Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:12 Welcome to Genuine Humans, exploring the stories behind the great marketing leaders of our time and hearing how their journeys have influenced the brand they've built, brought to you by the social element. Here are our hosts to Mara Littleton, CEO, e o and founder. And Wendy Christie, chief People Officer.
Speaker 2 00:00:44 Welcome back to Genuine Humans Podcast. Wendy, it's lovely to have you here. How are you doing? Oh, it's lovely to be here. As always, Tamara. And I'm really well, thank you. How are you? I'm, I'm really well, thank you Wendy. Uh, it's kind of, it's dark here, very dark cuz we're actually doing a late night interview because our guest is dialing in from New Zealand today and we are joined by Jodi Cook, who is the author of the 10 year career and she is currently living the post exit entrepreneur life having sold a social media agency last year and I can't wait to hear all about this. Jodi, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 00:01:23 Thank you so much. Yes. I'm calling from the future. It's Tuesday morning here. I'm 13 hours ahead of <laugh> the uk so yeah, sorry that it's dark for you, but it's very, very sunny here if that makes you feel any better.
Speaker 2 00:01:34 <laugh> <laugh>. So much better. <laugh>. <laugh>. So Jodi, I want to know everything, but can we go back, first of all to, you started your social media agency at the age of 22, I believe. Yeah. Can you just talk about, I'm interested into how you came about starting your agency and how you've got to now and I just wanna hear the story from you. So the floor is yours.
Speaker 3 00:02:01 Yes, definitely. Thank you. So I started the agency at 22, having just spent a year working two full-time jobs. And the first job was a graduate scheme, so it was for the National Skills Academy for social Care. Probably the only person in the world that's gone from social care to social media, but that's what it was. <laugh>, uh, it was a nine to five, but I negotiated eight till four, which was a huge deal at the time. I think after that lots of other people started doing it, but I was like, hang on, this is, this is starting far too late. I need to change something here. And then my second full-time job was as, as a waitress. So I was doing 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM four nights a week, plus a double shift on Sunday. And then, I don't know, when I look back at that I'm like, how did I do that all because I was also training for half marathons and doing races on Saturday mornings, so, oh wow.
Speaker 3 00:02:50 It was a bit of a crazy year. But the goal was always to be able to support myself while I started a business. So I wanted to save money and I knew I wanted to, to start a business because I knew I wanted to travel, but I didn't fancy being a backpacker or working abroad. I quite liked the idea of earning and traveling and I don't know where that idea came from. I just had this idea that I could be earning working, but from my laptop, I think that's probably when the digital NOMA thing was just about starting. Cause that was in 2011. And so the other goal was to find a business idea that I could roll with, but I wasn't intentional about this at all. I just had this blind optimism that I would somehow figure it out and then <laugh> true to the plan.
Speaker 3 00:03:30 That's exactly what happened. So somehow it came on my radar that there was this thing that you could do and that was be a social media manager. And I'd been doing a bit of social media management in my graduate scheme. And so I thought that sounded like Fern and I had a bit of an idea of what I could do. So my graduate scheme was just a year, so that came to an end and I quit my waitressing job as well and then moved back to Birmingham with no kind of plans other than to see if I could start this business with the savings that I had from those two jobs. And then <laugh>, I mean I, I kind of threw myself into the deep end because I got myself some business cards printed because they were a thing back then. And then I started rocking up to networking events, standing up in front of a room of, the first one I went to had 60 people and you had to stand up and everyone had 60 seconds to talk about themselves.
Speaker 3 00:04:20 And that's when I just introduced myself as, you know, Jody Cole as my name was back then. And that I was a social media manager and I could do X, Y, and Z and then started getting clients from there. So that's the start <laugh>. And then I guess the middle is the kind of juicy part that involves turning that first few clients into a company and a team and, and then realizing that now I had this team and this office, my original goal of being able to travel and work was almost forgotten. I hadn't had a holiday in absolutely Asia, I don't think I went on holiday for the first three years of having a business and then thinking, this is not what <laugh>, this isn't what I signed up for, this isn't what I planned at all. And then making a plan to sort that out, which then led to traveling one month in every three for about five years.
