Beyond Busy #36 The Happy Startup School

Graham Allcott  0:05  
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Beyond Busy. The show where we talk productivity, work life balance and defining happiness and success. My name is Graham Allcott. I'm your host for the show. And on this episode, I'm talking to Laurence and Carlos, the founders of the Happy Startup School. So welcome to 2018 - hope is treating you well. I've been back in the groove for like a week and a half. And I'm now going away. I'm going to go for a couple of weeks to get my annual kind of winter, vitamin D and sun fix and scheming and planning kind of fix and all of that. So taking about massive stack of books, massive stack of paperwork, and I'm just going to be asking the sea on a few things. It's just always what I do at this time of year is sometime in the winter, try and ask to see what I want for the year ahead. And the sea always knows the answers. So yeah, I hope that doesn't sound too hippy, but that's that's how it rolls for me. This episode is long as and Carlos really love this one, this was probably certainly one of my favourite conversations to have. And we get into so many different topics here. So we talk about their role as founders, how they work together, some of their views on stuff like networking, and building community. And a really interesting conversation about the whole notion of lifestyle businesses and whether lifestyle businesses are a good thing or a bad thing and some of the sort of negative connotations with a lot of the stuff that goes on in the kind of an entrepreneur business space. So really, really interesting two guys who I think have totally, certainly got well mapped out views on work life balance and happiness and what makes that stuff tick and just have a really good orientation around their lives of like, what they what they want to achieve and how they set about doing that. So really brilliant. conversation to guys who are very present very open and really inspiring. So I'm really hoping you're gonna get loads from this because I really love doing it and so much so that I'm actually going to be taking part in their Altitude's full week immersion thing in June of this year. So really looking forward to spending a lot more time with them as well. So let's get into it. So here's lots of cars we are in platform nine which is a new co working space in Brighton very fancy and also coincidently where think productive my business are moving to in March, April time. This year, we're actually ditching our, we have our own space at the moment in home, and we're ditching that to be in the co-working vibe and have shared office desks and all that stuff. So I say we, I'm never there like I'm at home in my shed, being a hermit but like the rest of the team will be there and that's where I'll end up going for meetings and stuff like that. So looking forward to that. So we're in platform nine, we're in the Brighton platform nine as opposed The whole one on in a nice kind of, sort of canopy read sort of meeting table kind of space. But there is a bit of background noise at times here. There's like a few people walking past and stuff like that. But hopefully that just kind of adds to the kind of CO working atmosphere that you hear in the background. So let's get into it. Here's Lawrence and Carlos from the happy startup school. Right so we're here at platform nine. I'm with Lawrence and Carlos, the founders of the Happy Start Up Schoo school, how you doing?

Laurence  3:29  
Good thank you

Graham Allcott  3:31  
could be better

Carlos  3:34  
Yeah, I had an unfortunate encounter with the car or side of a car and the wing mirror. I came a little worse off, but I had my helmet on. Number two always have a bike and other than a cut hand and sprain, maybe I came off okay. 

Graham Allcott  3:54  
So youcome up against this is always the thing about control, isn't it? You can be in control of your own actions. But then like if some idiot wants to turn left, you're going forwards and things like that.

Carlos  4:07  
I think I saw quotes yesterday. He's like life. Life is the thing that gets in the way while you're planning to do something else. Yeah. So I think that happens.

Graham Allcott  4:17  
So this nearly didn't happen. It was it will be in jeopardy of having to reschedule this.

Laurence  4:22  
I think if it was pretty serious injury might have put it in jeopardy.

Graham Allcott  4:25  
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I mean, like yesterday we you sort of

Carlos  4:29  
know yes, it is one of those things. It was actually when it was happening. I was very, very calm. Yeah, in shock, but it wasn't like panic or anything. And it was so contrast when you're like doing like, for instance, running the business loads of things in your head. You're always thinking about tomorrow yesterday. Then it was a purely I'm here now. That's what matters. Yeah, I was gonna say I was saying the middle of the road for about five minutes, just thinking it's gonna stay here.

So I just want to make sure I'm okay.

Laurence  4:59  
remindful

Carlos  5:00  
Very well just Yeah, exactly. Really just alright. Just everyone checking every point my body is okay. Yeah. And then thinking about Do I need an ambulance Tony talks on

Graham Allcott  5:09  
touching anything? Am I a ghost? Or is it still?

Carlos  5:14  
My flesh You

know, it was more okay stuff. How did I get here then?

I remember one thing and then there's about three seconds of my life that just went away now I'm here. Yeah.

Graham Allcott  5:24  
Okay, well, good to be here. It's very cold though today, isn't it?

Laurence  5:29  
Your fault when today we did allude to this earlier that maybe it's an age thing but um, yeah, getting, like cold bones. You start to say things that your parents used to say.

Don't just say that. Yeah, exactly. So we say hey, we'd love to

Graham Allcott  5:46  
hear from you.

Yeah, so amongst many things we'll probably touch on and talk about I want to talk about the whole notion of being a founder and being co founders and you guys with happy startups building maybe we'll start with Just to map what you guys do, but the interesting to also know bit more about how you found each other and how you decided to start a business together and all of that. So to start with that story, let me just start with them. What is happy startup school for people who have not come in yet?

Laurence  6:17  
When we first started, it was about 2012, almost five years 2000.

And back then we thought of ourselves as just an alternative Business School, really people who you know, for people who wanted to start businesses, but money wasn't their, their sole driver. There's something else going on. But I think more than that, since then, it's really tended to community so off the back of the setting up and that's where the ethos of what we're about. It tends to attract people who believe in doing business differently. And so now when we describe what we do, we really talk about community is the heart of it. Which you know, doesn't really sell people what you do, but I think ultimately, that's what we are doing is creating a community of people who believe in you know, ultimately creating a happier world and using business as a force for good and You know, we offer lots of different things within it, you know, programmes and experiences, but ultimately, yeah, it's an idea and ideas spread. And that's helped us to get to where we are today really. And

Graham Allcott  7:09  
Lawrence we first met because he invited me to come to your summer camp thing couple of years ago, and I couldn't come and I sent you some books. I remember that. Yeah. But so was that that was that the first main event that you were involved in summer camp, or were you doing other things before that?

Laurence  7:25  
So we used to myself in contracting business together since 2004, we used to run a digital agency design design studio. And so we kind of, I suppose, into apprenticeship running events was running that company towards the end was to run some design events in London. My backgrounds in UX design, so is to run I think, called us cafe, which got really popular every month to get 150 people together. And so yeah, we kind of learn how to put on experiences and build a community around that. And then, when we came up with the idea of a happy startup school, we kind of already had that experience under our belts, and so summer camp was our first big event. But we did lots of smaller meetups and gatherings before that just to, I guess, find out do people care. And that was, what was this kind of summer camp was the event that we'd always been looking for ourselves.

Carlos  8:16  
We had in the digital. So an agency world is very much about techniques and processes. And we go to these events and hear some amazing speakers about the next new thing and how to deal with customers and how to build websites. But actually, the interesting stuff was when you actually met people have really interesting conversations about what was going on for them. And that was usually squeezed in a coffee break 15 minutes for doing until the another. So for us the important part of any event was really connecting with people and I think relates to a lot to talk about in terms of community. What started off as a thing about startups and building businesses from scratch. Ended up about doing stuff together, supporting each other Like you're not alone on this journey. And that's another thing about when we were running the agency, it felt like it was a very much a competitive arena is about agents. All agencies are frightened competing for the same kind of business not really wanting to share much. Well, actually, we found through the happy startup school with the people we've met, the more you share, the more you actually gain as a group. Because stuff that other people found relevant, can start your experiences are relevant to other people, or vice versa. And you shortcut some of the challenges you have. And also, I think you build resilience and feeling like running a business is hard, as a co founder becomes a little bit easier, because there's two of you. But if you're on your own, it's a lonely journey. You know, there's always stuff that you think you've done wrong or other people doing better than you think if you create an environment in the space where you actually feel like saying you're screwing up isn't a bad thing. I think that helps. So,

Graham Allcott  9:54  
loneliness is one of those things that you you'll very rarely hear a CEO or a A self employed person talk about that as being part of the job description. But generally, it always is right. Especially once you have a team, there's always a certain amount that you can share with your team and certain things that you have to, you know, maybe hold back for them or certain things that you have to do that they're not going to have to do and all of that. So there's always that kind of sense of isolation, I guess. And so bringing people together, I guess is a huge Yeah, I think value created

Carlos  10:24  
that relates to hierarchy as well, I think within the traditional businesses, a real fixed hierarchy. And we also saw that with events, there's a fixed hierarchy, there's speakers and as attendees, and more we've spoken with our events and our retreats. It's like actually, if you blow that flattened out a bit and a bit like how a lot of businesses are trying to go, losing middle management and becoming more hella cratic or whatever is Yeah, you actually start to see there's leaders everywhere. And if you can have crave that transparency, of trust, bit of clarity as to where you will go in Then I think that could lead to a way of doing business away running events away of gathering more human than just this kind of, there's a lone genius telling everyone what to do. And everyone's like a machine other than the person pulling the strings.

