From winning a pizza-making competition at school through his partying years to a surprise Michelin star, Brad seems to relish constraints using them to make things his own. This includes his restaurant Carters, the one-star doner bar, Psychedelic Jam, and much more.  

Boff grew up in Burnley, in a Morman family. 

He embraced the art and punk scenes, experimented with different types of music, and with his anarchist mates from the squat formed Chumbawumba which became famous for Tubthumping and pouring water over John Prescott at the 1998 Brits. 

Chumbawumba, unusually, seem to have navigated their way through an industry with their values intact. 

It's a fascinating story where Boff and others seem to have found a way to balance being oneself with being part of a group . . . and thrived.

Don't try and put Derek in a box.

I discovered Derek's 'How to start a movement' Ted Talk over 10 years ago and have been recommending it ever since. It was a real pleasure to speak with him. He seems very clear that he learns from the people he respects and the material they recommend but it seems to me the lessons unlock something he already knows. He's not a man to change his mind because someone simply tells him something.

I've enjoyed every conversation on this podcast (at least all those we've released) but this was a little bit special. There are some useful take-outs - the power we all have to influence others if we're respected. The influence of negative motivation in our lives or put another way "I'm not going to be like him or her". In Derek's case he was driven to not be like the best musicians at school, who very early on traded the chance of doing what they loved, for a day job. There are many other take-outs for me but the biggest was sort of left hanging which is understandable given it's the subject of the book Derek's in the middle of writing. 

It seems to me his thesis is that we can benefit from adjusting the threshold for beliefs from 'being true' to 'being useful'. To me, this makes huge sense. "True" sounds permanent, unwavering, and inflexible. "Useful" sounds impermanent, adjustable, and flexible.

Our beliefs are a product of our history. Growing up we inherit them from the people around us and if we're awake and noticing and not on auto-pilot, our experiences provide us with the opportunity to shape or change them. But . . . what if we understood that the key is behavioural flexibility which simply explains that taking risks is often useful but sometimes playing it safe is the way to go, being assertive is useful and sometimes letting others assert themselves is the best approach, planning ahead is useful and sometimes spontaneous is . . . and so on. 

It seems clear to me that Derek's next book is a step on from his last book "How to live", which he describes as a book of conflicting philosophies. If you're into the world of polarities or duality you'll recognize the link. 

Derek describes himself as a pop philosopher but he's just a philosopher. He didn't consider the academic route and we're all the better for that. The constraints would have choked him before he got to the first corner. 

As with all good dialogue, this conversation left me with as many questions as it did answers. I hope we get a chance to continue the conversation.

Enjoy "Derek Sivers: The usefulness of opposites" 

Links from this Episode

• derek@sivers.org
• Derek's Website https://sive.rs/ 
• Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
• HELL YEAH! Or No. by Derek Sivers
• Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins
• Almost Perfect by Erika Lemay

He says "I'm at my best when I’m on the edge of not quite knowing what I’m doing". Amen to that, I think we all are. We can only grow when we're pushed, when we step into the unknown. Steve talks here about working in a factory, social loafing, our addiction to expertise, embodying 'not knowing', the beginner's mind, silent podcasts, rumblings of discontent, helpful bosses, feelings being real, quantum flirting, safe uncertainty, child-like enthusiasm, comedy, money, learning to live below his means and more.

To me, Steve is a great example of someone who has and continues to, trust his gut. He has swapped financial security for more meaningful, experimental work. He fully understands that with the joy of this approach comes despair but he also knows it comes in waves. 

Steve is an adventurer. He experiments, He wins and loses and does his best to practice letting go, noticing more and using everything.

Enjoy 'Steve Chapman - exploring the counter-intuitive'

Want to know whether scorpions can smoke or not? You'll find the answer here too.

It's a practical guide for leaders who want to grow profit and have a positive impact on the world.

Included in the book:

• Examples of inspiring businesses that have embedded purpose in their DNA, and who are making it work.
• The '7 Ps' - a systematic approach to making your business more purpose-led and profitable at the same time.
• The case for "doing more": why all business leaders have their role to play, and why it is never too late to begin.

Find out more here: https://www.bbopbook.com

Pieter is hard to describe if you’re after an old-world description. He’s most certainly a business guy and a software developer guy but he works remotely, sometimes he charges for his creations, sometimes he doesn’t. He practices radical honesty with himself and others. He’s unafraid to experiment, to play and learned as a student that doing something different can have unexpected and very rewarding consequences.

He works with a few trusted friends but creatively he’s the man. 

Neil has been telling me for six months that a conversation with Pieter would be fun and interesting. He was right. Pieter is in charge of himself, he’s not going with the flow unless it serves him. He’s not short of money but doesn’t own a home and his laptop seems to be as extravagant as it gets.

He keeps things simple and for someone so successfully immersed in the world of digital, has a level of self-awareness that ensures he spends time IRLing. For the uninitiated (as I was before this conversation) IRL stands for In Real Life, which means no screens just doing stuff out there in the real world. Amen to that.

Pieter seems to be on a quest to find the joy in life but fully understands that what brings joy today may not be what brings joy tomorrow. It’s all an adventure. 

Enjoy - Pieter Levels - Thinking and doing for yourself

The idea that there were other ways to do things stuck . .  so when it came to joining the world of work, Steph started to question the model of get a job, go to the job, keep the job and climb the career ladder. She started to experiment with a whole heap of different remote working jobs. Got herself a job with a fully remote company, flew to live in Scotland and she’s been working remotely ever since. 

Fully understanding that remote working was possible allowed Steph to question the other narratives in her life. If I can work remotely what else is possible?

Steph avoids pigeon-holing herself. She is very clear that what she does for work today may not be what she does for work tomorrow. She avoids using her job title because she knows other people will use that to define her.

Steph’s nature is now one where she questions the status quo but If you think that Steph is happy taking risks you’d be wrong. Steph explores different ways of living life but she does it carefully, cautiously. She does it in small steps but importantly for Steph, she’s constantly checking that a missed step won’t result in falling too far.

If the life done differently that Steph seeks is on another metaphorical island. Steph does a heap of research before she sets off and then she rows, then she checks the boat is in perfect working order, then she rows, then she checks the boat, then she rows and so on.

Other people might get in and row like hell but Steph isn’t interested in getting there quickly, she’s just interested in getting there.

Rosie builds communities and has done so for more than 15 years. It includes the Sherry community of Rosie, Graham and their 5 kids aged 17 to 3 - none of whom go to school. 

It’s not that Rosie is looking to rebel. It's just that she seems to be clear about how she wants to spend her time and a conventional path would not allow her to live life, her way. So she designs her own made to measure life with little or no reference to the way most people live theirs. 

Rosie’s approach is one where she just does stuff. If she enjoys doing it, she’ll spend more time doing it and then, because she’s spending the time she works out how to get paid to do it. 

Rosie is half Columbian, half Irish, sounds Scottish, was born in London, grew up in London, Indonesia and  Columbia, moved back to London with no qualifications because she avoided school and now as a reaction to her unsettled childhood, has settled near Brighton on the South Coast of the UK. 

She had an entrepreneurial and spiritual mother and a father whose life was changed by an accident. It resulted in financial insecurity but the upside was that along with her brother, Rosie was forced to be independent. It seems her kids are pretty independent too. Their unschooling, as Rosie calls it, requires them to self-direct their own learning, with a little nudge from Mum or Dad here and there. The set-up means their kids teach each other but it’s still a time-consuming endeavour.

Rosie’s clear that successful communities are places where there’s trust, a common goal or set of interests and a way to simplify things. She’s also a big believer that communities can solve most problems.

Rosie works on herself. Like all of us, she doubts she can achieve things but doubt does not prevent her from taking steps forward. She tries to remain positive. She believes things can change. 

Financial security is important, it’s a reaction to the financial insecurity of childhood. And because it’s important and she has the ability to change herself, and although she is by no means rich, she does now have enough security to do what she wants to do, what she’s passionate about. She is not afraid to lose her job or quit a job if it means doing what she wants to do.

Easier said than done. It took her 4 years to leave her own company, the £1m + revenue - Ministry of Testing

This conversation got me thinking. What can we do when we realise a job has reached the end of its natural life?

Option 1 - We can hand in our notice and have faith that something will turn up. All well and good if you’ve squirrelled away a war chest that allows you time to find the next positive step but the fear of not being able to pay your rent or mortgage can force us to leap from the frying pan into the fire of another unsuitable job.

