Speaker #0I wanted to mention that because you know I often share what the weather is like outside or how the season's changing but this is also the reality that we are breaking records in June yet again and I've been thinking a lot about how this will become you the baseline for my children. It's going to get a lot worse than this and I hope that as part of all these conversations that are happening around London Climate Week there is a real emphasis on tangible solutions and not just talk that makes us feel better and I know that many of you are here listening to the podcast because you are seeking that tangible change in your work. You are looking to make a contribution towards that change in whatever way you can and it might feel like that's, you know, still somewhat out of your reach but I just want to take a moment to recognize the fact that you you are choosing a different path. You are aware of the purpose and the impact of your work and that brings me hope and I'm glad that you're here. Okay, let's get into today's episode. I am going to rewind to a much cooler week last week when I was in Cornwall right in the very you far southwest of the UK which is the other side of the country for me so it was um quite a big trip in some sense I had to do a lot of driving um I was doing it on my own there was a lot of navigating some very treacherous winding country roads that were about exactly the same width as my vehicle and I was there to visit incubator farms which are essentially actually lots of different formats, but small areas of land that are made available to people who want to come into farming or who have been farming but don't have their own land. So it's all about sort of access to the land and the ability to get started with farming in a kind of more manageable, less risky way. And I was there as part of the Thank you. platform that I am creating to support small-scale regenerative agriculture which is the big new venture in my life coming out of a long period since I sold my previous company of thinking I didn't want to build again. I was very happy supporting people on their journeys to meaningful work and building impactful businesses but I started to experience the itch again. and I feel so passionately about this sector, about the need for small-scale ecological farming to become financially viable which is my mission that is the work that I am doing alongside the coaching that I do to help other people on their journey to meaningful work and this was really a kind of research exercise and testing my kind of hypotheses and you know getting kind of first hand you information from people who are living the experience of trying to make these farms work and this podcast is not about regenerative agriculture so I'm not going to go into too much detail but what I want to share with you is what that experience was like for me personally and why very often when things feel really hard When it feels like things are kind of becoming just too overwhelming, too exhausting, and we feel that temptation to step away from the pursuit of purposeful work and just go back to something that felt easier, that felt more familiar, that was inside of our comfort zone. Very often when we're in that situation, the breakthrough that we're looking for is just around the corner. And that was exactly the situation that I found myself in on this trip to Cornwall. So if you are in that moment, if you're in that place where you just think, no, this is too hard. I, you know, I've tried to do something that is beyond myself. I've stepped out of sight of a system and it's, it's too lonely. It's too long. I cannot. figure all of this out of my head, I'm going round and round in circles. Stop and take a breath, that is the invitation for this episode and allow the possibility that maybe the hardness that you're feeling is actually a sign that you are about to figure it out, that the insight that you're looking for is about to emerge, that the traction that you have been trying to build. is about to get into motion because I really believe that so often the work that we want is coming when we're doing all of the right things to generate it and we have to hold that faith and we have to keep in motion because we just can't see it yet. So let me take you back to Cornwall and at the end of this two-day trip Honestly, my head was aching. I'd had a lot of conversations. I was with an EU delegation of a lot of incredible farmers and supporters from around the EU. So, you know, meeting lots of new people, hearing about all kinds of different experiences, having really helpful conversations, visiting these different farms, travelling between them. And all the time in my I'm trying to piece together the different bits of knowledge that I'm starting to harvest from this experience and I'm trying desperately to answer this question of how I can play a role in making these kind of farms financially viable. That part was clear, I knew what it was that I wanted to do but I've been experimenting with various different options for how I'm actually going to do that. and it's felt kind of messy. It's felt like, oh, why can't I just sort of pin this down? I feel a little bit embarrassed sometimes when people who are really supportive of what I'm doing check in with me and I'm saying, yep, it's changed again. It's, you know, it's something new. And I really felt with this trip, I was like, I don't know if I can solve this. It's too big. It's kind of systemic and I was a lot of like, you know, who am I to think that I can actually make a difference here? And am I ever going to be able to get all these different pieces of ideas that I've been working on into some kind of coherent whole that I can take to someone's and say, look, this is it. This is the idea I want you to back. This is what I'm going to build. This is what the business looks like. And there was definitely a part of me that felt like, Maybe I just need, you know, to walk away from this. Like, there was a slightly surreal feeling of like, I'm in Cornwall on the other side of the country, visiting farms, spending time with people who are deeply, deeply knowledgeable and immersed in horticulture and agriculture. And, you know, am I just kind of, am I just kind of playing dress up here? You know, am I just playing a role? Or is this real? Can I actually make this happen? Maybe some of these kinds of questions that I'm sharing, the reason I'm kind of trying to give you my internal dialogue here is because, you know, I know that these are the kind of questions