Graham Allcott  11:14  
Yeah, especially at conferences and events where you get this sort of Guru mentality thing of this lesson. But say, you got to share the thing with me a little while ago, which was, you know, I think it's a medium post about the ethos with happy startup school and an aptitude which maybe we'll come on to as well. Yeah. And it was about the whole the whole event being the coffee break. So rather than there being you know, this very structured content, and there isn't time to get into some of that more human relationship stuff, that the whole thing is that so maybe just talk a little bit about that and, and why. Why do you think that's important for

Laurence  11:49  
you? Well, I think like you said, I guess going back to your first point about there being a lonely journey. I think one thing we found that people struggle with on that is that not lonely people, they've got friends, they've got family around them. But the loneliness being no one gets it. No, it gets what it takes to lead or to run something. And to challenge convention, particularly to do business differently to you're not following the traditional path, big thinking, now, I'm not going to take, you know, the money, I'm going to do something that's more meaningful for me. So kind of that's why these gatherings happen for us is like, it's a lonely place. So therefore, these forums are important. I think also, having been, like, pushed to the extreme of like events where every minute is programmed and everything's spoon fed to you. I think the hardest part is event organisers actually to stand back. You know, I remember seeing a great talk couple years ago, conference went to, and the guy talked about hosting and he said, you know, great hosts know where to step forward, but they also know when to step back, which I found really powerful. And for me, that was, you know, for any event we ran, we tried to like put in all that hard work beforehand, designed in a way that feels true to what the vision is, but at the same time, trying not to then You know, micromanage every situation that happens. Yeah. And putting a lot of faith in the people that come really because it really comes down to is like our jobs to get the right people there. And once the right people are there in the right setting, then we have to kind of let go a bit. And that post was really about that as a leap of faith we take every time we do these things, even though there was work, like before we went to the US for that event. And we wrote about, you know, part of me still thinking maybe this is the one where it all goes wrong, you know, because the easiest thing to do is just bring in speakers bring in worship leaders, you know, it's going to be, you know, a nine out of 10. But the real value happens in the emergent space, right? So, our leap of faith is okay, well, we trust that these people in this place will come to the right conclusions together will help facilitate it, but we can't guarantee the outcomes and that's the, that's the unknown is like we even sell it on that basis to be we say don't expect to come away with a kind of silver bullet for how to run your business or to lead a perfect life. But, you know, whatever questions you've got, you'll probably get the answer somewhere, whether it's from you No problem that space or from others just, you know, questioning your protein putting you and asking the right questions that too. So yeah, it's, it's a different way thinking about these things that we've seen is really valuable. But equally for some people, they just find it too hard to get their head around because it's too different to what they used to and what they've been brought up.

Graham Allcott  14:18  
I imagine as the person organising that event and being responsible and having your brand on the line, every time you do an event, I guess the sort of fear of that is that thing of what if this is the one where it goes wrong? What if this collapses and stuff? What do you find the attitude of the participant said, so do you get people who are kind of sold on the idea of it, and that's why they paid the money, but then there's still a little bit fearful of is this going to be? Am I joining some kind of cult here? Is this going to be really weird? So yes, yes. Yeah, just because it is so different to the idea of going to, you know, a few days or a week long event where essentially there is no content except what's created by you. Yeah, that's quite, that feels quite nervy for participants as well as for you guys as organisers. So

Laurence  15:09  
yeah, I think it's a lot of trust, right? So I think one thing we found is going was five years. Some people come in our events will have corner events over the last few months who literally been following us the whole time. And that's the first event that comes right. So there's definitely a long lead time between someone becoming aware of us and then coming home and experience that at the same time, there's a lot of people who haven't taken that long. But guess what it's about is, you know, there was a woman who came to summer camp from New York on our own. I was transferred like late and I overcome fire. And EPA hits me. Wow, she's flown on the range. Doesn't anyone here Yeah. 150 strangers in the field in the middle of nowhere, and that's the massive amount of trash she's put in us to come to the house. Yeah. So, you know, luckily, it was a really powerful experience for her but equally, you realise there's a real responsibility, right. So in answer to your question, I guess Yes, the recently event within the US Some people came who run events themselves or facilitators, you know, lead teams, lead companies leads, or may change in other people's companies. And a lot of them were saying no, we really want to know, how does it actually work? You know, because they want to do themselves too, right. And so even though they knew us and love what we did, they still at the end of the week, when we did a little sort of share, share back they were like, Yeah, wow, I just, I thought it'd be good, but it's just blowing my mind, you know? So that's nice to hear that they had high expectations, and it's still delivered.

Carlos  16:30  
So, as I say, just add on to that I overheard three of them talking about, you know, what are you thinking when you get here? They said they were. They were at the airport when they arrived, and they will just notice I have no idea why I'm just going to take it as it

Laurence  16:48  
goes. Was Tracy govern Seattle came in and she said when she just walked into the locker room we had she just got a feeling that everything's fine, you know, so she was terrified. But the first second she got notified. This is a good afternoon. Myself, which is a nice thing to hear to say.

Graham Allcott  17:02  
And is that is is that for you? The only bit that you do have to consciously design is making sure that that trust is there at the very beginning, that first impression must be a huge thing. When people arrive there in terms of putting people at ease and letting that happen organically said, Is that something that you do design a bit, that kind of opening spiel and welcoming sort of? What's yours? 

Laurence  17:26  
That's even starts before to be honest. Yeah, definitely. Like we do a few things beforehand to actually sort of onboard people, I guess, in a way that you know, given our backgrounds, my backgrounds in design, like designing experience, so putting thought into, what's it like, from their position is something we always try and do. But yeah, ultimate, it's about how we host and welcome to the space, you know, despite what we've done before, it's how some how people treat you. Yeah. So, yeah.

Carlos  17:54  
I think fundamental is the way you communicate what's going to happen.

I think The tricky thing, one of the challenges with this kind of business is you can't convince people to come. You can't, you know, if they're not in the right space, you can't say, this is, you know, you must do this, they've really got to be more or less than there. And it's much more of I need this, and this is why I'm coming. And it's that how you present that how you create an image that this is actually a safe space to where you want to be. And you're going to get the breakthroughs you need. That is partly like how communities are built. It's you can't force people to join the community. They want to be part of it, because it aligns with what they want to do anyway. Yeah, that's core, I think, to having people in that space because it's not only having people come is them behaving in the right way when they're there. And that's our job is this like, Lawrence does a lot the correct curation, making sure the right people come. So there's how we present it so that people like that's something I really need to do, who we allow in, but then when they're in making sure that the the way they interact is or we create a space that's safe. If enough of them to kind of break through, yeah,

Graham Allcott  19:04  
Only go back to the founder thing in a minute as well. But the curation thing, let's pick up on that. So I was at a mutual friend of ours birthday party weeks ago. And you walked in and you knew half the room. And now it's just now everyone in Brighton and I just knew the guy whose birthday was another friend who unfortunately for me was working behind the bar. So it just sort of struck me that a big part of that curation for you. And running a business that is about community and about people. It must be a big part of your job, that kind of networking and knowing people and maintaining a network of people. So yeah, maybe just talk a little bit about that. And how do you do that? How do you approach it? How do you navigate it? I don't call it networking.

Laurence  19:53  
That's the weird thing I think is like, feels like we've been a community of people who hate what networking huh? Or do a network For people who hate networking, so yeah, I think I've always just

liked. I've always been interested in people, I guess. But at the same time, I think when we first started out, we didn't feel at home in many business settings. Like Carlos mentioned, some of the events you go to were pretty dry or just didn't really align with our values so much. So I think for us, particularly in Brighton, you meet loads of great people doing great work. And so I've always been fascinated by people in their stories. And so, for me, it's like collecting great people bringing together for a day it's not it's not it's not nothing more difficult than that.

Unknown Speaker  20:35  
Panini stickers, yeah,

Carlos  20:37  
exactly.

Laurence  20:39  
And so, the good thing about that is like to get some a camera, it's a bigger event hundred and 50 people, you know, that even if maybe one of the talks didn't strike a chord with you, every conversation you have is gonna be great, you know, and that's why we have an application process for the events. Try not to be elitist or anything but really is just trying to make sure a people get it. You know, there's a limited amount of people, right? And that's important to us too. It's not about having 5000 people in an event because we wouldn't be the same feeling. Even if we could sell that amount of tickets. It's not important to us. And so the key thing for me is, for people to really want to be there, like Kala said, it's important for them to actually think about why they want to be there. And that's why we have an application process, but then also just to get the right mix of people because otherwise, you know, we could bring you know 25 designers to the US with us and Brighton. That's not the point. You know, we want to bring a diverse group of people together. So yeah, a mix of men and women, which again, doesn't happen that many business networking events, mix of different backgrounds and different sectors and just different life experiences really all brings to the mixer what we're trying to create.