Option 2 - We can stay where we are and save. This is a real option. If you know why you’re doing a job (to save money or acquire skills for example) it helps us to get out of bed in the morning. I imagine prisoners of war planning their escape have better mental health than those who are resigned to their fate.

Option 3 - We can be open-minded about where we live and the lifestyle we live. There are always less expensive ways to live. Kids and other relationships don’t always make this easy but accommodation is much more flexible these days, if you are. We’ve had conversations with quite a few nomads who work as they travel. In many senses it’s about working out what we’re prepared to let go of in order to grow. 

If I’m not prepared to make any sacrifices in return for a better working life or a better life in general then I’ll struggle to change. But letting go of this and that, might not be as painful as I imagine. In fact, my experience is that letting go of one story and replacing it with a better story, a story about what’s important and what’s not, is an uncomfortable process but not as uncomfortable as continuing to value stories or ways of behaving that fail to serve me. This process is me surfing the edge of my comfort zone. Resmaa Menakem, author of ‘my grandmothers hands’ talks about the uncomfortableness of change as clean pain and the uncomfortableness of avoiding change as dirty pain.  

The problem with avoiding change is that it becomes a rut, that becomes deeper and deeper, more and more difficult to get out of. Confronting your rut early is helpful and flirting with what you could do differently is often enough to climb out.

I love Rosie’s approach. She experiments. She does what she wants to do and then she finds a way to make it work financially. She started her newsletter Rosie.land and got frustrated with her ability to build a writing habit, so she turned it into a paid newsletter which left her no choice but to write on a regular basis. Making yourself accountable to someone or an audience is a good way of encouraging change. 

She is so aware. The choices she and her family make are not necessarily the ones you or I would make but every decision she makes seems to be done with care, and because she is unafraid of the path less travelled, there are plenty of options..

It’s not easy. She is not prepared to play the games many of us play and as a consequence has to invent her own which means her spare time is extremely limited. She does what she can to combine things. Childcare and running for example. You might see it as hard work but Rosie is coherent, she does what she thinks is important to do.    

Enjoy Rosie Sherry - Reckless Mother 

In part, Neil & I enjoyed this because Mills is from a world we understand pretty well. It’s a world that’s exploded in the last 25 years or so. A world where creativity meets technology, a world where innovation is valued, where work and play, and an excess of both, is baked-in to most successful start-ups because it’s a world full of young people. 

And then there comes a point a few years later, where the founders of these successful businesses, have to make a decision. They have to move from the playful, hard-working, youthful chaos of the start-up to the order, discipline and structure required to keep this beast of an organisation stable.

The last thing anyone wants is for people to lose their jobs because the company isn’t being run properly. This process is the process of organisational change but unlike organisational change in large companies where ‘change’ is swapping one flavour of order for another. This is swapping chaos for order. This is a massive challenge because many of the people that have made it successful are the creatives, the right-brain thinkers who are not huge fans of left-brain thinking aka order. 

These ways of thinking or lenses through which we look at things are ostensibly the same: left-brain logical and right-brain creative, chaos and order, certainty and uncertainty, rational and emotional - the list goes on.

These ways of thinking are as old as stories themselves. Jordan Peterson has been a big part of the reason that the idea of chaos and order has come to the fore most recently and whilst I think these terms are appropriate for Mills’ story I’m unconvinced they’re the best language to use when thinking about moving towards a life done differently because order sounds positive and chaos does not.

We prefer to use the lens of the known and the unknown where chaos is the unacceptable end of the unknown and a rut is the unacceptable end of the known.  

It will become fairly obvious fairly on in this conversation that Mills has a preference, he thrives in the unknown and can cope in what most people would call chaos. I get the impression Sinx is the yang to Mills’ yin or he’s certainly had to find a way to play that role which is how ultimately made is through to the point where they have grown up companies that operate without the day to day involvement of Mills, who like many of us has come out the other side wondering what his purpose is. 

Mills calls it three years of introspection trying to find happy again, working hard to let go of his ego. His Investor Deck is a brilliant example of how Mills does things his own way. He cares what people think but being his truer self is more important. His journey is a good old-fashioned quest to find himself.

His personality, he says, is one of never being satisfied with what I’ve achieved. Finding himself is the ultimate challenge and given Mills’ ability to get comfortable with the uncomfortable I’m sure he’ll get there, at least, in part.  

Mills went more extreme with ustwo because he thought that would make him happy - he told himself the story that his devotion to building a successful company was for his family but his wife isn’t so sure and as of now, nor is he. 

I don’t think you’ll listen to someone who is more honest and open with their thinking and where they’re at with their life.

In terms of moving towards a life done differently, Neil and I believe very strongly that this openness with oneself and others is step one, being bold and brave is step two and with this, you have a good chance of becoming or finding yourself.

Enjoy ‘Mills - Finding Myself’ 

https://www.ustwo.com/
https://www.monumentvalleygame.com/mv2
https://www.barneythehorse.com

Emile has spent most of his working life with the distinct feeling that he wasn’t doing what he was meant to do. This is Emile’s very frank story of his struggles with anxiety and his search for meaning. 

Emile’s willingness and determination to paint the real authentic picture of his life is what I appreciated most about our conversation. He does anything but suggest he has life nailed, but it is the hero’s journey, albeit he’s not returned home yet - he’s had that rock-bottom moment which arrived a few years ago after a sleepless night and a 90-minute hill climb with friends. His conclusion, at the top of that hill was that he had to change what he was doing, and he had to do it that day, because, to use Emile’s words 

“If I don’t commit to something else now, regardless of whether it’s going to make me any money or not, I’m going to end up in a mental institute, I’m going to have a breakdown.” 

It was the culmination of 10 years of “Melancholy March”, Emile’s annual existential crisis of meaning. He describes the feeling as:

“You know you need to do something different, but it’s so incredibly hard to do when all you know is the thing that you’ve always done”

He was trying really hard to find the thing he loved but he didn’t know what he loved. All he knew was what he was doing made him unhappy and anxious and wasn’t making the most of his life.

He talks about great ideas revealing themselves, that they don’t appear when you actively seek them. 

“When you’re sitting there stressed out, upset, telling yourself you’ve got to do something else. That thing isn’t going to come because you’re pushing too hard for it.

I’m mildly obsessed with Alan Watts at the moment and Emile’s experience sounds very much like his ‘backwards law’ - whatever it is you want; money, love, security, happiness or something else - it’s the idea that the more you want something, the more effort you make trying to acquire it, the more you’re amplifying the feeling that you lack it in the first place and  

How many people have you heard say “As soon as I’d stopped looking for a partner . . . it happened”

The flipside of this also seems to work. Stop fighting the negative experience and it becomes a positive experience. It’s a longer conversation for another day but this it seems, is what Emile was talking about when he says living in a simpler place with less stuff means it’s harder to escape your daemons, you don’t have the toys, bars, restaurants, clubs, cinemas and other distractions that do the job of numbing the negative feelings - anxiety, pain, suffering, whatever you call them. 

It seems that Emile subconsciously put himself in a position where he could no longer avoid his daemons, his shadow, his negativity, the suffering. I’d suggest that ‘no longer avoiding’ was the turning point on top of the hill, when he decided to take action, when he embraced his shadow and this is what flipped his anxiety from negative to positive because he’d now come to terms with himself and as a result could now move towards something, rather than away from something.   

This positive anxiety is anticipation or excitement. It’s the nervousness we all feel when we take on a challenge. The impact is very different from the negativity of fear but it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference, particularly in the early stages. Emile did notice the difference and has created a bit of momentum.

He’s not there yet but he will get there. 

Emile’s message is “Can’t find what you’re looking for? Let go and give it space to reveal itself.

Enjoy, Emile Bennett - Letting Go 

https://www.lubelknives.com/ 

https://www.getpennies.com/

https://www.mindjournals.com/

Boarding school from the age of six is a mixed blessing. It's certainly not what he wanted for his children put it that way. Philosophy and Physics at Oxford followed school and then into KPMG to become an Accountant and that's when he started to make up his own mind. The obvious path was to fit in and work his nuts off for the next ten to fifteen years and become a partner.  Two weeks after qualifying, at the moment his salary would have doubled, he left because he could see the future and it meant becoming someone he didn't want to become.