that go around in people's heads when they step out of a role that has defined them for a long time and they begin this process of creating their own work and, you know, having an area that they feel passionately about or a problem that they want to solve but not yet knowing exactly what that's going to look like in terms of an offer or a consultancy or a business. It's a very destabilizing and uncomfortable period. I talked a little bit about this last week when I was on location in Cornwall so do go back and have a listen to that episode if you're in that uncomfortable messy space. But here is what happened at the end of the trip. On my way back I decided to take an overnight stop actually in the Cotswolds which is where I grew up and I don't have a lot of opportunity to visit these days and I thought yep that's that's gonna be the perfect place to stay and you know it was a bit of um it felt like a bit of a luxury because part of me also wanted to get back. you know, to my kids and my family. And I'd already sort of taken three days on this trip, but I decided I was going to go and stay in this hotel that I had in mind that is in this really beautiful area nestled in among all the valleys, incredible views, peaceful and quiet. And I got there and I decided I was going to go to dinner. I took myself to dinner, had a very romantic three course dinner with a glass of wine. And it was just me. looking out at the sunset over the valley and I went to bed nice and early. I had a long sleep. I woke up in the morning and I took my notebook down to breakfast. I didn't bring my phone, I didn't bring my laptop, just my notebook and my pen and I sat down and I just started writing and it just started to flow. I kind of put down all the questions in my head and I started making the connections. I started finding the answers in myself and I wrote for at least an hour and I filled page after page after page and suddenly the idea for what I wanted to build just emerged from the page and it clicked for me and it made sense and it fit with my skills and my experience and my background and I thought This is going to be challenging but this is something I can build, this is something I know how to do and I had enough information from those pages that I was able to come home and the next day I was able to do a first draft of the pitch deck which of course will need a bit more work but is something that I can take to my mentor, I can take to investors and I can actually get in motion with. And honestly, if you had asked me if that felt possible at the end of this trip, when my head felt like it was exploding and I was feeling really kind of emotionally overwhelmed by the scale of the task, there's no way that I thought I would get there. I didn't know, how could I possibly know that one evening's kind of space and reflection was going to lead to this kind of mental breakthrough with the work. But looking back, it makes perfect sense to me because I haven't been idle in this. I have been researching. I have been meeting with farmers. I have been trying out ideas with my mentor. I have been pulling it all together. I've been trying out different iterations. All this stuff that I could easily sort of pass off and say, well, it's not actually producing anything it's not making me any money, it's not a real business yet, it's all necessary developmental work and I'm so happy that I stuck with it and it really is a case of that point where it just felt like no this is just too much, I need to walk away. If you can just... Take a breath in that moment and perhaps that breath means like me taking yourself away, finding some space, you know going on a long walk, going and sitting in a museum, taking yourself out for lunch. Take a breath in whatever format you can and see what happens. Trust that the answers that you are looking for, the shape of the work, the offer, that you want to take into the world it is there it is just around the corner if you are putting in if you are putting in the work by which i mean you are you know sitting with difficult questions you are putting attention into the areas that you want to be in you are researching you are trying things out it will come together and i am reminded of a concept that actually my sibling talk to me at a really really pivotal moment in my previous business and it's actually probably quite a well-known concept from Seth Godin which is don't quit in the dip and my sibling has this incredible ability to share things like this at just the moment that I need to hear them and this was with my previous company that I started and I grew across Europe and then I sold. a few years ago to my team, but this was about halfway through that journey. And it was in one of the many moments when I was just finding it really hard and thinking, you know, we're never going to get to where we want to be in the market. And we're not getting the traction that we want with clients. It's not growing fast enough. All of all of the things, all history now. But I remember Brogan saying this to me, don't quit in the dip. And it's so interesting because if I were to kind of chart the course of growth of my previous business and kind of map out that trajectory, they shared that concept with me right at the very bottom of the dip. And I did not quit. And sure enough, very soon after that difficult moment, things started to improve and improve. And no, it was not a perfect. upward trajectory, you know, it was definitely a roller coaster, but the roller coaster was always ultimately heading in the direction that I wanted it to be. And in some ways, I'm lucky this time around with building this new idea, this new venture, because I have that lived experience. I know what it's like to go through those dips and to hold the faith and to feel how things do start to come together. It's a kind of, I was going to say delayed gratification. I don't think that's what I mean. I mean, it's a sort of delayed compounding of results. You know, in my previous company, I was putting in all the right kind of work. We were building our reputation. We were doing great work for clients. We were doing the right kind of marketing. We were hiring the right kind of people. But the results of that is it's always delayed. always a delay and that's often the dip that we can experience. The same thing applies to my trip to Cornwall. You know, I've been doing the research, I've been having the conversations, I've been testing the various ideas. Then I went on this trip and I was right in the dip where all of this