Carlos  21:44  
So I'm going to bring it back to the founder thing. So Lawrence and I have known each other since we were primary school. So we were friends beforewe went on the lookout for each other co founders and one on one, we When the agency at one point, there was a period where thing, all right, what are we going to do next? We're gonna grow this thing. What does it mean to grow this thing? How does it evolve? And that was a soul searching exercise as to why we in business in the first place? Why are we doing this? So we had this exercise of what are our values, our blah, blah, one of the things that came out of it was like to kind of talk like friends, to be in an environment where you feel like you can trust each other. And so that was cool to business for us. And the thing I think about that when I think about networking, I think about transactions and business cards and finding the next big client, that actually is friend finding, Lawrence was saying, He's like, how do you meet a bunch of people that you actually enjoy being around? Because again, that was a criteria for people we wanted to work with. Could you spend time with them, and then through that, well, business can happen. And we found that actually, altitude was born out of making a fight and go on ashram or India. retreat is made out of making a friend altitude. And the us again, snowballed from that because we met some people from the States. So we really enjoyed being and they got what we did. So it is I think the founder, tying it back to the founder thing is we came together because we had the time we had a complimentary set of skills. But fundamentally, we wanted to work with people we trusted, and we enjoyed being around. And I think that's kind of core to the business.

I think that's that's the journey and the lens that we look at business through idea of actually merging those two sides of the friend life or work life. Yeah.

Laurence  23:39  
Even though most people say don't go into business with friends or

Graham Allcott  23:41  
family friends. They're absolutely what do you Is there a flip side to that then? So is are there parallels to that? Are there difficulties to that? You know, what, how have you guys navigated lower moments? 

Carlos  23:55  
Definitely friends. I wouldn't bother Yeah, I think the thing is, it's it's not About the friends thing, and friends is going to help because there's trust. But ultimately, it's what do you both want out of the business? If someone wants to grow rapidly, the other one doesn't? Doesn't matter what your friends are not, yeah, it's not gonna work. And then both of us, we kind of took the slow route to building businesses, we weren't interested in fast growth. Neither of us were really keen on having a massive team to manage. We both valued other aspects of our life rather than just the work. We enjoyed doing the work as well as managing a business actually enjoy doing work as much as managing business. So there's, there was lots of overlaps in what we wanted from our work. A lot of people would just describe as a lifestyle business when it was something that worked for us, and I think that's part of the happy startups was redefining what does it mean to do business, particularly now, in this day and age where these hierarchical structures are being disrupted, these big businesses actually falling because of these smaller things called startups. They're doing things differently. And we've just been doing things intuitively since then. So For me, the I don't think there's a downfall with being friends in business or positive or being friends in business. It's just here's a bonus for us. But it's fundamentally what you want to do as co founders, many, I think, yeah,

Graham Allcott  25:15  
it was interesting for me is that so I had a co founder with thing productive with my business for quite a short period of time at the beginning. And it became quite quickly evident that I wanted to grow much more quickly. I was really ambitious for it, I had a certain vision for it. And my co founder at the time, was interested in it wanted to sort of play in that space, but just didn't have that drive. And so what was very quickly evident because there wasn't really money to pay either of us. And there wasn't an easy way of differentiating the two workloads was I was putting in loads more time and feeling like I wasn't getting the support that I wanted and so on, and we ended up finding a different way of resolving that where he then still employed To the business, but not as a shareholder anymore and not as a co founder anymore. So I've experienced that, that thing of where you're in a situation with a sort of tension amongst co founders. So just wondered if you'd ever had tensions like that between It sounds like you're really aligned now, but has not always been the case was they've been?

Laurence  26:17  
And we've had, like, any relationship, you have your ups and downs, but I think, like, call us I think we've been quite lucky in that we've grown, like, as far as people together, like in terms of, you know, we've had sort of families around the same time. So that's kind of worked to is like, we haven't had that computing. You know, I'd say one of us had kids, one didn't, you know, we, when we want to speak studio, the agency we we always deliberately just stopped, you know, looking to grow. The team just kind of had a year or two, we just focused on young families and ticking along, you know, and that was fine for that time. And then, I think more recently, we've started to look much broader in television. fabbi stops was way bigger and stayed in the agency and so now As we're getting older and growing up a little bit, we can now start to think about, okay, how can we make a bigger impact? And yeah, since the the belief grows to as you as you work together as a team as a business, so not just looking as like having having the clients but like, how can we build something global and work in that way, but still, I think I'm at the point of Yeah, staying sane, like still serve us people and not just the business. So I'm necessarily mentally workshop back in. Early this year we ran was a co founder workshop. So for the last time he and his party went, you went, right. And he, we also we were actually just one of the teams as part of that. And that was a really useful exercise because it gets you to kind of connect outside of the day to day we went to the woods, in Sussex, and they just want a bunch of exercises. But I think that's really important for like co founding teams to have that time away from the day to day business, where you can just have those difficult conversations.

Graham Allcott  27:56  
And I was gonna ask if you do that on a regular basis, do you have a sort of an issue Annual appraisal where the two of you have appraised in the business together or, you know, do you have a have a sort of a rhythm of that having timeout? Or is that just something that comes up? When those opportunities come up?

Laurence  28:11  
I guess we're quite lucky in that we do these gatherings and we tend to use them as a way for us to get support to Yeah. And that's actually I think one of the things that people have told us makes it work is like we're equally as vulnerable and part of it as everyone else.

Carlos  28:25  
I think there's that whole thing about scratch your own itch. Yeah, all the stuff we do is there because we wanted it. So yeah, being away in the mountains and having returned to that, and that's our time to talk as well as everyone else's. Yeah, there's no, I think if there's one thing, one thing we've never been guilty about is formal structures. And so it's been a much more organic approach to stuff. So I think and this is the other thing that I think probably rubs up against more traditional business thinking it's been very much more instinctive, much more based on trusting what might happen based on trust or stuff, and not so much on Alright, this is this is the only plan. And this is the only strategy and this is the formula that will follow and affected us in ways and means slower pace, I think. Yeah, that's the that's the big thing. We know, there are agencies deciding but at the same time as us, we'll probably even after us have grown much faster, much bigger buildings, boy each other on stuff. But it was never the thing that we wanted. I think I said the thing we're trying to look at, although we'll try and we talked about is really being true to your own definition of success. And what is that not following necessarily a path, someone else's path ofwhat you want to do?

Graham Allcott  29:50  
Yeah, I think a lot of people and I don't think this is limited to entrepreneurs at all, but I think a lot of people in whatever career they're in, do feel this pressure to conform to the stereotypical norm and there is a stereotypical norm around startups and entrepreneurs about, you know, you need to get investment at this point, you need to grow really quickly to this point, and then you need to look for an exit. And notice when you you said, or somebody would have described this as a lifestyle, business, whatever it is that we said a minute ago, and I was thinking, yeah, I mean, what it's, it's quite amazing to me that people have the idea of a lifestyle business as being a bad thing.

Right. So that's almost quite a bad thing if you if your sole purpose is to exit and build another one. But actually, if you really love the work that you're doing, yeah,

Laurence  30:45  
Ultimately make everybody money and

Graham Allcott  30:47  
also you there are certain benefits of that of not having, you know, funders as bosses, or you know, there's a whole bunch of things that you could take off is actually being very beneficial to lifestyle businesses, but it's kind of frowned upon a little bit isn't it as being somehow not as sexy or not as important as bigger businesses,

Laurence  31:05  
one of the reasons we wanted to do an event in the US was because of the whole work culture, particularly around entrepreneurship. It's quite damaging, because it almost insinuates is only one way to do business, right, which is you kind of sacrifice. And ultimately, a lot of people think of it as a badge of honour. And so when they see an alternative, it feels challenging to them. So looking at some, you know, 14 before from Brighton building this thing as well, yeah, but you guys are off doing your thing and you're not a proper business. You're a lifestyle business.