What followed has been a career of curiosity. A few years at the House of Commons before leaving to spend three months on a silent retreat in North Wales which alerted him to the fact he's got one crack at life. The dark bit was confronting himself and his conclusion that "there are things that are real and there are things that are illusory and I wanted to live in a way that makes sense of what's real. I do not want to have regrets."

Charles' comments remind me of Bronnie Ware's work. Bronnie Ware worked in palliative care. Her patients we those who had gone home to die. She was with them in their last three to twelve weeks of their life. Conversations in those final weeks were highly emotional. When asked about any regrets or what they would have done differently, common themes surfaced again and again. The most common regret was "I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

Charles has that courage. The confidence to know when it's time to move on. The confidence to overcome imposter syndrome. The confidence to step into the unknown.

After his retreat, Charles, worked for Institute of Fiscal Studies where he was the guy who knew nothing about economics and then having met a nun, he ended up in the God business, working for Cardinal Basil Hume. This role and his affection for Hume satisfied his curiosity for eleven years at which point he stepped into the unknown again. This time it was business. More specifically a Blueprint for Better Business which he's been leading since 2011.

In Spring 2022 Charles steps down as CEO to go on another, as yet undecided adventure. Don't be surprised if you see him on The Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury sometime soon 😉

https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/
https://www.blueprintforbusiness.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Beuno%27s_Jesuit_Spirituality_Centre

I've enjoyed every conversation we've had on this podcast but these two conversations with Junior have remained in my mind longer than any others and I think that's happened because I'm simply blown away by the speed at which Junior was able to use prison as his turning point. 

I've thought about his journey in so many different ways and every time I end up thinking about his ability to build bridges when others were building walls . . .  and that's what leaders do.

Junior is a leader. 

Enjoy . . Junior Smart OBE - Leader

If you don't believe people can change, listen to this. This is a story about the power of belonging. A need we all have to belong to a group. A lesson in how we often attach importance to the wrong things and end up in the wrong group, the wrong Club. It's a lesson in how, with an open mind and good people in your support team, you can change beyond your imagination. 

Juniors levels of self-awareness are stratospheric when compared to the frickin mess he describes himself as in his early twenties.

From giving away his personal power to taking it, from toxic masculinity to the Tedx stage . . . it's quite a journey . . . this is a story about leading yourself . . . this is Part 1 

This conversation is a good example. It's a conversation with Matt & Lucia, husband and wife, both professional singers, parents to Persephone, neighbours of my friends Caramel & Roger and most recently the creative and operational geniuses behind mini music makers which are fun, energetic, educational music classes for pre-school kids.   

Back in March, both Matt's & Lucia's incomes dried up overnight. This is the story of what the business world calls a pivot but it's so much more than that.

It's really a lesson in both fighting and rolling with the punches. 

Matt and Lucia are very different. Matt was born with huge talent, Lucia worked hard to develop hers. Matt, the teenager, rebelled. Lucia didn't need to. Lucia's parents encouraged her to follow her dreams. Matt's parents less so. Matt is lazy, Lucia wants to be.  These differences, together with a shared vision are probably why they're such a good team.

Matt has achieved more in music than most people even dream of but he doesn't like to say he's a professional musician . . . because he's been this since he was 9 years of age. He really wants to do something different but money and more have been barriers.

He says "I feel guilty that I've found music so easy . . . I could always just do it . . . but I didn't make the decision to be a singer . . . it just happened"

Lucia seems unafraid to change her story. She spent her childhood dreaming of becoming a professional opera singer and as soon as the box was ticked, moved on to become a music educator.
 
Matt's teenage motto of "there must be more to life than this" is still there. He seems to have nailed curiosity but hasn't quite yet converted it into the life done differently he's looking for . . . . . but a huge nudge from Covid and an old story or two swapped for new ones, continued support from Lucia . . . and they'll be in a Costa Rican jungle dressed as Shady the Racoon.

The lesson I've learned from Matt and Lucia is that to get where you want to go you have to decide when it's time to fight and when it's time to roll with the punches. It seems to me you have to fight when you have a plan and energy . . . . and you need to roll with the punches and see what happens when you don't.

It works for Covid too. Embrace the chaos rather than fight it. When change happens you can hang on to what was if you want . . . . but you're better off saying to yourself. It's changed I've got to change.

When am I going to be able to go back to the way it was before? is not a healthy response . . . because there's no knowing when or if that will ever happen.

Enjoy Matt & Lucia Long - I'm actually an opera singer

https://minimusicmakers.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=mini%20music%20makers
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMArwTF8UQ8amxrP8NAkdRw
http://matthew-long.co.uk/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turn_of_the_Screw

Ben's awareness of business was there from an early age.  Both his Grandad and Dad were property entrepreneurs and this feeling that he needed to take personal responsibility or control of his life seemed to be a reaction to his parent's separation.   

He was good at numbers and so business or banking seemed a natural option but he realised early on that he didn't want to go down the corporate consultancy route and so, like many of us do, he followed a friend - in Ben's case on to the start-up bus where he started his own entrepreneurial journey in the form of One Pink Elephant which took him to China and then Los Angeles.

Ben was telling himself the 'Let's make loads of money' story and then at 21, Ben lost his 53-year-old father to suicide. Ben had spoken to his father the previous day and it was a shock like no other. Ben had always seen his father as a man full of fun, charm and character and seems to have been the moment Ben realised that what you see is nothing like the full story.

Ben describes his feeling of being utterly lost, having no idea how to deal with it himself and so he spent time being there for other people. Then he spoke to counsellors, then he started to understand the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and then acceptance) 

During this Ben went to China. He'd always wanted to go there because he'd studied Mandarin at school and what Ben noticed was that China and the Chinese culture is sooo different. Not better or worse just very very different - the way things are done is different at a fundamental level - it's China's differentness that inspires (check out Episode 5 with Oliver Dall for another example of how China inspires).

Ben has a mindset that if someone else can do something, he can do it too. Ben seems to follow through on most of what he says he's going to do because he perseveres. A good example of this is Ben's Ted Talk in Mandarin.
 
He talks about a fulfilled life being one with gratitude, purpose and meaning. He talks about happiness as love.

It's hard to imagine listening to Ben's story that his father's suicide wasn't the single biggest moment to date but like many other people we've spoken to on this podcast, Ben has reacted to this rock-bottom moment and created a turning point. Somehow, he's managed to, eventually create something positive out of the chaos.

Ben has worked in suicide prevention and has overcome what he describes as his biggest challenge and that's his 'When I have this' addiction. He says "I believed I had to be successful myself before I could help people - if that's the way one thinks you'll never be qualified because there's always something more to be achieved - if that's the attitude you will never get there because there's so much to learn you'll never be qualified"

Like me, Ben is inspired by Bronnie Ware's 'Five Regrets of the Dying'. What is it that really matters in life?

He talks about the benefits of noticing what's actually happening and the need to balance a 'gratitude for what you have' with 'the wonder of what could be'.

We talk about Goals as Direction - he says "don't become too attached to the result you're looking for because the result you have in mind is there to provide you direction and rarely something to be achieved".

He's spot on. If any of you have achieved those goals you set out to achieve you'll know that the moment of achievement is there only briefly - before you know it gone, replaced by another mountain to climb.

The bit I personally found most enlightening was Ben's take on relationships. He talks about the six expressions of love being; food, gifts, positive words, acts of service, physical touch and quality time. This insight that we all value different things is gold-dust and as awkward as it may feel, regularly asking the questions.

What can I do this week to make you feel loved? & When did you feel most loved?

This something I'm going to try.

At one point Ben says "Doing something different enables me to notice what's happening. It slows life down so I can enjoy it".

Enjoy Ben Ivey - when did you feel most loved?

https://www.ben-ivey.com/
https://www.tonyrobbins.com/stories/unleash-the-power/discover-your-peak-state/
https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/
https://www.kylebenson.net/make-a-relationship-last/
https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80102204?source=35

Thank you to Tom for a thoroughly enjoyable conversation. As you've probably noticed, our title for Tom is 'The Reluctant Adventurer'.

For Tom, adventure is a reaction to boredom, not the primary motivation.

It seems clear that Tom's parents and his wealth of experiences as a child played a role in shaping him. I loved hearing about the VCR and blueberry hustles. I loved the way he dealt so nonchalantly with the move from Poland to the US, gunshots in his hallway, rarely seeing his parents and customer service punch-ups at school. I get it, it was simply the way things were.

