the most important thing and around about two or three seconds in, they're thinking about leaving your video, because there's billions of others to choose from. So that's what we're faced with. And actually that puts us in a good position, because we go, okay, right. So how do we deal with this?
Episode 93: Author, Speaker, Jean Collins: Two Feet In for Life-Work Balance
What do you think is the one thing that truly helps someone to become resilient?
Journaling about the times that things have worked out and the universe has provided. I find any time I have any doubt or I am lacking confidence in something if I just sit down and really it's a brainstorm dump and it takes a little while sometimes in the beginning when I start to do it, but really think back to all the times that it did work out okay, and that the universe did provide and then that reminds me it's okay. You're going to be okay, you will be able to bounce back, you will find a solution. And then sometimes I will go for a walk, and when I go for a walk with whatever that challenge is, if I'm outside in nature and I'm walking it is amazing how I will solve that problem while I'm walking. And I'll come home and I'll be like, Oh my goodness, I figured it out. I know what I'm going to do. And so I find for me it's journaling, meditating, going for a walk and really just reminding myself of all the times that things do work out okay, because they do.
Episode 94: Serial entrepreneur, Patrick Noel Daly: So you want to be an entrepreneur?
First and foremost, the idea stage is important, you’ve got to make sure that your idea has commercial value, that it is worth the squeeze. You write it down. What I typically do is, I write something down. This could be like at four o'clock in the morning or four o’clock in the day and I'll get some idea and I’ll just go okay, maybe I should go with that. It sounds a bit nutty but It’s not. We just get these, everybody gets random ideas and when you're walking around, you could be in your kitchen and you pick up something and go, well, if I did that to that, now that probably would be a better product. It's just this random idea that comes to everybody. But we lose so much of those potentially good ideas because life takes over. Life gets in the way of those ideas. So what I do is I write them down. I look at them a day later, I look at them a week later, I'll probably look at them a month later. I'll take the foot off the gas for a while. You've got to be realistic about it as well. And if it still makes sense, then it's worth at least, at least getting advice and putting it in front of somebody. Somebody that you trust, always have one or two trusted people that you know that are within your circle and they've got your interests at heart. And show them the idea and say, what do you think? Get a second opinion.
Episode 95: Womens’ Advocate & Attorney, Michele Locke: You Have to Be You.
One thing that I wish entrepreneurs and women that are coming up in this modern world listen to more is their gut. Your gut never steers you wrong, and it takes you until you're about, I hate to say it, late thirties, early forties to start, “Oh, wait, I should have listened to my gut. Instead of blowing through all those red flags when I was dating X, Y, and Z way back when, thinking I could change them, when your gut was like, no, stop, don't do it.” You ignore your gut. That's why you get divorced. But yeah, trusting your gut. That is one that I wish we could get some of the younger ones start listening to earlier because that's a huge advantage, trusting your gut. Your spidey senses are usually right for a reason.
Episode 96: Celliant Co-founder Seth Casden. 10 Years of Tenacious Action
You have to have that resiliency, you have to really be clear of mind of why you're doing what you're doing and I think also your attitude around failure is so important. A lot of times people are very discouraged by a setback or what they might perceive as a failure. For me, I think my failure mindset is that that's really the only way to learn. I love the Thomas Edison quote that he didn't fail at making a light bulb 10,000 times, he found 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. And I think another quote of his attributed to him is that ‘Giving up is our greatest weakness’. For me, I've never really wanted to give up or throw in the towel. I think I'm challenged or emboldened when people tell me what I'm doing doesn't work or can't be true, it just makes me dig in harder and want to prove them wrong.
Episode 97: Hypnotherapist, TEDx Speaker, Karim Boktor - What’s Blocking Your Business?
So people that are reading a lot of these personal development books want to manifest these new traits because they're wanting more, they're just doing it via the conscious brain. People that are turning up to a lot of these seminars, like a Tony Robbins seminar because they're wanting to change their life, and I love Tony because he's the person who introduced me to this, but a lot of these seminars and a lot of these books are great, but if you're still feeling stuck and you're still feeling like you're in that same pattern of behaviour, it's because you haven't really understood what's happening in the subconscious. And for me, it's an easy thing, right? Instead of reading all these books and going to all these seminars, why don't you just hypnotise it? Why don't you just go in there? Why don't you just rewire your brain quickly instead of trying to travel up this uphill mountain with this big boulder, that pretty much sums up hypnotherapy.
Episode 98: Psychologist & Author Dr. Priya Nalkar: Kind and Inclusive - A Competitive Advantage
Are we delivering our services with kindness? When we facilitate, are we kind to each other? One of our company values is spirit, which means can you bring your own spirit to the work? I do it my way, but you might have a completely different way of doing it and because we're so different, we get to learn from each other and we get to offer more to our clients, right? There's that offer, generosity and kindness again. So if it's a value of yours, some version of a value, if it's foundational to the way you design your services and products, I think it can be a really competitive, a real advantage in the competition because unfortunately, not everyone I've met is kind, or at least not at first glance. And I understand that too. It can be hard to be kind when you have been hurt. We've all been hurt, I understand that. And so what I want to do as an entrepreneur is disarm myself, because if I disarm myself, it'll invite others to be disarming too, and then we can have a real conversation.
Episode 99: Lead Every Day Co-Founder & Bestselling Author, Mark Miller: Solving the Leadership Crisis with Uncommon Greatness
There's a leadership crisis out there and we don't have to go deep into that. I think most of your listeners have experienced the leadership crisis. And I think there are two sides to that coin. One is there aren't enough leaders. We did a global survey, over 4,000 leaders while preparing this book and a third of them said they don't have enough leaders today. And that's troubling. But what's more alarming to me is that 50% of the leaders surveyed said they don't expect that they're going to be able to solve that problem, that they're preparing to live with a leadership deficit going into the future, which to me is awful. So that's part of the problem is there aren't enough. The other part is so many leaders are not meeting the demands of their role. They're not meeting the demands of the moment. People in large numbers are being very poorly led.