Graham Allcott  31:34  
So I often watch there's a really interesting Twitter debate a few weeks ago between Gary Vaynerchuk and Jason Free. So Jason freed 37 signals Basecamp and filling in more for the podcast listeners. You guys think but you know, as has built by working a really balanced lifestyle. He's built a really great thing there, you know. And it's an amazing business. He's got ideas about how he wants to run his business. And Gary Vaynerchuk, pretty much the king of that hustle approach to things. I mean, he does very much put it as a badge of honour that he will outwork you. And he might not be the smartest guy in the world, but he will work harder than anyone else who's willing to work and that's what he's willing to do and sacrifice. And I've often seen him, you know, because he kind of films everything that happens in his life. I've seen a couple of things where people have sent me these clips of him doing sort of seminars to bunches of school kids, where he's basically giving young entrepreneurs this advice of, don't try and work nine to five, what five to nine, and then nine to five, and then five to nine, and then have to sleep and adult again, and you can see these kids, because he's really charismatic speaker, thinking, Oh, this is the answer to everything. Worked like 19 hours a day. Whatever. And so they had this Twitter sort of argument where you know, Gary, I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk, to give him a bit of credit, was also saying, well, Jason, that's how you've done it for you. And you're really smart. And, you know, I'm not saying this is the only way to do it. And I hope I don't come across as saying this is the only way to do it is the way that I want to do it. Yeah. But sort of, I feel like that whole hustle thing. Yes, it would be really threatening. You guys coming on long and saying, actually, we're having a really great time doing the work we're doing. And we also have lives outside of this. Now, we don't have that ambition. So I think that's like, you know, it's a really sort of powerful disruption to that hustle sort of narrative. But I do think that that that narrative can be, it can be quite dangerous, right? Like it can really mess with people's. Which one lives the hustle?

Carlos  33:47  
Yeah, I think it's a big fallacy. It's this big. I think the big fallacy is work faster, work harder, and you'll be more successful. But then there's always gonna be someone who's gonna work faster than you And there's there's gonna be a physical limit of physical breaking point everyone in the world wins. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's gonna destroy people at some point. Yeah, because there's only I think of the hundred metres sprint, there's gonna be a physical in which people can run and at some point something's going to break because yeah, stretching them to the limit.

Laurence  34:24  
Yeah, but also for me, the other damaging thing is it implies that the harder you work, the better the quality or like the the better work you'll do. Yeah. Which I just don't think it's true. So

Graham Allcott  34:34  
well, none of the science backs that up. No studies on this. It's a law of diminishing returns, and it happens much sooner than we think it does. And actually, if you do notice work, it's more than more like 3030 hours and 37 and a half.

Laurence  34:48  
I found that you know, from the work we do, it's about energy management. I think like knowing when you work best, and I found that the last. So a few months ago, I got a puppy like pretty rad The story but there's a blog posted somewhere because I was thinking about how it's actually helped me to be more in flow, right? Because I, I work in smaller time slots now because I can't leave them on the few hours. So I tend to like cram my work into the shortest time span span. And also, given the other work we do, we tend to head out to nature more and take people in teams out to the outdoors and go for walks and do things that don't look like work. But actually, you get breakthroughs that you'd never get if you were sat there trying to work to burn the midnight oil and work in the traditional sense. So for creative ideas and innovation and anything to do with running a business generally, I think those things aren't things that you can force. And so the more you try and force it, the more you probably won't get there. So yeah, I think it's damaging for lots of reasons, but particularly for those and also the mental health side, but we've, you know, we work with a lot of people who are doing purposeful work and running social businesses often so when it's something you really care about to giving them that message is is really done. Because it's almost everyone else's well being is important except your own. And so yeah, you know, the burnout thing is a real problem. And we've even seen in Vegas, they've got this whole Innovation Hub and centre, set up by Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, all geared around sort of happiness. And, well, it's a long story. But anyway, get around that. But yeah, there's been like lots of suicides of founders, they've had this pressure of building really purposeful businesses, and can't really show that it's not working. And so there's that whole Yeah, how does it look on the outside of it? How does it feel on the inside?

Carlos  36:35  
Well, I think that's links for me to if it's not working work harder, rather than it's not working to stop Hmm, see, is it the right thing to do? Isn't call it quits? Yeah, it is trying to work out different way of doing it. But there's that whole thing like, work harder, harder, harder, harder force, force the answer and I think I think that's a good message to put out there. Particularly since breakthroughs come from behind just when your mind is not so crammed. We try to do stuff and spaces, it's creating space. Whether it's the shower, the toilet or a mountain or Gary Renner, chicks altitude, I think that's that's pretty.

Laurence  37:23  
Pretty just need to pin him down on tweeting for like a day or something.

Graham Allcott  37:27  
Yeah, for sure. I mean, the question I would always want to ask him, and I'm going to turn this around and ask it to you is that I feel like what he I feel like what he's sort of continuing to push himself towards is is always a it almost feels to me like it's a he has a goal on the end of a fishing rod. It'snever quite, never quite enough. And I suppose the, you know, I suppose my concern with that is would he ever get to stay have enough before we ever get to the stage of enough before we had a heart attack, right? Because he's just like just pushing himself putting himself on my behalf. And so I wonder if that is a question that you guys have thought about is, you know, the boundary of what does success look like? And what does happiness look like? And therefore, what, what's enough to get me there and what and how do I feel fulfilled? By getting that far rather than pushing myself to go twice as far?

Laurence  38:28  
I think we always try to think of like, what cost, right? It's like, are we want to do this or grow here, you know, depend to another country or like, grow the team, whatever it might be. And then you start to think like, Okay, what what does that come at a cost? All right, so it could be less time at home or travel or, I don't know, like, you'll be managing business not working in it if that's what you want to do. So one thing we've always tried to do is one thing we do a workshop was like, how can the business serve me? And is it serving me now? And if it's not, how can it serve me better for us to be For us to have the energy for it, right? Because if the founders of any venture don't have the energy to keep going, then it will just either die or investors come in and the founders leave. And it's lost division or sole purpose of the business, which often happens. So I think it's important to have key on those check ins to say, what is it? And not even just thinking success, but like, what do I you know, what do I need from it? And why getting it? Yeah, so I'm

Carlos  39:24  
looking at a very kind of a deeper level, which is a bit more challenging for people. And it relates to I remember seeing the discussion about what we do on another discussion board, and one person put it that we don't create disruptive businesses, we just like to disrupt business people and disrupting the business people think is actually the question. So when I when we think of the picture that came to my mind when you're talking about Gary Vaynerchuk and the fishing rod, we I would interpret that is that he needs to get somewhere because where he is at the moment isn't good enough. So you can start picking into that, why is where he is not good enough. So you can either look at people who are trying to achieve as people who just are never happy in themselves. And so we're not talking about, you know, what is success? What do I really want? Maybe Ashley, if you did that, you wouldn't be on that john. Legend isn't bad as well, if Actually, I just want to do stuff. And I, and it's that I think it's a map Mahatma Gandhi quote is I think I do and I say are all in mind, all of that in tune. And that means making loads of shit all the time and being one if that's your definition of happiness. So good is when actually one of those things is and why. And Gary's doing this thing? Because if I don't do this, I'm not going to be talking Twitter, neck tomorrow, and I have to stay ahead of the pack. And also, if I'm not taught, then I'm not anything. So if that's the mentality of a business person, then I think we're in trouble with a few mentalities like I just need to express myself and this is how I express myself.

Hmm. So I think it's that questioning of how am I good? If I'm good, then what I do doesn't it doesn't matter. But if I don't feel I'm good, I don't have to do this to make me good, then I think whether that's business or work or relationships, you know, then you're in a problem. And that's the stuff. That's the icky stuff. Yeah, I think we touch on as a happy start school that people find a bit uncomfortable. And they don't understand how it relates to business. But I think, everything to do with business. 

