Speaker 2
Much, yeah.
And then working out what that is to you.
You can take inspiration from others and take those diet plans and look on socials and see the people doing amazing things, but customize it to you because that will be different in your life.
We have to take that time to work it out.
I guarantee most people will happen.
Yeah.
And I think that’s it.
And I think a lot of people don’t even know what they actually want because I think they’re being led.
They are.
And I think when you said to me about the things I did for my staff and stuff, right now we’re fully flexible, fully remote.
Great.
Everyone works on their own time.
Remote, results-only work.
Yes.
We’ve been, to be fair, like since before COVID.
I mean, you’re talking about we did all this stuff.
Even when people needed to go for a doctor’s appointment, I wouldn’t make them take time off and do that.
We’d always just be like, “Make up the time elsewhere.”
I’ve always been up there.
I believe in give and take.
If I’m that flexible, I’d like for them to be flexible.
Like he said, occasionally they need to work late one day, then work late one day.
We used to do drinks on a Thursday night and then start at 12:00 p.m. on a Friday because I let them have a handover in the morning.
We used to do that way before COVID.
Now, yeah, results-oriented.
But I think I do things like I got them a Peloton and put it in the office.
We basically made up a little gym inside the meeting room area because people wanted that.
But at the end of the day, I don’t think they actually cared about their well-being.
They thought it was a cool thing to have going.
We’ve got a gym in the office.
We’ve got a Peloton.
But deep down inside, they didn’t actually want to get fit.
And I think that’s what it is.
You’ve got to genuinely want it, and you have to want to change your behaviors.
Otherwise, you don’t adapt to things.
I think that’s important.
And same with diets.
People who just do the yo-yo diets because they just want to get to that point, but they don’t actually want to change their lifestyle.
I think it’s so much easier if you become a healthier person.
If you fundamentally want to change who you are and become that healthier person.
Like James Clear, Atomic Habits.
Why he always says it.
He’s bang on the money.
Yeah, he’s great.
Instead of saying, “I don’t smoke anymore,” it’s, “I’m not a smoker.”
It’s reframing that identity, the behavior.
“I’m a healthy person.”
Not like…
It takes days to build a habit or to unlearn one as well.
So if you think about it in the positive and the negative, it works both ways.
And I think that’s so good.
And again, it reminds me, same with entrepreneurship.
Like you said, all those things earlier when you said, “Oh, you’ve got the business plan, you’ve got the strategy.”
I’m thinking a lot of people don’t because a lot of people just jump straight in.
They’ve got this idea and they want to do it.
But fundamentally, do you?
Exactly the same thing.
That’s like a diet.
That’s like a cheat sheet.
All that sort of stuff.
Do you want to just get some quick results because you’re addicted to dopamine, or do you actually want to be good at business?
And your why needs to be so strong.
People talk to me about visualization.
It’s so true.
Fundamental to everything.
You don’t have to call it that.
It can be the best version of yourself.
You’ve got to be so clear on what it is.
Whether you’re making a vision board or whatever else, that’s cool.
I’ve got one on my desktop.
I like to think about certain things.
But that needs to be so clear.
If your why is not stronger than digital distraction, leaning into Instagram, or going to get something, or just quick dopamine hits, then you will continue to do that.
There’s a reason why people spend 137 days a year on social media.
That’s just the reason.
That is absolutely astronomical.
Every third of their lives.
And that’s why.
Because that pull is stronger than anything that you’re working towards.
If you find something you enjoy, you’ll happily do it.
The gym time is the happiest time of the day for me.
My mind’s always running.
I can’t just sit still.
Sitting on the sun, that’s not my idea of help.
Yeah.
Screw that.
I want to be moving.
We went to the hotel, me and my girlfriend, and she’s reading on the sunbed, and I was doing aerobics with old ladies.
And I love it.
This is understanding myself.
If I can go for a walk, I know that I feel at peace.
If I’m in the gym, I can do that.
Otherwise, if I’m sitting still, I’m like, I might as well do some work because I love what I do.
Then because you’re an entrepreneur and you love what you do, you can always do the extra hour.
But sometimes the extra hour is not doing you any good.
And we feel like we have to do it because it’s your baby, right?
But you have to unpick being busy and being productive.
They’re two different things.
And we conflate the two completely.
We spend 57% of our time on emails or calls.
That’s disgusting.
57%.
That’s us.
So that’s 57% of the time talking about the work that we’re doing, not actually doing it.
Exactly.
So we need to unpick those things.
And if that’s what we focus on for the workplace.
So here’s a rule of thumb.
Every single meeting is 15 minutes.
You have to have an agenda and objectives for every single one.
Each person’s role needs to be clear.
There are certain organizations that don’t have any meetings.
No standing meetings.