Speaker 3 00:05:11 So I kind of ran it as a lifestyle business in the middle stages. And then in that time developed a serious writing habit, a serious power lifting habit, and started writing performs and competing for Great Britain. And then the end is, I guess where I'm at now, which is that we had a kind of rough start to 2020 with the agency as, as so many companies did we mm-hmm. <affirmative> lost 25% of our client base in one week. And that was super scary. So, um, it, I guess it went from being a lifestyle business to being like a, well I need to get back involved now cuz all the SOPs in the world can't plan for a global pandemic. So, so I got super back involved, but with my team and everything that we did, we managed to grow back to the pre covid level and then grow another 20%.
Speaker 3 00:05:59 And so that was when it was like this, I need to do something here, I need to make a decision here because we could go back to what we were doing before and I could go back to the traveling I was doing before, but I feel like maybe I've outgrown the company and maybe the company's outgrown me at the same time and it feels like it might be ready to sell. So yeah, as you said in the intro, completed the sale in March, 2021 and since then I've been promoting the book and figuring out life next in all in this post exit entrepreneur glory phase. And then also something that I think we've talked about before is coming up with my kind of business philosophy, which is quite Yeah. Which is quite fun.
Speaker 2 00:06:40 And, and what is that business philosophy then?
Speaker 3 00:06:43 So I guess li well life philosophy for a start is about travel and fun and freedom. And whenever I say the word freedom, it's like freedom from what to do what. And I think this defines the life philosophy and the business philosophy because for me, freedom from what is the, the being needed at one given time in one given place, getting that tap on the shoulder, that means you can't do what you wanna do, you have to do what someone else wants you to do and to do what is fun projects where I can push my comfort zone and just see what I can do with, whether it's in sport or business or writing or anything else. I'm really fascinated with this idea that we, we live such cushy lives unless we really make an effort to get out of our comfort zones. And in some ways I quite enjoyed losing 25% of our client base in one week because it means that you have to get involved, you have to work out the solution and you have to, you know, get, get together and make all these ideas of what you can do and then work through it.
Speaker 3 00:07:44 And I think it's the peacetime CEO and the wartime ceo, that's the kind of analogy that I've heard used, but I think it's the business equivalent of going through a one re max in deadlift or, you know, hitting you Max's heart rate on a, on a run or something like that. It's like, we just don't get to do this. So I think having this whole philosophy of running towards those and them being like, oh wow, it wasn't even that hard. I did it, what else can I do? I'm just obsessed with that. I really, I really love it. Part of my philosophy is also that you, my time and anyone's time is not just there to be booked nonstop. So I'm so big on asynchronous communications and I don't think I knew the word asynchronous when I was doing it at my agency, but maybe it was because I was on different time zones a lot.
Speaker 3 00:08:24 But I would ask a million questions before I would let someone book me into a meeting. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and you'll know how hard that is in is an agency because all a team member needs to say is, oh, the client wants you there. And you're like, okay, well the client wants me there, I'll be there. But I was like, well why, why do they want me there? You are their account manager. What, like, you know, what's going on here? What's the bigger problem? And I would just ask, ask, ask until we got to the deeper meaning, which was always a training issue or a confusion issue or a miscommunication or something like that. And I would make it so I didn't have to be in the meeting because I wanted to do what I thought a true business owner or CEO should be doing, which is head in the clouds dreaming up big ideas, you know, writing stuff up, growing a network and only having meetings of just the highest level where it absolutely had to be them. And I think that most meetings and calls are the enemy of that. So it's a real big part of my whole business life philosophy that I wanna be doing, only the stuff that I can do at any given time. And yeah, most meetings and calls are a bit rubbish and a kind of waste
Speaker 2 00:09:24 <laugh>. Well, I lo I love that and I know, we'll, we'll come back to the, um, the power lifting. I love that you kind of just like casually drop that in, you know, because I, I know that's what you do, but I I think it's such a, a, a big part of, of your life when, actually, can I just ask, when did you start doing power lifting?
Speaker 3 00:09:43 Um, well I was first a runner at, at when I was doing those two full-time jobs. And then when I read a book called How to Run by Paula Radcliffe, she recommended that you pick up weights and also do different squats and different exercises that would help your running. So that's when I started. So I'd say that was around 2015.
Speaker 2 00:10:04 Okay. And so do you think that was having that sort of discipline and doing the, um, power lifting, do you, do you think that helped you be more strict on I don't want to go to this meeting because I've got all of this other stuff going on in my life as well?