Graham Allcott  41:33  
So the geeky stuff being how people see themselves how people see themselves and

Laurence  41:40  
like, one of the one things that comes out some account, which is a real weird, sort of, I suppose, byproduct of coming to these things is people learn about themselves, or they don't necessarily expect to they come to learn about business or they come to make connections and network and then they go like, Wow, I've actually learned something I didn't know. So there's a whole blog post about He says, Hello me was never he was like she went to Sussex and found myself Sheena, looking for another, she found myself talked about this idea of acceptance. Now, she'd gone to try and achieve stuff and actually met loads of people and through some of the workshops, people have just relayed stuff back to her observations, whatever it might be, which he found really powerful. And so she came away feeling much more empowered, because it's like, I've actually got everything I need to do my thing well for the people around me that I've met, but also, I'm equipped, you know, personally with those skills and traits to do this thing. So that's what we found doing more of these things is the geeky stuff called it where you want

Carlos  42:32  
the kind of limiting beliefs. Yeah, yeah. And it's the things that hold you back that you don't actually see. And they really kind of on the other end of the scale, a story that kind of highlighted it to me was our first trip to India and Ashram. We met a guy who are in Jain runs this design consulting he sold like the cheapest part of it for over nearly a billion dollars to a US consultancy. Very rich man, but he told us About a story about, I think, 20 years previously, where he, his business wasn't going anywhere, or he wasn't making the breakthroughs he wanted to make. And he traced it down, he went to some kind of a leadership retreat. And he traced it to actually, he had this guilt that he had about him and his parents, or not looking after his parents, and whatever that journey was, the the Emperor was, he found a way to resolve that. And he found that after resolve that things just took off and changed. And he was able to actually release or be much more powerful as a business person. And so there's these invisible barriers I think we could have. So we ignore and we work against Yeah. And we've met so many people who do that kind of level of just looking at introspection themselves. They're looking at that other side of work and business then actually will probably create much more benefit for you than learning a new process or theology

Graham Allcott  43:58  
was just Coming into my mind is just something around. How do I explain this? Well, it feels like there's there's almost like two types of people running businesses as the people who put on the costume a business person, and leave themselves at the door and go and do their work. And then there's the people that you guys are talking to working with. And I think modelling yourselves, which is bringing yourselves to work, because what happened to that guy there is that he changed as a person, and then he could change as a business person, as well. And I just, I wonder whether that's something you have experienced solving how and you know, how people get how people get away from, from acting in those particular ways, or with those particular costumes on or mindsets on. You know, because there's lots of there isn't a few people who do all kinds of jobs that are very, perhaps very competitive or aggressive and they're not necessarily competitive or aggressive people but they will

Laurence  45:01  
Do between nine and five, because that's how I make money and you have that limiting belief around it. And so just interested in your, your thoughts on that idea of being human at work, I think it's, it can be really difficult to lose that, you know, those beliefs, those those traits and behaviours that were picked up over the years, you know, to suddenly shed that and say, right, you can now be yourself at work and be authentic and not put on that. Put your guard up like you might do. But I think what we've seen is the world's changing, right, so the workplace is changing the brands who want to buy from the changing, people want to really understand the people in the stories behind the products they buy. So I think that's for me as a kind of branding design person who's selling that background. I've always been fascinated by that. It's like when people used to come to us and say, yeah, we've got this great product, and I just need to sell it and get the word to care level, how they're going to care, like how you're gonna make them care who's behind it, and what's the story in there. So that's the thing we try and do through our events, particularly talks and stories we share our people, there's not about look at me and my clever business idea. And my product is, you know, taking over the world. It's like, Who am I? And where do I come from? Oh, and by the way, I just haven't done this amazing thing. But you can see the story in the sort of trace it back to where it came from. So I think when people start to hear those stories, I see those people, they suddenly become role models for them. Ryan says, okay, you can sort of live your life in a way or build a business away or go to work every day and align that to who you are. And it's okay, because I've seen people do it, right. So the first thing for us is just surrounding people, surround yourself with people who are doing it already. Because then you can see it's possible. Yeah, otherwise, it's just theory and pie in the sky. From my experience, I've

Carlos  46:42  
kind of heard that question on two levels. I think there's a Lawrence was talking about in terms of in the modern world is so noisy, and so full of brands and ideas. How do you stand out and I think people Stand out are the people who are authentic because they make a real strong connection with people. And it's that Simon Sinek thing, start with why and why is true, then people can connect to that and create stronger relationships, whether that's customers or business relationships. But then there's the other thing is like people who just go to work. And they think they need to be a certain person at work and another person at home. And I think it's like a shackle, or it's like caching you. There's this thing that there's your work brain and there's your homebrew. There's no separation. And actually, creativity happens when you have connection of different signups in different parts of your brain. So if you start to Cypher, you know, basically cut off a part of your brain because that's your home brain. And you're not relaxed because your word brain, how'd you perform, you can perform much more better if you're relaxed, you're happy you're enjoying what you're doing. You're you're being yourself. Yeah, as long as you're not lost or psychopath.

Graham Allcott  47:54  
Yeah, I was just I was amazed how Robert quotes like that. I'm always amazed by when I go in and do productivity workshops with people. And one of the exercises is about looking at projects and lists and kind of the stuff that you have on your plate at any one time. People have this massive need to separate work and home. And when I say Oh, put it all onto one master list and have a big master list of projects where all your home projects and your work projects because at the same brain that goes home and goes to work, people are really resistant to that idea often.

Carlos  48:28  
And I wonder if that's a cultural thing of workplaces as well, because you can't bring home stuff to work. And this, or they might get a bit more complicated now in terms of but it's because I think as a boss or leader or a manager, you having to deal with someone's emotions as well as their performance isn't on their job description. Well, I think it should be Yeah, if you could do that, because if you could deal with someone's challenges and if someone's had a shit time at home, or they've got young kids coming in in the neck, to give him a heart give him a hard time because they haven't produced the report. isn't gonna help. So actually understanding people, his whole human being, and being able to deal with people socially have empathy, then that's going to be much better for business. But because that's harder to do, less measurable, not something you can scale. It's not something business manuals will have. Yeah. And I think that's what, that's why I think there's going to change needs to change and what we're about in terms of part of that change, where you can think of businesses not just as a collection of robots doing something as a collection of people trying to achieve their dreams as a part of a group of people trying to achieve something bigger.

Graham Allcott  49:36  
Yeah, and so I'm sold on the need to do that. And I guess then the paradox becomes, you guys are going to kind of want to do that loads and loads more. And then you're also going to want to stay true to to whether the business serves you. So do you find a tension between.Yes, you you have a question around does the business serve you and And are you creating the right lifestyle to be able to say, yes, this is what I want to do, and I'm happy. Versus, and it's the same. But I find this a lot when I've worked in charities before. And when I know people who've worked in charities have, it just feels like the world is burning now. And there's so much to do, why wouldn't you work super hard to change as much of that world as possible? You know, is that attention that you have? So yeah, I mean, it's

Laurence  50:24  
Yes, yes, is the answer. But at the same time, we, we have to practice what we preach at the same time. So I would say, you know, we've tried to always check in and see make sure that you know, life events and stuff that happens to you isn't something you just brush off and move aside. So I think it's, but it's same time if you need these check ins, right. I think you can't just let it run away with you. I'd say we probably my feeling is like we've reached our limit in the last year or two of like, trying to we put other people's needs first, you know, I'm not trying to be sort of holier than thou. I just mean in terms of probably saying yes, too much. Right, and you know, just simple like, Can we go for coffee? Or can just have a call or like, you know, yeah, those things, whilst we love doing them can just sort of SAP your energy in time, right? And really damage the business if you're not making money from those interactions. So it's the challenge of building. I guess a community driven business is like, how do you manage your time? Yeah, without being without seeming like you're so close shopping? You can't come and knock on the door.

Graham Allcott  51:27  
So what's your criteria for who you say yes to coffee because mine is just will I enjoy coffee? Not the actual coffee, but am I gonna enjoy the conversation?

Unknown Speaker  51:36  
Well, the trouble is, we knew we almost always would enjoy the coffee, right? Yeah, exactly. It's even harder. I think what we tried to do so we used to run out or still do but kind of getting out of it when a co working space in Brighton. It's one of the things that we've had in our plate in the last few years. And was it's been nice to have that community and that physical community around us day to day it's actually been challenging for us to get any work done because my seven car have found ourselves spending less and less time going into the space. Yeah. Because people like being around us in the team. And when I want to want to get some help, right, I want to get the help in their businesses and projects. So naturally, that was what we're trying to create. But it was almost the downside of that is within that, how many times everything else? And so that was one of the things that we've had to say, look, we tried it, it didn't work for for us, and therefore it's not gonna work. And so we've had to pull the plug on that. Yeah. But at the same time, that now means that we can focus on what we do want to be doing and really sort of be much more razor focused on that. So I guess it's just knowing your limits, right? And knowing when to like, tell us what the hell do I post about the know when to walk away? You know, it's easy to start things sometimes. Yeah, it can be really hard to know when to walk away. And so having the leap of faith to say, right, this is, this is why we're doing this, and yes, we might annoy some people. But ultimately, we can't, you know, someone said you got your own life jacket on first, and that's not so true. So I think that's one thing we always have in mind is, yeah, as long as we've got any Then it will ask otherwise, will

Unknown Speaker  53:01  
you run out of fuel? So the question I had as well was, when there's so much bad stuff happening in the world and things that need to be fixed, how could you not stop? Keep on doing trying to do that? And we weren't the meaning conference. Yeah, a few weeks ago, there's a woman there who was talking about, you know, just that. And part of it, I think, is ego. So if you think you can fix the world, you really dilute it. It's really about fix your world and the world around you collaborate with other people who can fix the world as well. And then there's a group will do. So I for me, it's like, less of, oh, there's loads of problems around the world. I need to keep working to fix it. No. So let me do my thing. And make the influence like positive as I can where I am. And hopefully that's going to inspire other people and connect with other people who do nothing. And if we're all doing our thing, well, then we'll fix everything. Doesn't take 100 Not everyone's a Mother Teresa, everyone's Nelson Mandela, but all of us less unsung, more unsung heroes who can do our own thing in a way. And I think the world would be a better place. I think there's this pressure to feel like I'm going to change the world. Yeah. stops people from changing the world. It's interesting.