For me, the inspiring bit is when he starts to get dissatisfied with his trajectory when he starts to make his own path. I wish I'd been smart enough to hack the school software system and pass my exams in two months rather than the usual four years - it would have saved me and my teachers a lot of pain!

I see Tom's unwillingness to go with the flow as taking personal responsibility for his own life. Tom's realisation that he was trying to live other peoples stories and not his own seems to be such an important one. There are so many of us who simply go with the flow and end up being a part of someone else's else story, always feeling something's not quite right.

It's interesting to hear about Tom's unwillingness to be a part of the crowd, to be unique or as he describes 'finding the third door'. I'm in no doubt it's what's delivered entrepreneurial success and I think the way he compares himself today with himself yesterday is infinitely better than comparing yourself to someone else.

As Oscar Wilde says "Be yourself, everyone else is taken."

Tom's life now seems quite different from his life a few years ago. It sounds like he's starting to reap the dividends of all that investment in learning, in failure, in different jobs, in meeting different people from different cultures and different industries. It sounds like he's taken the best of what he learned and experienced and transformed it into a series of healthy habits and routines that, with discipline, deliver the consistent results he's looking for.

In our terms, his early years were spent voraciously exploring the unknown, albeit reluctantly! Now, he seems to have found more of a balance between the known and the unknown.

I can see Tom will always be curious to some extent or another but it's so interesting to hear him describe the way he stops himself from getting distracted. For people like Tom who feel comfortable in the unknown, this is a big challenge. New ideas can often feel so much more interesting than maintenance.

It all seems to come together in his bus metaphor. Serial entrepreneurs get on a bus and stay on for a few stops before switching to the bus where people look richer and happier. This process continues when you're a hustler, you never stay on any bus for very long, you never stick at anything, you never go deep into anything.

Tom's trick has been to notice the dissatisfaction, explore alternative paths, pick the one that works for him and repeat until he feels that twinge of dissatisfaction again.

As Tom and Jocko Willink say "Routines free you."

To some people, it might sound like Tom's wrestling with, on one hand, the value of routines versus the value of adventure but it isn't like that.

Routines and adventure work together as interdependent pairs like inhaling and exhaling. There's no point in mastering inhaling without giving equal attention to exhaling. The way we think about these things is balance.   

With balance in mind, I hope Tom works out how to feel a contentment from what he's already achieved and balance it with the desire to move forward.

I'm sure his small group of family and friends will help him along the way.

Thanks again Tom for all the insights.

Cheers

Ray & Neil

https://smartbrandmarketing.com/ 
https://smartbrandmarketing.com/tom-libelt/
https://www.tonyrobbins.com/
https://jockopodcast.com/

I'm sure that year shaped Clare but I have very little doubt that Clare was born to rebel. Her childhood was characterised by instability and change. She learned to cope with the unknown. As an adult with her own mind, she is still unafraid of the unknown. She is unafraid of the consequences of her actions because she's experienced the likely consequences before . . . and survived. Being arrested doesn't faze someone whos spent time in the notorious Top Shop Hilton. 

Clare's childhood doesn't seem good enough to me. I think she deserved better. She's worked hard to understand what happened but what occurs to me is that this not good enough childhood might just be the very thing that's given her the ability to shock, to wake us up, to help us notice. 

In her work with XR, the job is to wake us up to what's happening to the planet.

It seems to me the risk is too great for no action. Hindsight won't be an option. And why not work together to clean things up?  

Why not shout about it if that's what you do so well?

Enjoy Clare Farrell - Rebellion

We talked to Clare about:

• Claire's estranged relationship with her much older Dad
• Having the wrong accent
• The moment she lost trust in her family
• Watching her mum get ill and die 
• Going into a state of numbness when her Mum died
• Having to grow up quickly
• How she justified her thoughts of self-harm 
• Becoming a surrogate Mum to her little brother
• Living in Middlesborough next door to armed robbers, heroin dealers and heroin addicts 
• Being surrounded by people who'd also suffered childhood trauma because they understood each other
• Finding out your boyfriend's gay
• Arriving in London in a state of serious trauma
• Mistaking openness for weakness
• Bailing on the commercial fashion world
• The benefits of desperation if it leads to asking for help (rock-bottom)  
• Becoming a much better version of herself thanks to a very special therapist
• Learning to become more compassionate to herself
• The culture of the fashion industry
• The plethora of gross bosses
• Being told 'sustainable' wasn't something that would work in fashion
• 'Sustainable Fashion' by its very nature being an oxymoron 
• The destructive nature of Capitalism
• Her Dad's advice to do something she enjoyed
• The protest/art project she organised in a Top Shop store
• Getting banged up in the Top Shop jail
• Buy Nothing Day
• Space Hijackers
• Disrupting the daily life of people
• Shaking people awake
• How Clare's rebelliousness developed 
• How age has mellowed the rebel
• Extinction Rebellion
• Teaching fashion  
• Money
• Risks
• Forgiveness
• Some people walk on by, some people take personal responsibility
• Heading toward environmental catastrophe
• When comfortable becomes uncomfortable
• The impossibleness of maintaining the status quo 
• Clare's relationship with 'hope'
• The challenges of activism
• How our planet is the thing that can bring us together

Extinction Rebellion
Reverand Billy
Space Hijackers
Vigilante-hippie-six-wheeled-riot-tank
David Wallce-Wells

• The wasted years of her life and how she started to doubt people were good
• Noticing she was angry with herself and everyone around her
• The point at which she decided not to be angry
• How she became braver, how she started to change
• How the simple act of liking an instagram post became the first step of her journey 
• The importance of her friends who act as her support team
• The moment when she realised she was strong 
• Her brother's suggestion to make a list of the things she wanted to do
• The difference between confidence and self-esteem
• How getting out of her comfort zone gives her confidence
• How liberating it can be to take your clothes off in public
• What happens when you bring what you want and what you need together

La Bordello Boheme Burlesque
The Walrus Pub Brighton

• Growing up in Swansea
• The problem of doing what you want on your wedding day - when others want you to go with the flow (one week after this conversation Damian was getting married Vegas) 
• Moving to New York
• The problem of describing what he does; Musician v Builder of Businesses
• The creativity of building businesses 
• When he gets bored it's time to move on
• Being a five-star failer
• Good drummers = good videographers
• Playing Wembley Arena & Hyde Park 
• Meeting your heroes
• Being paid to do what you love
• Failing all his GCSE's
• Joining a band
• Signing a record deal and the anticipation of becoming a rock star
• The 9 months of anticipation being followed by being dropped by the record label  
• Getting a job in the local shampoo factory
• Realising that he didn't want to get used to a very boring job
• Why everyone should do a very boring job
• Reacting to rock-bottom
• Being more scared of staying at the shampoo factory than he was scared of the unknown
• Understanding that failure isn't fatal
• Finding his 'lane' which is working very hard to overcome any lack of talent 
• Competing with himself not others 
• Why he doesn't want to look back on his life and wish he'd done something different
• Why life is like a computer game 
• Money is like oxygen - you don't really care about it until it's gone
• One holiday in his 20's
• What are holidays?
• Having a Dad with no ambition whatsoever and reacting to that
• Taking personal responsibility 
• Contentment v Ambition
• His very supportive mum
• Having a Stepdad who introduced fun and was a big influence on his life
• Sliding doors moments
• The importance of the mentors in his life, particularly Bruce Dickinson
• When 'Why Not?' is the answer
• The amazing Princes Trust 
• Going to Rock School
• The different lenses through which we look at life and why alternative lenses are essential for growth
• The importance of doubting that your stories are the only important stories 
• When snow forced Damian to move from Rock School student to Rock School teacher
• When Damian became the Rock School's Sales & Marketing Manager 
• Following/stalking his mentor Bruce and how they set up their own music college (BIMM)  
• Damian's focus on giving students the best music education possible
• How in the first 3 years students were involved in 24 Top 40 hits (including the Kooks)
• The importance of remembering students names (and at the height taking 3 weeks to remember 1,000 students names)
• How the scale of BIMM became a problem
• Leaving BIMM 
• How becoming a millionaire was overshadowed by a sense of failure
• Losing confidence
• The 'what next?' moment  
• Feeling like Jason Orange
• Going back to the comfort of his bass guitar
• Learning to sing and having too much work
• Starting to manage bands and having to employ people to help out
• How learning is a confidence builder
• His Mum's words 'do it while you can'
• Unwittingly becoming the social media guy
• The irony of being asked to write a book when the last book he'd read was Fantastic Mr Fox
• Writing 'Fuck Plan B' which became 'The rulebreakers guide to social media' 
• Understanding that both success and failure are fleeting and just part of the game 
• The importance of doubting the stories you tell yourself when the story is that you can't do something
• The importance of creating meaningful experiences or 'legacy' 
• Damian's next adventure and why it feels like he's burning the ships 