Speaker 3 00:10:18 Yeah, I think so. I feel like how I kind of talk about it is your profession, your obsession and your decompression. And so I had my profession, I had my company and the obsession was started to be lifting and power lifting and then competing in power lifting. And then decompression is just the relaxing but not the relaxing way. You think you're relaxing, but you're actually shopping or running errands, but the intentional meditating, journaling, chilling out with friends, stuff like that. So having these boundaries helps so much. And I think it's two reasons. One is because my default mode network, like my subconscious brain is just working all the time on work stuff when I'm power lifting. But I don't think about it actively. It just happens and vice versa. And the other is because there are just these boundaries that I'm just not going to move.
Speaker 3 00:11:06 There's no way I'm not going to train, so therefore other stuff just has to be squished in. Yeah. So it becomes a non-negotiable. I think that having that is really good. So in Parkinson's law it says that work expands to the time made available to fit it. And I think if you don't know what you're putting first and you don't have those non-negotiable blocks in your day, then work will just expand and you'll end up doing a vague, fuzzy level of work for the entire time and then wonder how you didn't get anything done. Whereas I prefer shorter, sharper blocks where you're just relentless, the, the headphones are on, the concentration music's on and you're just going for it.
Speaker 2 00:11:42 And before Wendy kind of gets her her hands on you and starts sort of talking about kind of taking you back to your, to early life, I would just like to know a a little bit more about the book. I'm reading the book at the moment so I know all about the book, uh, the the 10 year career. But can you just give a bit of a summary of, of your book just for our listeners?
Speaker 3 00:12:03 Yes, definitely. I love that you are reading it and you were reading it when I bumped into you in London as well. That was super exciting. <laugh> <laugh>. Um, so yeah, te 10 year career is, it's based on the belief that your career doesn't have to extend over 40 or 50 or 60 years. And if you structure it a certain way, you could be free of the need to work within a decade. So the book's all about questioning and reworking how we think, and it introduces a new method and you can see it through and you can open up options for yourself because I think that we all have so many options, we just forget that we do. And one of the ones that always springs to mind is where we live. So if I lived in Birmingham right now, it would be because my mom and my dad happened to live there because my mom happened to have a job there and it's like I can't make my whole future decision based on that one chance decision that someone else made 30 years ago.
Speaker 3 00:12:54 It's crazy. And yet so many of us do and we don't question it. So there's just, there's decisions like that everywhere in our lives. And so the book explains all the ways that we've been trained out of thinking for ourselves. And there's different examples from menu psychology and from schooling. And then it introduces new ways of thinking. So with, with your mindset, with growth, with sales, with everything else, and also designing a really cool life that we can love to live when we're not working. So, um, it's also got a framework which I think is super useful for entrepreneurs and business leaders. So it's a four step framework that goes execute, systemize, scrutinize, and exit. And I kind of see it as the entrepreneur's version of the career ladder. So I know that in my agency, especially, every single member of my team knew where they were headed.
Speaker 3 00:13:46 They had appraisals, they had a progression plan, they had all these different benchmarks and they, and they knew that, but what about mine? I don't think I had that. And quite early on in, in my business, I went to a networking event each week and it was with 50 other business owners and so many of them had had their business for like 20 years, but they lived the same year 20 different times rather than having any sense of progression. And it was fun. And if it, if it works for some people, that's totally cool and, and they were definitely happy. But I knew that that's not what I wanted. So I was, when I'm thinking about my progression, it's like it definitely fit within those four stages. So I made it so it could be useful for other people also running their business wanting the progression.
Speaker 2 00:14:26 Fantastic. And congratulations again on, on on the book.
Speaker 3 00:14:30 Thank you. Yeah, it's, it's so exciting and it's, it's the most exciting thing is hearing people using the framework and kind of repeating it back to me and telling me which stage they're in and getting really excited about getting to the next. So yeah, it's been, it's quite cool to have brought something like that into the world and have people really using it.
Speaker 2 00:14:44 I'm sure it'll get to the point where someone will be chatting to you on the plane and then talk about, oh, you must read this book
Speaker 4 00:14:50 By uh, Jody Cook <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:14:52 Ah, I would love, I would just explode. I would love that so much. Yeah,
Speaker 4 00:14:56 That's, you've arrived <laugh>. So as Tamara said a moment ago, um, I'm really looking forward to hearing how all this links up with what you were like as a child. I mean, it's the risk of sounding patronizing. I it's just incredible what you've achieved at such a young age and the drive and the, the sort of hard work that that must have been involved is incredible. So where do you think that came from?