Unknown Speaker  54:19  
I think it's one thing we've learned is just yeah, impacting the world around you. And that could be you know, starting with your neighbours or your family and I don't know if it's actually quite familiar to is about seeing that attributed to her which is if you want to change the world go home to you know, look after your family. Because Yeah, I can imagine a lot of these entrepreneurs are on present right? They're not they're not focused on the people around us. So they always tried to do is just be present and there was someone really listen to them right and care about what they're doing. And even they present a lot of stuff going on. So it's kind of impacting my view was like, What impact means, right? Like, yeah, there's loads of problems out there, but what what can you do because ultimately You could initial kick anybody nothing? Because they are where do I start? So I think what we found is like starting with what frustrates you, you know, and we got frustrated by the way we saw startups working in business work and so like we're trying to channel our efforts through that. But there's a million other ways you can make an impact can be smaller, big, but ultimately needs to work for you too. And

Unknown Speaker  55:22  
yeah, I think that's for me kind of cool to now what we're doing is they we're not trying to change the world, we're trying to help other people change a lot in terms of trying to collect people who inspire each other and do their thing in their own way. But feel like they're connected to other people doing good things and through that collective effort, then things will happen. But not necessarily one person saying this is how the world should be not gonna make as much as Elon Musk is doing a good job.

Laurence  55:51  
The other nice thing about that is what we've seen is it changes people's view of what's actually happening out there because the media is so powerful, right? So when you are constantly surrounded like we often are Great people doing great things I will maybe what we hear isn't all bad, you know, maybe the good stuff out there. And it's just not. It's not, it's not newsworthy because it's not interesting, really, you know that the stuff that sells papers and sells ads and TV ads and stuff that scares us. So, you know, there's it just gives it some balance, I guess, to hear these stories and meet these people to trust to see Well, there's a lot of people who are frustrated with the way things are going and they're actually doing something about it. And that's, that's, that's nice to hear and gives people confidence. Let's make happy, sexy.

Unknown Speaker  56:31  
But one thing we found it also recently is like, we've had community builders themselves coming to our events. And so I think that's maybe one of the next step for us is really to, like, share what we learn in this community over the last five years, not just to people who want to start businesses which ultimately our communities in our own right, but people who have the capability to impact a lot more people through the communities that are building so whether that's, you know, business community in town or in high schools or whatever it might be If we can empower those people what we've learned and share that, you know, connect them with the right people, then the ripple effects hopefully are a lot greater. So my colour circle comes back down to sharing knowledge and collaborating really, in trying not to hold what we have tightly, which is Yeah, what can happen so easily, right. It's just yeah, defend what you know. And

Graham Allcott  57:18  
Yeah, and it feels like there's a sort of human nature response to that is that there's a psychological bias called the IKEA effect. Yes, basically says, you value the things that you've spent an emotional labour having to build yourselves and, and whatever. And so, you know, you see that idea is better than somebody else's idea. And you see it as yours and you want to protect her and yeah, sort of thing. Whereas I think that spirit of generosity, I mean, that's going to help you achieve that purpose, right? Because then you've got all these other people who can then go and run their own communities and start to work in that same kind of way and you start to see that permeate much further. Yeah. And it's about productivity before we finish. So it feels like it's something that you know, that that discussion we were just having about the CO working space. There for Like you're thinking about productivity, and how do I say no to stuff? And how do I switch off and get my head, my head down into stuff and so on? How do you guys think about productivity? How do you approach productivity? How do you what are the things that particularly works for you around that

Carlos  58:14  
subject? For me, the killer was context switching. So if you 500 reduce the number of times I have to change what I'm doing and during the day, and I'm always more productive, so. So one thing of course, is email thing. And I've purposely try to not email less and less as the whole morning afternoon primary routine, which is a killer for the number of unread messages in my inbox. But I have found that anything that's important will end up coming to me at some point, and I don't have to answer every single email straight away.

Graham Allcott  58:48  
So let's get specific about that. Then. So what hours of day would you say right I'm going to delve in and be in my inbox versus

Carlos  58:55  
outside. I try if possible, late morning. That's when I I think I try and get about half an hour to an hour there. And then probably late afternoon, early evening, to just clear stuff out of the place. Nice possible. That's the idea, okay. And you'll see things like people will people saying what people do here. But when I do that now is in between a lot more productive, always trying to check stuff. So that's one thing. And certain levels of batching stuff, just things that seem to be similar type bits of work. So if there's lots of small bits of work, having those batch together, then it feels amazing. I've done 10 things 10 things 10 things. So you

Graham Allcott  59:42  
designate an hour for I'm going to crack through these musically most the rest of the day, you're not switching context between starting with one thing or something else. 

Carlos  59:50  
Yeah, exactly. Well, you finally fundamentally comes down to context switching. Do you see that as much as possible?

Graham Allcott  59:57  
Nice. I think you might be the first person who said context switching is the The first thing that I like, let's get,

Laurence  1:00:02  
I think, like, maybe the reasons we do so many different types of activities, you know, and that's one thing we struggle with as a team, I think in terms of productivity is, you know, one day, we could be like planning for a trip to India and like, you know, working with people out there over the phone, or Skype, whatever. Or like, serving on like community and doing online webinar and hosting space or doing a workshop. And so that's, I think, where this comes into context, which anything is so important to us in terms of how we can limit that because otherwise, you know, hang on a minute, you know, who just, I was jealous of people who just building an app, for example, not saying it's not difficult, but my point being it's, its focus, right. And so, the whole idea of doing one thing, well, it's like we never quite, that said, there's variety. So you know, we kind of I mean that we go in cycles, or most of times when we're really busy in the run up to event times when we kind of have like at the moment, which is a liminal period between a big event and we have time to work on the other stuff. We're doing. To housekeeping as well. For me, the challenge is always like how to find flow as a team, not just as an individual. That's one thing we're still working on, in terms of like when we come together, like, because now we have access to another space and it's like when when's the optimum time to work together? Some of us like being in a certain day, some of us like, you know, working at home certain days. So that's the challenge, I think is like how you can because, you know, I mean, college can say, right, this is the way I work best in flow and like a lot myself away for a week. Okay, great. That doesn't work for everyone else. So how to compromise almost to make your productivity blend with everyone else. What I found useful lately is again, having the puppy bring it back to that please, for me is having the morning to work on my own stuff without having to sort of have meetings and stuff and trying to keep the afternoons clear for calls and meetings. I just found find if I get into a meeting or call any morning and the day just runs away with me. So just Having the data clear having coffee and just kind of like ploughing my way through most of the stuff I need to do that day gives me a feeling of Yeah, of make progress even if I don't get the other stuff done. I've done the hard things.

Graham Allcott  1:02:12  
And you try and agree that within the team as well so that's sort of your, your personal policies kind of morning versus afternoon as the two boundaries there, like does everyone else have the same

Laurence  1:02:23  
I wouldn't say in that rhythm but we do have a daily sort of stand up on slack for like each day we'll post what we're working on and what that does highlights if anyone else needs input and stuff. So it might be that Yeah, then something I Sophie on the team needs my input on some things. I'm not going to hold her up to the afternoon I'll try and step in, but

Graham Allcott  1:02:40  
yeah, generally happens first thing in the day

Laurence  1:02:42  
that might do or it might be something like wait, no, the slack or the slack thing is yet Firstly, in the morning is 9am. Everyone's on there saying wherever they are, you know what they're doing, unless we're, you know, doing a big event, but generally that's that's what we try and do. And then we have sort of bi monthly retros and Now, we can look back over the last two weeks and say what's gone? Well, it's not gone well, again, looking forward to always working like two weeks sprints. But again, part of the thing is for us, when we go away to a big event, we come back, and then we have to kind of get back into that rhythm again. So that can be challenging, or, again, how the team keep busy when we're away. So trying to make sure that they keep that sort of productivity up,

Carlos  1:03:25  
which is, I think one of the biggest challenges that we live regularly, and I'm guessing a lot of startups is, it's never a static situation. Things change, things arise. And so you can get into you. You can try and pose process and read comments, you can try and set the structure. But it's also balancing that to being reactive to a situation. And when you have, I think, particularly with startups where you're not sure what the business model is actually something isn't working anymore. To keep on with that thing. Social bank has some very cool Probably the worst thing, last thing you can do following the structure. So it's really hard balancing act, I think people, particularly productivity and startups from getting into rhythm, but also being aware if something isn't working to change everything being flexible. Yeah. And that's hard. That's really hard.