BIMM
Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
https://www.youtube.com/user/Damiankeyes

• the importance of articulating a vision when you're working in a team
• the move from graphic designer to Adventurer
• the move from adventurer to community leader
• not wanting to wait for the bad thing to happen before making changes to his life
• being a fortunate kid
• having 18 different addresses by the time he was 18 (because his Dad was in the RAF)
• not needing to make long-term friends because he was going to move on
• being physically and mentally bullied at school
• when football isn't enough
• planning his suicide 
• feeling there was something important inside waiting to get out
• the deliberate act of escaping home so he could grow up
• beginning to understand the importance of long-term relationships
• understanding that nobody else cares what you do, you have to make it happen
• university life 
• becoming a football entrepreneur 
• becoming a writer, storyteller and maker of small films
• teaching himself graphic design so he didn't have to make the trip across town
• being lost/having no direction
• feeling there was something more to life
• his 'crossing the threshold' moment 
• the first step being late for work
• understanding he had a negative approach to live 
• starting to say yes instead of no
• starting to explore the town in which he lived
• the benefits of a cardboard programmer
• wanting to impress himself
• his habit of not spending very much
• the skateboard that became the turning point
• breaking Jack Smith's world record for the longest journey by skateboard
• understanding it's not what you earn, it's what you don't spend
• understanding that the feeling of being alive comes with higher highs and lower lows and that it's worth it
• the importance of taking small steps / one day at a time
• the importance of focusing on what you want to achieve NOT what you want to avoid
• post-trip book writing depression
• the joy of being in nature
• finding the things that bring him joy in life
• turning pub ideas into reality
• ten years living out of a rucksack
• combating post-expedition depression with expedition 1000 - having the next thing to look forward to
• paddleboarding the Mississippi with alligators
• wild camping  
• Yestival, a festival where people share their stories of adventure.
• how one step leads to another
• why an 'existing life' isn't enough

  https://sayyesmore.com/

• Studying the stoner's degree that is music technology
• Not feeling he could focus enough to become a professional singer-songwriter
• Swapping music tours for travelling
• Enjoying the creative process
• Going to the Happy Startup School Summercamp five years previously when first looking to leave employment
• On the travelling bug and finding the places that other people don't
• Having a Mum and Dad who encouraged adventure
• The importance of a 'Buddy' (Nicola in Kim's case) when stepping outside a comfort zone 
• Wanting to be a pioneer
• Travelling to Central America not understanding that no one speaks English
• Almost leaving Central America because it was too daunting
• On the words of Warren who becomes Kim's Central American Mentor "don't be soft"
• The kindness of strangers
• The fine line between trusting and being wary of strangers  
• The adventure of moving from Bognor Regis to Brighton
• Being a confident version of himself and getting his first career job in social media 
• Becoming bored and selling everything to go on another adventure when life was perfectly comfortable
• His obsession with islands
• Finding the edge's of the territory in which he's just arrived
• Not wanting to miss out on an experience 
• The moment he realised he wasn't going to get another job again
• Arriving back in the UK with no money
• Living on a leaky boat with nappies on the ceiling to collect the drips 
• The need for resilience when making a transition (for Kim, from employment to self-employment) 
• Starting the adventure company 'Unknown Epic'
• The importance of direction / a goal when trying to make decisions
• Becoming a coach to friends who struggle to step outside their comfort zone
• The extent to which we all grow is in direct proportion to the uncomfortableness we experience
• Getting married one day and losing his father-in-law the following morning 
• Losing confidence, depression and letting his wife down    
• The importance of noticing rock-bottom
• The importance of asking for help, talking and therapy
• How Barry the Van became Kim's therapist and allowed him to focus on something other than his depression 
• The benefits of living on a shoestring
• Setting up Touch Video Academy and learning about business
• The difficulty of balancing adventure and the environment
• Founding Unlost  
• The constant challenge of balancing the need for money with the need for adventure  

Derek Sivers Ted Talk covering the Leaders & Followers
Unknown Epic - Forgotten Valleys
Touch Video Academy
Unlost

• The importance of a Support Team, positive people that have a genuine interest in you, your wellbeing and your growth
• The benefits of adopting a child-like curiosity to life
• The doors that can open when we reassess what we value (trading with different currencies)
• The way the stories we tell ourselves can either slow down or speed up our growth
• How redefining something we value e.g. adventure, can open up new doors
• How difficult, exciting and rewarding stepping into the unknown can be
• The importance of noticing how you feel
• The importance of sharing the story you want to be able to tell about yourself

• Why people often apologise for the work they do
• The stories we tell ourselves and how they can limit our development
• The inevitably of the ups and downs in our lives
• Why he eventually got expelled from college
• His first job selling computers at Dixons
• Meeting Sir Clive Sinclair
• His expected life trajectory of marry, kids, mortgage 
• His problem with authority 
• His ability to translate the features of technology into the benefits for humans
• The moment he realised his employer was trying to trap him
• Why it's important to expose your kids to people who live different lives
• Why Mike leaves things to the last minute
• The healthy discipline of deadlines
• Careers 1, 2 and 3
• How a career in TV lead to a career developing websites for Channel 4
• Why people try so hard to see something new as a minor variation of something old when in fact it's so very different 
• How Mike got TV Producers 
• Why Mike and authority are not comfortable bedfellows. 
• Why he's the captain of his own ship and how he takes full responsibility for it.  
• Mike's Beatles moment when he turned down the opportunity to develop the Big Brother website because he thought the whole Big Brother idea was a stupid concept
• Why Mike operates at the bleeding edge and why it doesn't make financial sense
• What happens to cool ideas when the money men arrive
• Edisons idea that the best use of the telephone was to broadcast the opera directly into peoples homes  
• The importance of vision versus the dangers of being wedded to it
• Would you want to be Elon Musk?
• 3D printing and space exploration as the bleeding edge technologies of now 
• Wanting to be remembered for something
• Why Mike changed his story from 'I've had so many bad bosses' to 'I shouldn't have a boss'  
• Why pilots died when the designers designed for Mr Average 
• The moment Mike was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL)
• How Mike's fatigue facilitated focus
• How Mike managed to treat his Cancer as a selfish creative Cancer
• Mustard Gas = Chemotherapy
• The importance of white blood cells and why they're like aged skinheads 
• The importance of managing energy when you have the CLL cancer
• Why you should have a blood test if your neck starts swelling up and your energy levels are low   
• The importance of doing things that make you or the people you love happy and not the things you feel compelled to do
• The importance of dealing, living and dying gracefully with cancer
• Why people stick with work they don't enjoy when they could stop and learn to live on less money 
• Why Mike got a rescue dog and how Scrabble taught him
• The unexpected consequence of UKIP taking offence to one of Mike's tweet
• Why he watched every single episode of Trumpton
• Why it's important to say what he wants and if the audience reacts well he explores it further 
• His search for a lovely publisher
• The joy of negotiating a publishing deal through his dog
• How Greta Thunberg talks truth to power
• The rough and the smooth of changes to our DNA
• Poo powered rockets
• The joy of seeing his art on someone else's wall
• What it's like to live day-to-day

A few nice quotes:

"Whose voice is it telling you that you shouldn't do something you want to do?" Mike Dicks   

"I love deadlines, I love the whooshing sound as they pass me by" Douglas Adams
"Why do we work so hard to impress the people we so dislike?" Cameron and Rob
"Neil Armstrong left a poo on the moon" Mike Dicks
"Every 24 hours you get another chance to have a good day" Mike&Scrabble
"How can you release yourself from the trap of money?" Mike Dicks
"There is a dog for everyone, if you don’t have one it’s because you haven’t met enough dogs yet" Mike&Scrabble