Speaker 3 00:15:23 Uh, a few different places? So, um, in answer to the question, what I was like as a, as a child, I would say as a child I was the second best <laugh>. And I think that's because partly because I had this best friend in primary school, um, she was this wonderful human called Emily and she was very charming, she was super clever and she had this amazing joined up handwriting, which is really important when you are in year five. And now she's in this amazing role at the time. So she's, she's done really cool stuff. And I read recently that the biggest indicator of your IQ at 15 was your best friend at 11. I'm pretty sure that I've got Emily to thank for a lot of the, the thing, the stuff I do now. Um, so because that was who I hang hung out with and bounce ideas off, I think I was just really malleable back then.
Speaker 3 00:16:12 And that led to decisions like being vegetarian or having pitched the Leonard DiCaprio on my wall or you know, where I shopped or which beanie babies were my favorite. It was all, it was all because I was looking up to someone else and that became my role model. So, so yeah, having a super cool best friend when I was 11 and younger I think contributed in some way to just learning to look at people who were a few steps ahead and to figure out what they're doing and to figure out what kind of different models and things I can copy. And now I'm definitely not as much of a copier as I was back then, but I think it's still a useful thing to be able to emulate people rather than feel like a, a non-useful way of doing it would be to feel jealous and to feel like mm-hmm <affirmative>, oh well they're doing that but it's easy for them or they're doing that, but they've got these certain different characteristics that mean that it's, you know, they can just do it.
Speaker 3 00:17:03 But I think because I was so close to it, it was like, no, I can do this. I can replicate these methods. And then my handwriting got better and then I became better at my classes and I think that has knocked onto adult life. I think the other person was definitely mom, like she's the big influence, probably the biggest genuine human influence to date. And we also worked together on quite a lot of different projects. So that was quite cool having her as my mom and also as my business kind of colleague, although we didn't call each other like I didn't call her mom when I was working with her. I just called her by her first name and lots of people didn't even know that she was my mom and I, I was so keen that people wouldn't think I was this little girl who didn't know what she was doing and needed her mom there, that we just completely separated from that altogether. So when I was growing up, my mom held corporate jobs until I was about 15 when she became self-employed. So I definitely remember her as working in big banks and donning the trouser suit and having fancy titles and carrying papers, which is a sign of high importance. Of course.
Speaker 4 00:18:08 Absolutely.
Speaker 3 00:18:09 So, so um, so when me and my sister were growing up and my sister's only 18 months younger than me, my mom was really keen that we developed this independence and so she would regularly throw us in at the deep end on lots of different things. And one of the ones that really sticks out is that it was up to me and my sister to book our own dentist appointments and this is from as soon as we could talk. So it was like, it was up to us to see in the calendar when the dentist appointment was due or it was up to us to remember every six months or however often you do it. And it was up to us to get the phone book, find the number, call the dentist and book the appointment. And the, the, the dentist secretary must have thought this was so strange hearing a child booking their appointment, but we just did it.
Speaker 3 00:18:55 And we never even realized that it was a thing that other kids didn't do. And I don't think I realized it until I went to uni and talked about it and there were people that I was living with who were 20 and their moms were still booking their dentist appointment and I'm like, do you not just start doing this on your own when you were like five? And they were like, no <laugh>. So, um, apparently that was kind of strange. And there were other things like if we ever went away for a trip, it would be up to us to pack our own suitcases and we would just decide what we were going to do and then figure it out for ourselves. And I think with the phone thing especially, I remember my sister being a bit apprehensive about it, but she almost got a training session from my mom and in terms of, well it's easy, you just do this and then you do that. And it was always this ethos of it's easy, just try, what's the worst that could happen? It's really not that bad. And I know that in my agency lots of the people I hired were scared of the phone and you just, if you do it from a young age, it never, you never really bothered by it.
Speaker 2 00:19:52 I think a lot of people are still scared of this. The phone actually
Speaker 4 00:19:55 <laugh>, it's, it's funny isn't it? Did you have a particular, a childhood dream or something that you knew you wanted to do or achieve when you were older?