Laurence  1:04:19  
And we're always trying out new ideas, right. So the online community that we have, we said, we have people paying to be members of the online community, we're still working out the value of that, what is it we're creating, because we've got members, but we've got lots of different things that come in under it. And we're trying to sort of zoom in and the really important stuff. And so we're experimenting a lot. So yeah, that can come at a cost of some time on other things, but at the same time, it's worth doing because obviously, if there's an opportunity there and it's you know, what needs to be done, then it needs to be done. Yeah. So yeah, particularly with the online stuff we do, nothing stays the same, right. So new players come in, there's new ways of doing things. We're learning stuff all the time, you know, in terms of online tools and techniques. for building businesses, both online and offline productivity tools and all these things we share, right, you know, we use Slack, we use Trello, we use a lot of these tools. So what we try to do is share what we know to the community. Yeah. Because a lot these people are starting out and have no idea how to balance all these things. They've had a boss on the job, and suddenly they're given all this freedom there. Like it's kind of overwhelming.

Graham Allcott  1:05:21  
So freedom can be terrifying as well, right? Yeah. Yeah, but it's also

Laurence  1:05:26  
like, such a criticism for forget. We talked about curation of the events before I actually think one of the things that's really helped us is to curate other stuff too, for the community's like curating the right tools correctly, the right talks, to watch other courses to do for our community who have that freedom to then go. Trust these guys. I'll let them tell tell me what I need right.

Carlos  1:05:48  
Now, so actually follows on from that. I think the biggest challenge for early stage entrepreneurs and probably entrepreneurs who are like in the thick of it is am I doing the right thing right now? Because there's 100 things I could be doing them but this is the right thing. And so for me, and this is something I really, I kind of dismissed before when I first heard of mindfulness, it's an amazing tool to actually really be present. With wondering now I'm not worrying that there's 99 other things I could be doing. Because then if you get this done, then you feel better. Yeah. So being able to be really focused on that thing, get it done, again, trying to stop the context switching in your head, while you're trying to think of that something. So yeah, there's technology tools, as a tool in your brain, you could use

Graham Allcott  1:06:31  
quite easily your brain is the tool. Exactly. Yeah.

Laurence  1:06:34  
And we always tell people that you know, to be off the events we do we go out to nature a lot. Yeah. You know, if you've got a thing you're trying to crack, probably just walk away from it. You know, just go for a walk to the dugout, whatever it is, go, you know, whatever mindfulness, mindfulness is for you. Some people I don't, I can't just sit and meditate. It just doesn't work for me. But whatever activity you can do, which will just help you to just forget about what you're trying to do.

Graham Allcott  1:06:56  
So what's your alternative to meditation

Laurence  1:06:59  
For me, I work a lot. Yeah. So I live on the downs by the sea. So there's lots of great opportunities for walks. I swim hundred kilometres. I think for me, it's an activity, which is not too difficult, but you know, it makes my brain so sharp.

But yeah, he's different people, right? It's finding that

Carlos  1:07:24  
I would say it's different for different people fundamentally. It's, it's always emotion, emotion, or worry or fear, or something happening that you should be doing what you're doing right now. So, being able to have MS is related to a lot of oblique stuff that we come across when we're doing happy startup stuff is that feelings are just things have nothing to do with you. Just they can come and go. So you're going this feeling of anxiety that you know, if you can somehow get to space, we can feel it, let it go. Then carry on. That for me is like the biggest So you're doing something you think there's something going on if you can carry on doing this now, yeah, then that, for me is mindfulness. Because you're not not thinking about a thing anymore, is when you think about a thing, and then that brings another another thing. And the next thing is spiral lost. And you know, you're not doing your work and what's your Do you have a shortcut to that or a thing? I think it's really a practice. Another thing is something that it's one of those things for me is that you do you try it, you practice it, and sometimes at some point, it will just switch and you're able to do it naturally. And it's, I think, stop and carry on. 

Laurence  1:08:37  
But I think it's just awareness, like you said, it's just awareness, that awareness that a feeling is isn't the only right, so it's like that anxiety isn't you know, all the time. It's just something that hit you and you can kind of try and let go. I think for us like it's just a being around other people offering sessions that do stuff for you kind of best practice, right?

Carlos  1:08:56  
Some meditation, I think, is that I can remember when I first learned meditation There's a whole thing clear your mind can do possible. So why then a really nice analogy I had really is your mind is a train station. And thoughts and feelings are trains that go through what you're trying to do is not get onto a train. So how can you just sit at the station and not caring get carried away with anything and being able to sit for five minutes and never have a single fault dominates that process? I think that's the first step to training want to be always context switching in your brain?

Graham Allcott  1:09:35  
For sure, I also think that whole thing of clearing your mind and not having a thought is one of the easiest ways that people fall off the waggon with meditation because it just it makes it so pressured And so yeah, difficult whereas Yeah, like you say, it's that whole thing of just noticing thoughts and then seeing them and then letting them go. I think for me, it's

Laurence  1:09:53  
just the process right? It's It feels like rain, a camera so it's quite as brain clutter or something but it's you know, clearing out the The garbage from your head was

Carlos  1:10:02  
one hack I heard someone talk about is related to the don't think of a grey elephant is like, think of lots of things. Think of as many things as you can in your head and you try that. And then suddenly it just becomes this white mess of nothing. So as I the active pursuit of trying to think of things, think of as many things was missed or something like that, it just then suddenly, that melts away that before. Okay, so you think of trying to trick your brain into

Graham Allcott  1:10:29  
Yeah, you're trying to like fill your brain with thoughts and you go grey elephant, red rhinoceros and just try and list like 100 things trying to figure out at the same time and then

Carlos  1:10:36  
you overload your brain, basically. 

Graham Allcott  1:10:38  
And then your brain just gives up and just goes, I'm letting go of all of it. Okay, that's like, it's like the opposite. It's like, the opposite of, of mindfulness technique. Yeah, the same place. That's fine.

Laurence  1:10:49  
Yeah, that's one thing I've done a few times and I never do enough but when I'm done, I always find it really powerful as a floatation tank. Okay, is actually one in Brighton.

Graham Allcott  1:11:04  
Of course there is. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:05  
The weird thing is, he's telling me in London and Brighton there wasn't any. But there is one now. But it's a really weird sensation because you're, it's pretty The only chance unless you go into space of being like completely. There's no you can't feel your body you can feel the air temperature is the same as the water temperature. So it's almost like all your senses have just been sort of withdrawn. So you're just in the moment and just your thoughts take over I and I've had the most mad, so visualisations and thoughts come into your head or memories and stories from years ago and you know, really bizarre kind of brain patterns that happen there. So, yeah, that's a bit of a left one. But yeah, maybe worth worth trying out for those. No, no, don't don't hate being in law school chambers. Yeah,

Graham Allcott  1:11:47  
I have to check that out. And the other one for me, aside from just meditation, and that kind of mindfulness is is yoga. And then particularly in yoga, which is where you get into very one very deep stretch and you hold that pose for For a long time, and in that pose so often I'll do it with my hamstrings and my hamstrings a runner but my hamstrings are really short so I'm always trying to hips and hamstrings is what my yoga teacher says. JOHN more hips and hamstrings here every week. And so we've done you know, go around stretch now in the in the facia, which is the sort of the tissue in between the muscles and the ligaments and stuff. It's where all of that all of those brain chemicals are held in the in the sort of hormones of emotions are held. So like suddenly you in the stretch and suddenly you just want to laugh really loud or you want to cry or just smile, it sort of opens up all of these you like revisit all of these different thoughts, I guess. Well, from sort of different releasing those emotions and you feel totally drained afterwards. It's really odd thing you just do that for half an hour. So it's not like it's not meant to be laughter yoga, but it ends up being there. It's definitely not supposed to be laughter yoga. And, you know, my teachers said that She's regularly happy, we'll just we'll just cry, like all the way in yoga class because it's just it's physically bringing these things to the surface and removing them. It's okay. It's a very restorative cleansing ceremony there. So we don't need any less.

And anything else you want to say before we finish I kind of I had this whole list of questions, which I always do. I feel like it's been so we've just bounced around topics. so busy, I haven't even looked down. But it's been just fascinating to connect and to grow around these different topics. Is there anything, any sort of final words of wisdom because I kind of feel like you have such an access and wealth of data back here and by the fact that you're always talking to founders, by the founder or looking for that? And yeah, what are your kind of key principles around that before we finish?