Mike's Shop
https://www.young-enterprise.org.uk/
https://www.sketchup.com/
Peter Dawe
BPS Space (Elon Musk's Prodigy) 
99 Designs
Scrabble & friends on the Number 25 bus
Greta Thunberg - full speech
The Brexit Comic

Twitter
@mikedicks 
@Trump_ton
@TheBrexitComic
@TheLastIceberg
@mikeandscrabble

• Realising he didn't have a life he'd asked for or wanted
• His quest to understand himself
• Going from not believing in himself to doing what he does with passion
• Going into shock when one of his first video's went viral
• Being accepted 
• His need to learn, grow and push himself
• His sales pitch of free positive energy, free music, free smiles, free glitter, free chalk
• Pablo noticing the different reactions from different people and understanding he makes people feel uncomfortable
• Wanting to stop dreaming and start doing
• His mission to unite people by providing them with opportunities to share positive experiences
• What it's like to survive on £20 per day 
• A life where material success is living in the Bunny Bus, not the car.
• His perfect future where he's disco bunnying all over the world
• His search for love  
• The huge difference between his first and second lives 
• The unexpected consequences of being adopted by a new family into a new and very different culture
• His time spent doing conventional jobs
• His breakdown or breakthrough moment 
• Why you don't have to wait until you're desperate to inspire yourself and make changes to your life
• Noticing that he was living in his very own metaphorical prison, his feeling that he was trapped and wanting something else 
• One day living in a castle, the next day living in a car 
• The worst thing in life being death by boredom 
• His faith in people and that cries for help will be heard
• On receiving sexual abuse because of the way he looks
• The confusion caused by the Disco Bunny    
• Countering aggression with politeness and the importance of emotional intelligence
• Why The Disco Bunny goes wherever you least expect to see him
• On not wanting to live in a house
• On the very recent arrival of baby Rainbow Soul who right now has everything she needs i.e. warmth, milk & love
• Life is a puzzle. How can I continue to work on and share my happiness?
• Why he left his two oldest children, his house, his job, his relationship and Australia    
• A good father is a happy father
• If you only had one life, what would you do with it? I've decided to be the Disco Bunny 

Cafe Bombon - freshly brewed coffee served in a glass with a dollop or two of condensed milk
Jeff from Oregon mentioned the Aria Code Podcast with Rhiannon Giddens
Viral video of the DB and old lady on the streets of Brighton
https://www.thediscobunny.com/
https://www.pablowoodward.com/

• The productivity benefits of slowing down
• The importance of taking ownership of how we spend our time
• The importance of understanding when working harder isn't working
• Financial security in the future v being energised and healthy now
• The importance of creating time in order to connect with oneself
• Recognising rock bottom
• 'Time' becoming their new currency 
• The vicious circle of the hard working week followed by the getting smashed weekend 
• The crucial difference between knowing what to do and doing it 
• How a focus on his own health lead to Rik developing HAPS 
• The link between nutrition and mental health
• The health benefits associated with learning and purpose 
• How to increase your serotonin levels naturally
• How crucial a 'support team' is to creating personal change
• What it means to be a 'digital nomad'
• How a change in our environment makes personal change so much easier
• Enjoying the journey versus getting to the destination
• How cutting cuts can lead to innovation
• The importance of telling people what you're going to do
• The power of becoming vulnerable
• Why we should avoid Instagram lives
• The importance of tribes
• No decisions to make v Many decisions to make / Unconscious v Conscious / Unknown v Known
• The benefits of travelling on a limited budget
• Setting up The Slow Farm in Arrabida Natural Park south of Lisbon, Portugal

https://www.propellernet.co.uk/
https://www.wearehaps.com/
http://www.thehappystartupschool.com/
https://slowcowork.com

 Our conversation with Liam covered many topics. He talked openly about:

• Growing up thinking he was the dumb one
• Failing all his GCSE's 
• Thinking he has undiagnosed dyslexia
• Finding confidence in his quick-wittedness and his climbing ability 
• Deciding to study climbing trees because he was already good at that
• Feeling part stupid, part genius
• His talent for doing dickish things, just to see a person's reaction
• Telling himself "don't be nervous because your brain will cope when the time comes"
• His preference for enduring the feeling of being afraid than being someone who couldn't do things
• Telling people he can do things and then works out how to do it
• Not celebrating early. He waits until the job is done and he's home.
• Getting  into trouble on the first day of everything and puts it down to being over-excited
• Being a bit of a show-off and his six months working on the stage at the Blaydon Races Bar in Tenerife
• His spell working in customer services as a stepping stone to Big Brother
• His confidence that he would be chosen to appear on Big Brother 6 in 2005
• His Mum's Multiple Sclerosis as a reason for auditioning for Big Brother
• Being turned down for Big Brother 6 and not knowing why
• Why it's important to be the best version of yourself, you can be
• His last-minute application for Big Brother 8, his invitation to take part and his last-minute rejection
• What it's like to be chopping trees when you're meant to be live on Big Brother 
• Two weeks into BB8, finding yourself in Chris Tarrant's dressing room waiting to go in
• Enjoying Big Brother because he wasn't at work
• What it's like, after 6 days in the house, to be voted by housemates as the person to receive £100k no strings attached
• Being motivated by experiences, not money and why the £100k prize didn't cause the controversy it was designed to cause
• His attitude of a no, only being a no today and feeling that something might happen tomorrow
• Seeing his brother and Dad as he came out of the Big Brother house 
• His Dad's ability to bring him back down to earth
• The first of 600 personal appearances at a Glasgow student union and why red wine and vodka is essential
• Why it's important to share the experience with friends
• Why he didn't buy into the fake girlfriend's scene
• Shutting down the Metro Centre
• The low point where he feels numb and is pretending to be busy and okay
• Moving to London and the relative obscurity 
• Giving stand-up comedy a go and believing he can do anything if he's motivated enough
• Auditioning for Billy Elliott when he can't dance    

Liam McGough - The Tree Guy
Big Brother 8 - Wikipedia
Liam in action on Big Brother 8 
 

• Growing up thinking he was the dumb one
• Failing all his GCSE's 
• Thinking he has undiagnosed dyslexia
• Finding confidence in his quick-wittedness and his climbing ability 
• Deciding to study climbing trees because he was already good at that
• Feeling part stupid, part genius
• His talent for doing dickish things, just to see a person's reaction
• Telling himself "don't be nervous because your brain will cope when the time comes"
• His preference for enduring the feeling of being afraid than being someone who couldn't do things
• Telling people he can do things and then works out how to do it
• Not celebrating early. He waits until the job is done and he's home.
• Getting  into trouble on the first day of everything and puts it down to being over-excited
• Being a bit of a show-off and his six months working on the stage at the Blaydon Races Bar in Tenerife
• His spell working in customer services as a stepping stone to Big Brother
• His confidence that he would be chosen to appear on Big Brother 6 in 2005
• His Mum's Multiple Sclerosis as a reason for auditioning for Big Brother
• Being turned down for Big Brother 6 and not knowing why
• Why it's important to be the best version of yourself, you can be
• His last-minute application for Big Brother 8, his invitation to take part and his last-minute rejection
• What it's like to be chopping trees when you're meant to be live on Big Brother 
• Two weeks into BB8, finding yourself in Chris Tarrant's dressing room waiting to go in
• Enjoying Big Brother because he wasn't at work
• What it's like, after 6 days in the house, to be voted by housemates as the person to receive £100k no strings attached
• Being motivated by experiences, not money and why the £100k prize didn't cause the controversy it was designed to cause
• His attitude of a no, only being a no today and feeling that something might happen tomorrow
• Seeing his brother and Dad as he came out of the Big Brother house 
• His Dad's ability to bring him back down to earth
• The first of 600 personal appearances at a Glasgow student union and why red wine and vodka is essential
• Why it's important to share the experience with friends
• Why he didn't buy into the fake girlfriend's scene
• Shutting down the Metro Centre
• The low point where he feels numb and is pretending to be busy and okay
• Moving to London and the relative obscurity 
• Giving stand-up comedy a go and believing he can do anything if he's motivated enough
• Auditioning for Billy Elliott when he can't dance    

Liam McGough - The Tree Guy
Big Brother 8 - Wikipedia
Liam in action on Big Brother 8 
 