Speaker 3 00:20:03 I think I had loads of random ones that weren't really based on anything. Like I wanted to be a vet, I wanted to be a magazine editor, I wanted to be these different things, but I think I decided I wanted to run a business quite early. And I think that was because when my mom was self-employed, she would be, she would take checks to the bank to cash but you could, there was no parking at the bank. So I would sit next to her in the passenger seat, she'd hand me the check and she'd get me to go in and she'd have already filmed out the form and I remember seeing the checks and I was like, whoa, this is cool. <laugh> <laugh>. And so I knew that I wanted to, I wanted to have people write checks for me and also because I knew the terminology that she used. So things like invoices and clients and networking and accounts and just all this business jargon was quite natural to me because we'd talked about it and because I'd heard those little phrases going around. So I guess I knew I wanted to start a business, I just had no idea what it would be. But like with calling the dentist, I just figured that I'd figure it out somehow and it couldn't actually be that hard.
Speaker 4 00:21:05 And here you are, uh, you've talked about Emily and your mom as these role models when, when you were younger and, and how about as an adult and some of the people that you've worked with, are there any particular genuine humans that you'd like to acknowledge as people who've influenced or supported you in your career?
Speaker 3 00:21:21 Yeah, one of them, she's this amazing lady called Joanne Rule mba and she was assigned to me as my coach on my graduate scheme. And so we had I think six sessions over the year and they were so useful in just teaching me how to think and teaching me frameworks for how to think cuz I would go and see her with a big mess in my head because I was running two full-time jobs and training for marathons and was really busy. But also it was quite confusing at my main role because they were facing various different challenges in social care. So I would arrive to her with all these different problems and she would just help me not solve them by giving me the answers, but help me solve them by giving me the framework through which to solve them. And I found that quite challenging within the session itself.
Speaker 3 00:22:09 So she would say, okay, what could you do next? And then what about after that? And then what af about after that? And then she would ask me all these questions and I'd have to write stuff down and if I couldn't think of the answer, she wouldn't fill the gap for me. She would just say no think and then I'd be like, ah, just tell me the answer. And she just wouldn't <laugh> <laugh>. So, but I know now that that was so valuable because I use some of those frameworks even now. And so she's a really big person who has helped me a lot and probably doesn't even realize how much.
Speaker 4 00:22:36 Oh hopefully she'll hear this. Yes. And, and she'll realize
Speaker 2 00:22:39 Now I'd like to go back to talking about habits and, and really about creating the, the right environment. So I'm, I'm curious to know that you talked about your frameworks, you talked about your power lifting as well, but how important is it to have like the right environment for, for success? And are you able to sort of share some of the, the habits that you've got into, for example?
Speaker 3 00:23:04 Yes, definitely. I'm gonna sound like a very intense person right now, but that's fine. If it helps someone then yeah. So yeah, I mentioned the profession obsession, decompression, different pillars that I think about life in terms of, and I also probably would go one step further and say they are the only three things that should be in your life. Cuz if it's anything else, someone else could probably do it or you could probably not do it. So my day consists of, my day consists of professional obsession and decompression and I think of these as the blocks that I put in that create what I call my perfect repeatable day. So I don't really subscribe to the whole weekday weekend thing because it's kind of just a social construct and it might not really match your energy levels or how you wanna spend your time and it definitely doesn't match mine.
Speaker 3 00:23:52 And there's loads of things that I might do on a Tuesday that I would never do on a Saturday cuz it would be really busy. So it doesn't make any sense. So I think if you are, especially if you're an entrepreneur, if you have control over your schedule, the weekend weekday structure that was invented like a hundred years ago maybe by Henry Ford just makes zero sense. So I like to think of it in terms of a perfect repeatable day and then an adventure day or a day off or the other day. Okay. And my perfect repeatable day is exactly the same in terms of the structure, the overall structure. Cuz the idea is to get to this day that I feel like I could run nearly every day forever because I'm so aware that all the stuff I wanna achieve, it's not just gonna happen in one day, it takes years and months of consistency.
Speaker 3 00:24:34 So, but the idea is that because it's filled with all the stuff you love to do, you also really love to live it. So for me it involves getting up at about six ish having two or three very solid hours of deep work where there's no interruptions, there's no like, no one else can get me. And that's why I quite like being on different time zones as well because you get true the true silence that you only get when you're not on the same time zone as someone else. And then training happens at the same time twice a day. And then I kind of split my work into make or work in the morning and manager work in the afternoon where the manager work is more like the shorter attention span type stuff where you do need to, I dunno, send emails and do those smaller things.