Laurence  1:13:54  
I think the first thing is don't do on your own, you notice the first thing you're not going to achieve any Change your successful business. I think if you tried on your own, we tried for a few years running our agency, doing our own locking ourselves away almost in the outside world thinking that we didn't need to go and sort of interact with others too much. So we learn the hard way that it's not the best way to do it. You can learn so much by being around other people on that journey with you. And for me, there's funny people who were where you want to be, right. So one exercise we did at the start summer camp was, you know, seeing someone like having a physical sort of setup or where people are and it was a bit odd, but it was like, if you're happy and rich down over here, if you're miserable, we just hang over here. people understand the last season and the idea was being like look at people who like to ahead of you, you know, two yards ahead of you and say, What have they done to get there? And so if you're looking to align your sort of passions or your purpose and your, what you want from life with your business, and still stay sane in the process, like find people who are doing that already, because then you can just through osmosis find out you know, how you can behave like that. So that'll be the thing for me and says that

Graham Allcott  1:15:00  
saying if you if you end up being the sum total of the five people that you interact with the most or something, exactly, you know, I think you can dilute that idea slightly and appear slightly more organic than that.

Laurence  1:15:09  
But after so all, I think based on what we've learned, I've learned things from other people who are on that journey with you. And then you kind of inspire each other and you get belief from each other and confidence. So bear with me,

Carlos  1:15:19  
pennies worth nothing that's related to that, if it's about ego, sometimes when we think we have to do things ourselves. I think one thing for me that I've just I've learned, over the past few years of doing this stuff in talking to people was kind of the secret to real productivity. And people talk about plant and structure and eating bits of the thing by mountain. And the phrase I heard was inspired action. And it comes from a place of space is so you somehow just in intuitively feel what's the thing that needs to be done. And because if it's not just a conscious, I'm going to do this thing. It's like, I really feel I need to make this happen, then it happens super quick. And I relate that my personal experiences like just writing along, I don't enjoy writing a lot. But then sometimes there's a thought and a feeling and a need to write, and it happens within half an hour. And I've got a whole thing there. And sometimes when I think I need to do something, it takes me weeks to get it done. And I think whether it's building products, designing events, writing a blog post, doing the washing up, it's like when you're inspired, yeah. It will you become super productive. And you're not, no matter how many tools you got, it just doesn't.

Graham Allcott  1:16:47  
And is that is that? I mean, that's a great philosophy. And I'm just wondering if that's something that you can proactively plan ahead for or is that something that you retrospectively diagnose? So you look back and say, Well, the reason I didn't do that is because I wasn't inspired or you know that that's the reason that has drowned. And that's the reason that that was great or quick, whatever. How do you use that as the compass as well?

Carlos  1:17:12  
I think there's our I would say, I guess this is my guess when it's both because knowing when you're not inspired, and knowing when you are inspired, will give you a way to plan ahead. But then I think it's when you are trying to make something happen. The whole idea of not forcing, yeah, creating space. So if you have an idea, and you think it's a good idea, how can you create space to know it's a good idea?

Graham Allcott  1:17:39  
Yeah.

Laurence  1:17:41  
So there's a workshop we've done where we had to list all the shoulds. So so we've got a list of things to do, right? Yeah. Which which ones of those I should I should do this? Someone wants me to do it something that's always landed on my plate, or I need not need to do I feel like it's in your head to do. So there might be things that you're planning out, they actually don't, they're going to feel that hard work. Because there's something else, someone else's idea of what you should be doing. So, for me, it comes down to the energy and excitement almost is like, we tried to have fun at the heart and one of our values is make it fun, right? If it doesn't feel fun, why are we doing it? And so we always have to keep checking ourselves. Like, I'm not sure about that, what is this, maybe it just wants to do, it doesn't feel fun, it doesn't feel like we want to get excited about it. So we're not excited now then we're not gonna be excited when we're knee deep into it. So likewise, with all the stuff that you've got planned on your list, and I do this all the time, like, someone sent me an email before you know, you just got this list of things that other people want from your day, right? And it's like, No, I don't wanna do that. I don't have the energy for that. So yeah, I think it comes back to actually as well like yeah, trying to leave the shoots.

Carlos  1:18:44  
thing when you're when you're doing something truly creative. And this is like this is secondhand knowledge from there's a guy called Charlie Davis who doesn't subtract their ideas is a copy Lauren shorter. Author of become lazy gurus who work with And then it's kind of as several other people who have kind of, say similar things, and I've never really quite got it because I think it's just being lazy. Actually, what I haven't got is that the creativity and the effectiveness comes intuitively isn't just a 10 point plan. It's a feeling it's a it's a kind of embodied action. And then and it comes from this clarity you, you can see it, you can touch it, you can taste it, you can feel it. And so you know, needs to be done to make it happen. And I think a lot of plans these days, don't carry that vote, just carry on. We need to be there. Why not? Sure. That's the right thing to do. But there was a business project and if at least one person because I I know what it smells like, I can describe it to you when it's like to be there. And I think that's where inspired action comes from, I think entrepreneurs entrepreneur, we get a lot of one a printer saying Oh, I'd like to sell my business, but I don't know what to do you And they force it, and I need an idea, I need an idea, actually have an idea. Maybe the thing they need to do is not think of the idea and just talk to hello to people, be around a lot of people. And then somewhere that's like touching, tasting,

Unknown Speaker  1:20:16  
or maybe then entrepreneur. And that's fine too. You know, it's where people come to events who have that pressure of like, donating idea. And they come in and they don't have the idea. And other people got ideas, and they're building their businesses. Or sometimes people end up just either being part of the community and just getting a buzz of that, or they collaborate with someone else. And maybe the right hand man and the brain or the operations of it or whatever, they're not the ideas person. So there's always benefits to being around it. But if it feels right, do it, that's the thing. So so if you don't, you can't be a finger on it just going

Unknown Speaker  1:20:47  
yeah, people who can force it, they can make amazing businesses, just through your through pure strength of will. And you know that Gary Vaynerchuk and the Gary Vaynerchuk acts of the world, they can do it and that's cool. I'd like to be a bit lazy with it. Yeah. Try not to be too stressful in it. And maybe that will, you know, maybe a little bit longer because of that. So I think it's there. There are various ways to do this. But if you're lazy, you like to enjoy the time where you're at the moment making a living bit more intuitively can help.

Graham Allcott  1:21:19  
Hmm, I think lazy for activities are lovely place to conclude the finish up. Yeah. Tell me how people can find out more about happy status for everything you do.

Laurence  1:21:28  
So the happy startup school calm is our website. We've got loads of stuff on there, blog posts, we've got a lot of stuff out for free. So talk some relevant links to the programmes that we run. Probably startups and Twitter. Ali, so happy stops on Twitter, happy startups and Instagram. Happy startup school on Facebook. And more media mediums actually. No question people aren't so like we should medium handle. Yeah, medium is our main blogging is once a Reach reaching people. So medium, happy startup school is a publication on medium. So we share all our stuff on there. And that's

Graham Allcott  1:22:07  
we'll share the links to that article that was earlier on. Yeah, get dumped, calm and so people can get a link to that for you guys as well. Excellent. Yeah. Thanks so much for taking the time. This has been really nice. Thanks for having us and privileged to be here.

Yeah, I'm looking forward personally to altitude in June.

Carlos  1:22:25  
Yeah, unknown and awesome. Thanks, guys.

Graham Allcott  1:22:36  
So thanks again to Lawrence and Carlos for doing that. And just following on from the theme, really. So we had Mike Williamson from action for happiness on the previous episode just before Christmas, and now we're having a happy startup school. And then the next episode is actually going to be me doing a talk at action for happiness. So on a kind of very similar theme, talking about balance. The title of the event was beyond busy so we get into a lot of time. From what I've balanced and some of the more subtle mindset shifts around productivity as well in the next episode, so hope you're going to make sure you subscribe and stay tuned for that in a couple of weeks time. We'll be back on a pretty regular schedule from now on in 2018. So every couple of weeks new episode dropping, and more information at get beyond busy, calm, get beyond digital comm you'll find show notes links, everything that we talked about in the show links or the previous episodes, RSS feeds, everything basically all the stuff that you need. Thanks also to mark Steadman, who's my producer on the show. And also thanks to think productive who are the sponsors of this podcast? If you are interested in the work of being productive, we run a whole range of workshops to help boost your team and your personal productivity. So check out think productive calm think writing code at UK if you're in the UK, and around the world on various different sites in the US and Canada and Australia and everything else but think productive.com will get you there. So that's it. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you in two weeks time for the next episodes. Take care Bye for now.

Links:

• Why The Hardest Thing To Do Is Nothing – The Happy Startup School – Medium

• The Happy Startup School

• IKEA effect - Wikipedia

• The Happy Startup School – Medium

• The Lazy Guru's Guide to Life: The Mindful Art of Achieving More by Doing Less

• How to be a Productivity Ninja

• Subscribe to Think Productive’s monthly tips newsletter