Shopify has a meeting cost calculator.
So when you put it in the diary, you can see this is going to cost you eight grand.
People don’t realize that.
So if we focus on those things, then we’ll finally create space.
And as an entrepreneur, why do you think sending a few more emails or a few cold calls at 9:30 is doing your health any good?
Or is that actually saying, “Well, this is what we can expect from this organization working at this time.”
I would rather work with someone who’s refreshed, energized, and stuff like that.
There’s a really interesting case study with the legal profession saying that I think it was 43% of all tasks in the legal profession can be automated by AI.
So you’re going to get two types of firms.
You’re going to get those that simply take away a lot of the workforce, focus on that optimization, and continue to get hours out of people.
Or the organization that then takes a 43% saving off that work week and then has people feeling refreshed.
They can have a life outside of work.
They will then turn up and be able to use the time to focus on the human creativity around the side and provide the best results to their clients.
Which law firm do you want to work with?
Yeah.
So that’s what we need to consider.
We need to think about how we can do this over the long term.
And while we can burn the midnight oil consistently, and you will have to, let’s be real, it’s understanding that we have to focus on those things that can continue to allow us to turn up.
And your well-being is different to mine.
So you’ve got to take that time to work out what that is.
Yeah.
I think it’s about making sure we always do the jobs that we are best at as well.
Because I think that’s it.
So 57% of emails and meetings.
I’m definitely going to check my time tracker because I log all my time.
I actually will because I’m really aware of all my time.
I do.
I think I’d be interested to share that with people.
Yeah, do it.
Because I think I’ve really worked on this.
Because I believe that you should be spending the time doing what you’re great at.
It’s really difficult, again, being the balance sort of thing.
Not one end or the other.
Anti-hustle versus really hustle.
I also think that versus delegate everything, which is what ideal people want to do if you had all the money in the world, but do everything yourself.
There’s got to be a happy medium.
And I think the reality is, as an entrepreneur, especially bootstrapping, you’re somewhere in the middle.
So I’d love to do only the things I’m great at.
At the same time, I still have to do a lot of this admin.
But I do think I’ve got a bit better at it.
So I’d love to share that data with you.
But on the note of data, because you were saying earlier you’d love to call out some of the bullshit and you love to back it with data, I want to talk about some of that bullshit because I do believe that the well-being industry has a lot of it.
And it’s got a lot of stigma as well.
Like I said, I just ran a retreat, and my co-organizer Natalie was the first episode actually.
Natalie from Elevate.
She was my co-organizer.
I told her when I first met her and she was like, “I run a retreat company.”
And I was like, “No thanks.”
That’s what I said to her.
But critically, talking to her, I realized she was very different.
I think there’s that stigma to the airy-fairy, arty, woo stuff.
And there’s a lot of people doing it and they don’t know anything about well-being.
I want to know from you because you’ve got a lot of experience now in this industry as an entrepreneur, or anyone online seeing the stuff, like I said, the well-being versus wellness and the advice out there that we’re talking about.
What are some of the biggest pieces of bullshit advice you’ve seen in the well-being industry that we need to know about and protect ourselves from?
And what’s actually real?
Speaker 3
So I normally work with large organizations.
So what I would say is get the data right.
Understand what’s driving the cause of negative well-being.
Map out your attrition.
Show how increased work hours drive attrition and stuff like that.
That’s not going to be on the cards for a small organization, nor is it required because you’ve got anecdotal evidence, essentially, of everything that’s going on within the business.
You already know what the crack is.
But we said it already.
It’s about not trying to put every solution under the sun for people or make assumptions that we know what people need.
Or do every single awareness day under the sun because while people want to learn about certain things, then we’re detracting from the message of the work.
An organization, Coinbase, the CEO was really brave.
He basically said, “We’re not doing awareness days here. None of them.”
And they said, “What are we doing about Black Lives Matter?”
He said, “Nothing.”
He said, “This is a workplace. We’re going to focus on those things.”
And if those things need to be part of your work, you have to go elsewhere.
And I think that is a brave position to take.
And while he himself, I’m sure, had an opinion on it and understood the importance of it, he said, “As a workplace, this is what we focus on.”
And I think while that is an edge case, I think what we can learn from that is saying, “This is actually how we work here.”
We’re not going to focus on those other things outside of it.
We’ll support you or give you a little bit of mind space to focus on those things, but that’s what you do outside of work.
And here, this is what you can expect from this workplace.
This is how we turn up.
This is how we are.
And if you want anything else from that, then you can go elsewhere.
I think it’s about getting really, really clear because now there’s an expectation you have to offer all these things.
But I think if someone said to me, “We work flexibly here. We’re a results-only workplace. We’re not going to offer you any bits on the side, but that’s it.”