Speaker 3 00:25:18 And then the decompression is pretty intentional as well because it involves meditating and journaling and reading books and hanging out with friends. But I guess the main thing that helps me create the habits is that I really don't multitask at all and the boundaries between each of them have are really defined. And then it means that when you are doing something you are so immersed in it that I feel like it makes it easier for it to become a habit because you are very present, you're not doing anything because it's just you are going through the motions. Mm-hmm <affirmative> creating the habit for me comes with come coming up with a structure of my perfect day and then living that again and again and again and not being scared to make little iterations, but being aware that I have to get this right right now because that's gonna lead to chunking those cool days together and then being like, oh, I've written this book or I've done this thing. And then almost not being able to understand how you did it because it felt so easy.
Speaker 2 00:26:11 And is there a connection between making less decisions as well? You know, having like if, if you know that certain things are happening uh, at, at a certain time of day Yes. Um, that's just one less thing that you need to sort of think about that you could be making a decision about something else like your your new book or or something like that.
Speaker 3 00:26:29 Yes, yes. I'm glad you asked that cuz Yeah, that's, that's a huge part of it. Decision fatigue is so real and I try, I go to quite big length to try and avoid that happening. So, um, because I travel around quite a lot, I don't have that many clothes so it's like there's, there's a, there's a few outfits and I'm really happy with all of them so therefore I can just kind of shut my eyes, put my hand in my wardrobe and pull something out and I'll know that it vaguely matches the other part of the outfit. If you know what you're gonna do it every time, each day I feel like you guard that time really well and you're really aware when smaller things try to creep into it that they're probably not important. And so it means you can reserve your big decision making powers for the big chunks and not spend any energy on the smaller things like what to wear or where to go and eat.
Speaker 3 00:27:18 And if it's something that really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, I would rather just say, I don't care <laugh> you sort it out. Yeah. It doesn't matter. And that might be, you know, cuz some people like really getting in the details with stuff like how to change a bin or they just wanna talk about it and it's like, no <laugh>, I don't wanna talk about this. I don't care how this bin has changed. I don't care what kind of coffee I'm having, I don't care what sources is on my eggs. Like it just doesn't matter. I'd rather be like, no you decide you are the pro, you make the decision and then I'll opt out of it. I think it's why I quite like tasting menus.
Speaker 2 00:27:53 Oh my god, I was just gonna say that cuz you just kind of let someone else decide Yeah. What you're gonna be served and you can have more time to chat.
Speaker 3 00:28:00 Yeah. Like, oh would you like the six course tasting menu or a nine course tasting menu and then you say obviously the nine course and then you leave all of the decisions to the other capable people who are doing everything. Yeah, I like that. And if you think, think of yourself in terms of a video game character who starts at the beginning of the day with a full bar of energy and then you run and jump around and the trials and tribulations of the day wear you down and then your energy goes down and down and down and it's like spend that precious energy on the stuff that really does matter to your pre your profession and your obsession not on deciding, I dunno what earrings to wear cuz it's just not important.
Speaker 2 00:28:38 Yeah. Fantastic. And what does the next 10 years look like then? So obviously you've, you've done your 10 year career and you know, theoretically you don't have to work if you don't want to, but what does the next 10 years look like? Or is that part of the journey and the excitement as like, you just actually don't know?
Speaker 3 00:28:56 I don't, yeah, I don't know. And we were actually saying before this call, I don't know where I'm living beyond the 5th of December, which feels quite organized. So 10 years you've got no chance with that. But what I do know is that there's a, there's a bias that I heard about recently that humans fall for and it's called the finished article bias. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I find this fascinating cuz if I look back at, at me at 22 when I was first starting my business, I feel like a completely different person today. Cause I can look back and go, oh she was so silly. She was green, she didn't know this, she had different hair. Oh I had the, now I had the same hair <laugh>, she was different.
Speaker 2 00:29:31 She <laugh> there's too many decisions to make. Right <laugh>. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:29:36 But she was, but either way she was different. And I see her as a young, naive version of what I am am now and definitely not the same. But if I look forward 10 years, the finished article bias says that I won't be able to see that there will be that same magnitude of diff difference but projected 10 years into the future. So if you ask me what does the next 10 years look like, I'm gonna say, oh well I'm just gonna do this and this and this, but actually it's gonna be so unbelievably different because I'll be a different person again in 10 years time. So I guess that's a very long way of saying I don't have a clue, but I know that it'll be shaped by the places I go, the books I read, the people I meet, and whatever random decisions I tend to make that lead me all in a different direction. But chances are it'll be completely different to now. But I find that so exciting and I'm almost like, ah, can't wait, bring it on.