work that I've been putting in for several months just felt like it wasn't going anywhere. But of course it was. It was just happening, you know. in my subconscious kind of behind the scenes and I held the faith and it came together and that's my message really to you today because I see this so often with clients particularly clients who have no experience of self-directed work if you have been in a corporate role or even a kind of corporate feeling environment in a conventional employed role, you will, you know, you'll be used to maybe peaks and troughs and stressful periods. You'll, you know, you'll know what it's like when the company is going through a difficult time, but it's not quite the same thing as when it's your own work and your own journey. And you Often what I see happening is that clients who begin to create their own self-directed work, they go through the process with me, they're designing, they're testing, they're coming to launch the business and at some point during that process there will almost certainly be a moment or perhaps even In several moments when they have this wobble and think it's just not working, you know, maybe it's that the idea isn't coming together or the feedback that they're getting from doing market research isn't aligned with what they hoped it would be or they've launched but it's just taking that bit longer than they would really hope. Those are all mini dips on your journey to meaningful self-directed work and of course if you are just passive you you know, if you're sitting back, if you are not doing what you need to do to make this happen, if you're not going through a process, if you're not taking action, then you're not in a dip, you're just, you're, you know, on an exit route. But if you are doing those things, if you are putting in the work, if you are building momentum, if you are trying and iterating and learning and putting new things out there, then you are going to experience that upward trajectory but you've got to find the faith in that difficult moment to trust that is coming and you've got to create this space to let it happen. Remember that the results will come later than the actions that you're taking and that that is hard and it takes patience and it takes faith but it feels wonderful when it comes together and this applies to you even if you are not yet in the process of designing your own self-directed work. You might be still in that corporate role and you're trying to put together an exit plan that feels right, that serves you, that honours the experience that you've had within the organisation and perhaps you're really struggling to bring all those pieces together and you have that feeling of like you I'm never going to be able to get out of this. I'm never going to find a way out of this. Or, you know, maybe you've just left and you don't yet know what it is that you want to build. You don't know the direction that you want to go in and you just feel that kind of lost sense of limbo. Or maybe you're just looking after yourself because you need an extended period of rest to recover from burnout, to recover from the stress of being in a corporate environment. And it can feel like there is no light at the tunnel. You know, I'm not in any kind of forward moving momentum. But I promise you are. I promise you are. If you are giving this your attention, if you are taking action, even if that action means that you are deeply resting, that is all part of the forward momentum. I really hope that you can trust. those difficult periods, those moments when it all starts kind of coming to a head, when it all starts bubbling up, when your head feels like it's going to explode. I don't mean make it harder for yourself. I don't mean pile on the pressure. Absolutely not. I mean just see if you can breathe through it, that you can trust that that difficulty that you are experiencing is something that is percolating. inside you. It's kind of a chemical reaction that is taking place because something is getting born out of that. It's something that is difficult to describe if you have never experienced it, which is really why I wanted to talk about this today, because it breaks my heart that many people will just walk away when the going gets tough, when they start to feel I'm overwhelmed, when they feel like I'm back in this pattern yet again. The reality is that the corporate world of work will start to look very appealing at those times, no matter how much you suffered from it before, no matter how out of sync with your values that work experience was, it's going to call to you as something that feels comfortable and familiar and safe and where you don't have to experience. these kind of growth shifts in your identity. But really just ask yourself the question if that is truly what you want. Because if you can sit with discomfort, if you can take on difficult questions, if you can be willing to try and to learn and to iterate and to evolve, you absolutely can create. Self-directed work that feels deeply meaningful to you personally, but also crucially. actually has impact, actually makes change happen. So when we're having this conversation and we are in a heat wave and it is so clear the necessity of action and change that you can be part of that in whatever way that you can while also supporting yourself and maintaining a you wonderful, rich and supported lifestyle. I believe from the bottom of my heart that that is possible for you. If you can have faith, if you can move through that discomfort, if you can take a breath and let it come forward. I really hope that the energy of this episode is landing with you. It is really coming from my heart because I have you lived this experience in many different work situations and I know what can happen when you can hold the faith. I also know how very, very hard it is to do that alone and that is why I am here. I am available as your guide and companion and accountability. partner on that journey. I am available to provide structure when it feels chaotic. I am here to be able to help you take those practical steps and move through a process that makes this that little bit more controllable and effective and a little bit faster. So if you would like to discuss my process and how I can support you in your journey to meaningful work. please go ahead and book a free discovery call. You'll find the link in the show notes and let's get to know each other there. Thanks for listening. And hopefully a little cooler next week. I will see you back here on the podcast for another episode.