I think that’s almost like an enlightened future of work.
For an entrepreneur, well, that’s great to hear because that’s the direction we want to go.
Because we had all these fluffy great perks on our website and we realized…
And it’s also attracted the wrong people because all they cared about were those things.
These causes are so important.
I care about all of them.
And I see the value in it.
But then if we’re spending half our week talking about this stuff, then the business will not continue to operate as it should.
So it’s about unpicking it.
And when we treat well-being like a science, creating an environment where people can focus on what they need instead of assuming that we know, that’s the biggest challenge.
We’re trying to fix people.
Me, I like to go and train in the morning.
I like to do a nice 5K.
That’s me.
Tell the business that’s what I have to do.
So it’s making those assumptions.
Whereas you’re not going to have these huge data sets.
You know this is how we work as an organization.
Create the space for people, the time, the flexibility, the autonomy, the sense of trust, belonging, inclusion.
So important.
That’s where we focus instead of trying to provide a load of solutions to people.
Say, “If you actually want them, they’re over here perhaps.”
Or you sign up to an organization that has benefits on the side.
I think that’s where we need to move to because right now we’re trying to offer all this stuff to make ourselves attractive.
And while it might help get someone through the door, is that the person you want in the business?
And I think it’s just clear expectations.
Then as an organization, you can get everyone to develop a manual of me.
Like saying, “This is how I work. This is what I need. These are my dependents.”
I’ve got a couple of learning disabilities, for instance.
I’ve got to pick them up at four.
Or I’ve got a kid.
I’m breastfeeding.
Any of the above.
That’s well-being.
It’s literally just unpicking well-being and wellness.
Focus on well-being as an entrepreneur now.
As you scale, you can offer these perks.
A piece of research recently showed that most of them don’t actually work at increasing subjective well-being.
The research was problematic because it takes a homogeneous block over a macro group of people and just says financial well-being doesn’t work.
That isn’t the case.
When I was in debt, that would have helped me massively.
That would have worsened my subjective well-being in the short term as I tightened my belt, but then ultimately put me in a position where I was able to start saving money.
So those binary metrics or measures of what works and what doesn’t are wrong.
So instead, let’s focus on creating an environment where, if you’re struggling, we’ll give you that support over there or that support over there.
So it’s about flipping that switch from well-being to wellness.
And if we’re just clear on that as an organization and get it abundantly clear to people what they can expect, that’s a great place to start.
Because happiness is the difference between expectation and reality.
So if you come in expecting this and we’re focused on all these things and campaigns and it’s not leaving you much time to get the work done, I would rather people say these are the boundaries.
You can go and do your thing outside of it.
I think that’s beautiful.
I think it is that.
I think a lot of people feel the pressure to make employees happy.
And you can’t do that.
Their happiness depends on them.
Not worse than their happiness.
It’s about creating an environment where they can get their work done.
They can get a sense of meaning, whether that be at work or outside of it.
And what would you recommend for those who are employees who may be feeling unhappy at work at the moment and they feel like their workplace could do more?
How would you recommend they should approach that?
Well, they’ve got to understand what their version of well-being looks like and communicate their needs.
Because unless we communicate, we rant.
And the organization is not going to help.
And then often people just get angry about stuff or the way things are.
But how can we help you get to that place where you’re performing better?
And I think my fear as a small business owner is that, like you said, every person’s needs are very different.
How are you supposed to accommodate every single person?
People like different environments and everything like that.
And obviously it becomes easier if you are working flexibly.
But not everyone has the luxury to be able to do that.
How do you accommodate everyone?
If you try to do that, then it’s…
This is the switch, isn’t it?
So we’re not accommodating everyone.
We create the space and environment where they can turn up as they are.
And we focus on that.
Creating the space in between meetings and calls.
And these are the boundaries.
And fair pay.
That’s where we need to get to.
It’s not about improving happiness.
It’s about not worsening it.
And if we focus on simply creating the space and the environment instead of putting stuff in, then we’re in a better space.
So it’s literally just flipping that switch.
Saying, “Oh, this person is struggling.”
Or maybe you’ve got two people in your team with ADHD.
We need to account for everyone.
That’s great and that works.
I think that’s something that can be used.
But the focus needs to be on creating the environment instead.
Whereas we’re looking just at this without changing any of the underlying factors or drivers which are causing the stress in the first place.
So plastering over the issues with more.
And most of the time, the issue is that people don’t have the space or time to do their work.
And to fix that, we give them a course to talk about it.
Giving them even less time to do their work.
So I think it’s just the simplification of what this looks like in the workplace.
And just create work that doesn’t fuck people up.
I think that’s a great idea.
I think it’s been such a valuable podcast because I think there are so many things to think about that maybe we haven’t been thinking about in the right way.