• His natural personality of nervousness, stress and hate of late 
• Coaxing himself to become more curious, more spontaneous, more relaxed and more adventurous  
• Differentiate between the things where you have control and those you don't i.e. don't get frustrated with the waves because you can't change them
• Confidence is built from doing things and the trick is to keep the momentum going
• The impact of his adventures on his life - and becoming more of the person he wants to be
• Learning to focus on what matters in life
• The power of laughter when things aren't going so well
• Cycling 46k miles around the world which took him 4 years, through 60 countries and 5 continents - all on a total budget of £7k
• Cycling around the world when you begin to understand how little of the world you've seen 
• Walked across India and Iceland
• Ultramarathons and expeditions across oceans, deserts, the Arctic and Greenland
• On wanting to become a tough guy like Ranulph Fiennes
• Summoning up the guts to take on an adventure when normal guys like him don't do adventures - they live normal lives
• The moment he committed to his first adventure - when he wrote a letter to Mr Walker saying thanks but no thanks to the offer of a job as a Science Teacher
• The power of writing a letter to tip his head full of daydreams and insecurities into action 
• Why cycling is the perfect way to travel
• Wanting to break free from ordinary and do something extraordinary and difficult for the first time in my life
• The chip on his shoulder at being so ordinary and average
• His habit of getting his school work done immediately and then relaxing 
• His spur of the moment decision to join the Territorial Army and why he enjoyed the experience
• Underestimating the horribleness of the adventure and craving a normal life
• The uselessness of using the finish line as motivation because it's so far away   
• When during the 3rd year of 4, he finally started to enjoy his trip
• Solitude and Loneliness being two sides of the same coin   
• When he came back, noticing that his values hadn't changed but his focus had - he was far more aware who he was and what mattered to him
• The two years he spent talking in schools about his adventures  
• Ditching his planned South Pole trip with a mate in favour of time with his son 
• The routine of the school run
• Learning to make a living from adventure writing
• Becoming a brand
• Switching from a few big adventures to many small adventures
• Being motivated by the opportunity to become self-aware and not the finish line
• Understanding that the reasons he started his adventures were no longer relevant and he needed to find a different way 
• How he used the violin to bring fear and excitement back into his life
• Why travel doesn't have a monopoly on adventure  
• The benefits of becoming more childlike in his approach
• Not coping with the routine of being a father
• Designing short meaningful adventures for others
• Learning the violin for seven months (and still being rubbish)
• Walking 500 miles for one month through Spain with his violin, no money and no credit card
• His No.1 rule of spending the money earned each day from busking (120 Euro's in one month) - he spent it all so he'd be back to no money and a state of fear
• Looking for the opportunities to have micro-adventures in nature
• Scheduling a tree climb once a month into his Google Calendar
• Learning that it's more important to have a lifetime of small little adventures than it is to do a few big adventures
• The ongoing wrestling match he has with himself    

https://www.alastairhumphreys.com/
Living Dangerously by Ranulph Fiennes
Seth Godin Blog
Do Something Different 
My Midsummer Morning
https://www.nicolabenedetti.co.uk/

- Why he got rid of the TV at 18 years old
- Why he rescued a shapely old Portsmouth Ferry from the riverbed
- How his floating home became a reflection of his warped self
- What a squircle is
- The freedom that comes from a frugal lifestyle
- The simple way to get a bus on a boat
- Why he and nature prefer curves to rectangles
- How a spell at VSO shaped him
- His unwillingness to ask for help
- His confidence in his own ability to solve practical problems
- Why he's done with the car
- Why he's done with politics
- Why we should listen to Greta Thunberg
- He's ready for a change and fancies getting his hands on a wood

Greta Thunberg

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3124660/From-rusting-coach-coal-carrier-Del-Boy-s-car-sticking-wall-wackiest-houseboats-Britain-selling-325-000-each.html
 

• Growing up in London pubs
• The family DNA of bringing people together
• The benefits of aligning what you think, say and do
• How he helps corporate hippies
• A life spent working out what he doesn't want to do
• Forgetting his vision which became a reality 20 years later (his wife Tamsin did not forget)
• Breaking his back in the middle of nowhere 
• The merits of 'temping'  
• The benefits of not being an artist when in a creative role
• Realising that culture is the way people treat each other
• Working with a mate
• The uncertainty of self-employment 
• Becoming a digital agency (Spook Studio)
• Becoming digital business designers
• Becoming start-up business designers 
• The misadventure of developing a co-working space      
• Becoming the Happy Start-up School
• Moving out of London
• His approach of chipping away at the things that don't work
• The benefits of 'space' when deciding on a new direction
• Balancing speed and scale v control and solid foundations

The Michelangelo quote(s) Laurence referred to are:

"Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it"

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free"

Happy Start-up School
Pamela Slim - Body of Work
Charlie Davies
Jack Hubbard - Dream Valley Picture

• His frustration with Greenpeace*
• Working hard but not compromising on his 8 hours sleep.
• Why he shies away from telling people he works at Twitter when on holiday
• The different hierarchies of Birmingham and London
• His period working for Capital Radio, the Fawlty Towers of media
• The cultural power of 'companions at love' 
• The benefits of being a trouble-maker
• Discovering he was the third poorest kid at school
• Studying Economics because he wanted to solve injustice*
• Why Bruce's next job will be an eco-warrior
• How his mum encouraged him to work hard at school
• His prolific letter writing
• The influence comics played in his career 
• His ability to get noticed*
• His super-skill of persistence
• How Bruce backs himself
• How Bruce always looks for the fast lane
• How to go from 'bottom of the class' to 'top of the class' 
• Bruce's time at YouTube and his approach to promoting YouTube in the early days
• How he's unafraid of rejection
•  'The Joy of Work' becoming Sunday Times No. 1 best seller and how it was not an accident
• How the tyranny of numbers affects your relationship
• How comparison can lead to unhappiness
• How stress has become the operating system of modern-day work
• The increasing importance of creativity versus  Our increasing inability to be creative
• How the science of open plan offices reduces face to face communication and increases emails
• Why he looks to create a climate rather than direct
• The problem with appropriating US norms
• His interest in the compelling science of laughter and how it can save your life
• How our fear of being judged leads us to become more agreeable and less authentic
• The importance of finding the kid within

* We wonder what would happen if these things could come together?

https://twitter.com/brucedaisley

https://twitter.com/eatsleepwkrpt
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/eat-sleep-work-repeat/id1190000968?mt=2

In this conversation Fiona sheds light on:

• the 'doing' motivation versus the 'achieving' motivation 
• how she moved 'pain and suffering' from the 'Avoid' section to the 'Seek' section
• pain in training being like depositing money in the bank and withdrawing it on race day
• how purpose trumps talent every day of the week 
• how this 'talent-less' runner broke 4 endurance world records
• her adventures in 3 Marathon de Sable (often seen as the world's toughest foot race)           
• what it's like to experience the freedom of pain, discomfort and despair
• what it's like to live a 'no negotiation' life
• her model of "I'll do things at 100% or I'll do something different"
• ditching the Garmins and simply listening to your body
• her belief that congratulating herself will stunt motivation
• when it's appropriate to hide injuries from the doctor
• the importance of grandparents
• a life-time of veganism
• how putting others first, puts her first
• her super-talent of 'determination'
• why she prefers to tell people what she's done rather than what they should do
• hitting 100% as she crosses the line
• learning how to fix herself

http://www.towerhillstables.com/
https://runningforgoodfilm.com/#home-2-section
http://www.cowspiracy.com