Speaker 4 00:30:24 That sounds amazing. We're gonna move on to the, the, the last chunk of the podcast now where we talk about, we do, you know, just a bit more lighthearted and a bit more personal. And I realize actually the first question that I'm gonna ask you, it might not really fit with, with how you're living your life. So I would normally, if you're listening to the previous episodes, you'll know that I ask people what's their idea of a perfect weekend, but you're not necessarily living within that construct. So if you have a day where there's not a profession chunk Yes. If it's all obsession and decompression, what does a perfect version of that day look like?
Speaker 3 00:30:59 Uh, that's a great question. Yeah. Thank you for Thank you for amending it <laugh>. Most appreciate it. So, um, I get, I'd say that adventure days or days off involve lots of active stuff. So, um, actually no, they'd, they'd probably start reading books, going for great coffee, maybe going for a run, going for a really good breakfast or brunch with some friends. And then I would probably wanna do something like climb a mountain or explore a new area or I guess do something outdoorsy. And then we've mentioned tasting menus. I would definitely go for a tasting menu at a fancy restaurant in the evening. And then I would probably get an early night really rock and roll
Speaker 4 00:31:34 <laugh>. Yeah, well I think you'd need one after all that <laugh>, romantic climbing <laugh>. If you could time travel to any point, it could be future, it could be passed with no consequence, you don't have to worry about affecting timelines or whatever. Where or when would you go to
Speaker 3 00:31:52 It? Uh, it has to be the future. I think I would go to a hundred years in the future. I think I just, how long can I spend there? If that's not part of the question is that maybe if I could spend a week as long as you
Speaker 4 00:32:01 Like, as
Speaker 3 00:32:02 Long as you, I'd like to just watch things and see what was going on. I'd like to see what people were saying and see how they were using technology and seeing what the world looked like. And then make loads of notes. And then I would like to come back to now and figure out how they got there and figure out what they, what was invented and what was, what kind of stuff that we came up with that then led to living like that. I would, yeah, I would find that fascinating. If anyone knows how I can do this, by the way, please do get in touch cause that would
Speaker 4 00:32:28 Be cool.
Speaker 3 00:32:29 <laugh>. I would happily be a Guinea pig in this experiment.
Speaker 4 00:32:31 And there's an absolute fortune waiting for them if they do pig that out. I suspect <laugh>. If you could be remembered for one thing,
Speaker 2 00:32:39 What would it be?
Speaker 3 00:32:40 This is tough. I think something to do with not settling or not just accepting stuff the way it was. There's a quote that is in the start of the book, but I really love it and it's the Epictetus, the Stoic. And he said, how much longer are you gonna wait before you start to demand the best for yourself? And I think that I'm constantly reminding my friends to demand more and to stop settling like in their careers, in their relationships, in their lives. And so I think at my funeral it would be quite cool if the people who were there thought that this philosophy and that me badgering them to constantly demand the best of themselves had improved their lives in some way. That's
Speaker 2 00:33:16 Possibly one of the best answers we've had. <laugh> <laugh>, what's one thing about this new phase of your life that you didn't expect? Ooh.
Speaker 3 00:33:26 I mean the first thing that popped into my head was that I miss my team because they were really awesome and we had a lot of fun together. But I'd say the main thing I didn't expect was that I'm really, really excited about starting a new business. I didn't know that I wanted to do that until I did a whole bunch of experiments over the 18 months since exiting and realized that I really, really do want to start another business. But I'm really aware that the version of me that started one at 22 is not the version of me that I should bring forward to starting this one. And I was talking to a friend about this recently and she was saying it's like the paradox of success that what got you here won't get you there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so you think it's like, oh, starting a business, well I have to, I have to go networking, I have to put myself out there, I have to knock on doors, I have to do all this stuff. But really if you're starting it with a different set of resources, you have to use 'em in different way. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and different things like defaulting to action, to defaulting to delegation and working hard compared to thinking hard and all these different shifts. It's kind of fascinating, but I know that that's required of me to do the next steps. And there is, there's so many of those, but I'm quite excited for all of them.