• Selling plums outside his parents house
• How school really wasn't entertaining enough for him
• The benefits of having supportive, positive parents and positive friends
• At 16 why he ditched the idea of college for a job selling phones for O2
• His experience of going from a terrible manager to a fantastic manager as a Trainee Estate Agent
• His need to stand out and be independent
• His spells travelling around the world 
• The difference between Portsmouth and Brighton (one of these places is cool with chapless pants)
• His period living in a cupboard
• Learning to mix with different sorts of people
• His period working hard because he wanted to make money so he could do his own thing
• Getting on the property ladder and becoming a landlord
• Spotting the opportunities that present themselves versus being lucky
• His spell doing turtle voices at the Sea Life Centre
• His first spell as an Polaroid entrepreneur touring the pubs of Brighton
• Brands employing Ollie's services as an alternative photo booth
• Fuji Film employing Ollie's services to travel around Europe's Festivals 
• Him losing his independence 
• Heading back to Asia looking for inspiration
• A spell in a hairy pod in Guangzhou, China looking for a Virtual Reality product ideas
• Disappointment and demoralisation in a lonely sweaty teenage Chinese gaming bar
• Picking up 'The Chamber of Secrets' and realising that wizardry was his thing
• Evolving his wizardry ideas and settling on a store
• Getting advice from Warner Bros. about setting up Oliver's Brighton
• Finding Gene, the builder who shared his vision for creating a truly unique space
• Finding the cabinet to display his wands and adopting a Netherland Dwarf Rabbit 
• The nerves, disappointment and ultimate joy of opening day 
• What it takes to garner over a thousand 5 star reviews for a shop
• Winning start-up of the year at the Brighton & Hove Business Awards 
• Not worrying about / enjoying being a bit weird 
• The importance of stepping outside his comfort zone 
• Finding the drive and energy to do it his way 

www.oliversbrighton.co.uk
42 Trafalgar Street, Brighton BN1 4ED
https://www.instagram.com/oliversbrighton/
https://twitter.com/oliversbrighton
https://www.facebook.com/oliversbrighton
https://www.instax.co.uk/

• How Miami Vice provided him with a focus on money 
• Taking two companies public 
• Having a rocket scientist for a Dad
• Tom, the 10 year old entrepreneur
• Why he chose a job over university
• Being the worst salesman of the month and the shame of fishing in Oxford Street
• How mistakes helped him grow a thicker skin
• Moving to Hong Kong in May 1989 and how a salary allowed him to focus on rugby
• Playing international rugby for Hong Kong  
• His belief in luck and why he sees a fortune teller once a year
• Having nothing when he was sued personally for £3.5 million dollars, 3 weeks after getting married 
• Borrowing £3.5 million USD from a friend with no obvious way of repaying the loan
• On the 18 hour days that led Tom to repay the loan within 2.5 years
• Floating Playtech in 2005 and what it was like to lose 40% of the value overnight
• How he took his company private having only just taken it public
• The importance of goal-setting 
• What happened when Daddy was asked to sign his daughters contract to spend time with her and not his computer 
• Pretending to his wife he wasn't suffering a heart-attack whilst at the ballet
• Waking up to the value of time   
• The benefits of learning to say "no".
• Working with friends
• The joys of a shared experience
• Why experiences are a better motivation than money

https://www.success.com/tony-robbins-goals/
https://youtu.be/XOiK5abM3AY
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bup-khVHNln/
https://portal.navglobal.com/

• Big questions such as "What really matters in life?"
• What happens when you climb the ladder of success only to find you're climbing the wrong ladder
• What it takes to help people experience and create a happier world
• How our leaders have forgotten to focus on the greatest happiness for the greatest number
• Why measuring GDP at a national level and personal wealth at an individual level does not measure success
• How Coca Cola have cheapened happiness
• Why the feeling of happiness is so universal but what makes us happy can be so different
• The benefits of the Stoic philosophy of choosing how we react to situations  
• Changing ourselves when we are no longer able to change the situation
• The importance of 'meta cognition' aka 'noticing how you feel' as the first step to doing something about it
• The role of the Dalai Lama in the Action for Happiness movement 
• What it means to live a good life and care about each other
• The Dalai Lama's secularism and his sense that we need to create a new way of being 
• Consumerism and why it's such a poor substitute for purpose and a shared humanity
• The trials and tribulations of growing up in a loving Malvern family
• Noticing a depressed peer in the year above and using it as the motivation to study
• His ten years as a management consultant where he focused on the money but wasn't proud of what he did
• How he had neglected the emotional side of life 
• The power of the 'good life crisis' and how it can help provide direction
• How Mark's increasing emotional discomfort with his work turned into a constant physical pain 
• Mark's low point when he was diagnosed with a degenerative hereditary spinal disorder and faced the prospect of a wheelchair in his 40's
• 'Back Sense', his wife's gifted book that prompted him to think himself free of pain
• His interest in the placebo effect
• How his MBA allowed him to slowly understand himself and the human condition 
• The importance of Kate, Mark's then girlfriend and now wife, in helping him do something different
• The struggle of bringing oneself to work versus knowing when to stop when you do
• The options that come with a frugal life
• The difficulty and the power of listening to your gut
• Meeting Neil Crofts and answering his three questions:
  • What are you really good at? 
  • What are you passionate about?
  • What makes you angry?  
• The angst of leaving The Carbon Trust and a job he loved for the challenge of Action for Happiness 
• Life as a recovering people pleaser
• Following the energy when deciding where to put your own energy
• The future of Action for Happiness  
• Why personal success and community success is not a zero sum gain / why me and we are the same thing

https://www.actionforhappiness.org/
www.neilcrofts.com
www.backsense.org

Monty was on the way to the pub when the lure of a few unusual beers persuaded him to join us in Ray’s cellar for a conversation that helped explain:

• Why he runs fast towards the edge of life’s cliff and then walks back 
• Why he’s fed up with journalism
• Why Peter Jones in Sloane Square is unlikely to replace his Mont Blanc pen
• His period ducking and diving in the Sinai Desert
• Why he was cast as a Russian drugs dealer in a Bollywood movie
• Why writing is better than athletics
• How the 5’ 2” Monty learned to use his mouth
• What it’s like to grow 11 inches in 18 months 
• Why he declared war on money
• How he personally lost £50K from bitcoin hackers
• Why he’s more interested in the unknown than the known
• How his company turned down Angry Birds
• Why it’s important to laugh at your mistakes
• Why he left the London commute for India
• The difference between ‘running away’ and ‘running towards’ something
• How an experiment in separating himself from friends and family almost killed him
• How not to have a fight in the lift at Covent Garden Tube Station
• The importance of reinventing himself 
• What falling in love and becoming a Dad can do to a man
• How he ended up being invited to John McAfee’s island
• How he exposed Steve Wozniak as a man who once smuggled Coke into Russia
• Why he tells his audiences to “fuck off”      

External Links:

Snoop Dogg on 'Personal Responsibility' (wait until the end - it's worth it!)  

Kidnapping, murder, guns and prostitutes - John McAfee at Malta BlockChain Summit

Monty's Forbes article on Steve Wozniak

mob76 (Monty's Consultancy Website)

Twitter: @montymunford

• Why everything will be fine
• On vision as an ability to visualise and create order when others can only see chaos
• Why he’s looking for £100 per week from each of his kids
• A rock ‘n’ roll year working with Bono and The Edge 
• Why Architects make very good lovers but very bad husbands
• Becoming a committed Mod in 1965
• What it’s like to have two mothers and two fathers
• Late diagnosis of Adult Attachment Disorder (AAD) 
• Travel anxiety and why two hours early is preferable to one minute late 
• His knack of destroying his relationships
• How Architecture has provided security and stability in his life
• How setting light to his canvasses in a telephone box led to a career in Architecture
• The importance of third-party endorsement 
• The importance of doing something modest and doing it very very well
• The joy of both teaching and designing houses
• Exchanging architectural fees for backgammon and skiing lessons
• His second Grand Designs project

 Links:

Alan Phillips Architects

U2 Beautiful Day @ Eze-Sur-Mer

Gaudis Sagrada Familia

Gina met us in the Prince Albert pub to tell us what it’s like to be a rude working class girl with no fear and:

• How a night on the rum resulted in her purchase of a Sri Lankan hotel
• How her big break in TV evaporated and then reappeared  
• How Ross Kemp beat her 
• Why you have to hang out with comedians to be a Comedy Producer
• The period spent living with a nudist and no gas or electricity
• Why her mate Simon isn’t allowed near the Queen
• The influence of her brother  
• Why the downside of fearlessness can be fatal 
• How anxiety has crept into her life
• The fine line between ambition and delusion
• The benefits of changing one’s mindset
• Practising resilience
• The benefits of putting yourself under pressure

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2275219/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
https://www.curtisbrown.co.uk/client/gina-lyons
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/british-newlyweds-drunk-luxury-honeymoon-13387506
https://www.instagram.com/luckybeachtangalle/?hl=en

We cover the ideas that:

• successful lives are lived with a foot in each the known and the unknown
• if you want different results, you have to do something different 
• the stories of others are what helps us focus
• beliefs have no value without action
• the bigger the comfort zone, the better
• growing one's comfort zone is a necessarily uncomfortable process   
• the best journeys are a shared experience 

https://dsd.me/