Speaker 2 00:34:32 And I suppose, you know, you've already built up that network over the years that at least you don't have to sort of go back to going to your local business chapter and starting to sort of just give up business cards again. You know, there's so much that you just don't have to do again because you've already done it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 00:34:48 But it's so confusing because if we are just creatures of habit, then I've got my starter business habit kind of rule book, but it's different now. So I have to throw out this old rule book, but you have to invent your own new one and it's, it's a minefield because on some level, cause I still get people from that old network every now and again saying, oh, do you wanna come along? And I've always been like, no, I'm fine. But now I'm like, well I'm starting a business, is that what I need to do? And you have to really go through a conscious thought process with every single decision like that to make sure that it does match the new version of you and the new business. You're gonna start.
Speaker 2 00:35:20 How would your friends describe you?
Speaker 3 00:35:23 Um, <laugh>, uh, like a really strange paradox. <laugh>, so really easygoing, get really intense and always trying to improve everything yet pretty good at letting stuff go and then, then really structure and organized. But I love traveling with no plans, so I think they would just say I was wholly confusing and <laugh>, if you didn't get me, you'd just would just be like, what? But I guess I'm pretty lucky that they do.
Speaker 2 00:35:48 Uh, do you have a karaoke go-to song
Speaker 3 00:35:52 <laugh>? Um, so two of the things in life that I am either really not good at or have no interest in, uh, singing and cooking <laugh>. So, so with the karaoke thing, I'm quite lucky that two of my really good friends are very, very good singers. So I think I would outsource this to them and I think I would write them a song list. So I would get them to sing Call Me maybe by Kylie Ray Jepson, which they probably turned down. And then after that I'd say anything from the Scaled and Icy album by 21 Pilots.
Speaker 2 00:36:23 Okay. So outsourcing karaoke. I, I, I hear you. Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 4 00:36:27 <laugh>. And actually if those two friends, if they're not available at any point, <laugh>, you've got two stand-ins right here. Bring Happy. We do take requests.
Speaker 2 00:36:37 <laugh>. Jody, this has been so good to have you on the podcast now I just wanna check if there's anything that we haven't covered that, that you wanted sort of talk about or any sort of final thoughts from you?
Speaker 3 00:36:51 One thing I always find interesting in businessy type podcasts and business books and business articles is that we're always hearing from entrepreneurs and business leaders when they have solved the problem. It's always after. It's always when they've worked through it and when they have come up with the solution and now they're sharing the solution. But sometimes what I find really fascinating is like the, the mid bounce, you know, the before the bounce back mm-hmm. <affirmative> where, so this is, this is what I'm thinking about quite a lot and writing about quite a lot at the moment, but that mid bounce stage where it's, this is a problem I'm working through, like how to start a business the second time around or how to show up online or all those different things. And I don't have the answer yet cause I haven't come up with it, but what I'm sharing is instead of the answer and the method I'm sharing, the framework I'm using to solve the problem.
Speaker 3 00:37:43 So I don't know if that, I don't know if I mean that, I wish you'd asked me that, but I think that it's quite cool to know the challenges that someone is working through at the moment. Yeah. So I love that you said whatever question it was that led to what does the next 10 years look like, which then led to, oh this is something that I'm really confused about at the moment and I'm figuring it out. And I think that's always a really valuable part of different, of different podcasts that I feel give the most value. Cuz you don't always wanna know someone's shiny success story, which is has just got this narrative through it. Anyway, I wanna know, how are you working this, how are you working this answer out?
Speaker 2 00:38:18 So maybe we could actually crowdsource your next business <laugh> and we actually put it in the show show notes and then everyone can like, so if you sort of shared how you are actually gonna tackle the, that particular, um, issue, but then maybe as part of your openness of not sort of knowing what comes next, perhaps people will suggest what the next
Speaker 3 00:38:39 Business is. Yeah, I've got a good idea of the next business. But the thing that I would love if anyone does wanna send me answers or their thoughts on this, I would love to know if you started a business in your twenties and now you're starting a new one in your thirties, what's the shift? What's the shift in mindset that you knew you had to have and how did you do it and how did you think about it differently? Because that would be fascinating.
Speaker 1 00:39:06 You've been listening to Genuine Humans brought to you by the social element. If you loved what you heard, remember to subscribe or you can find out more at www dot the social element agency.
