You Are Not A Victim - Tom Otton | Modern Wisdom Podcast 252

Tom Otton is the Managing Director at Create Group and an Ultra Endurance Athlete. Everyone experiences negative self talk and doubt, how you deal with it is what makes the difference, and the choice is yours. Expect to learn what it's like to run for 50 hours without sleep, how to create the perfect company culture, why a victim mindset is the most important thing to overcome, how to lean into your fears to overcome failures and much more... Sponsor: Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 3.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Follow Tom on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tomotton/ Subscribe to Tom's Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creator-sessions/id1384284937 Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #mindset #motivation #endurance - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Everybody experiences that negative self-talk. It doesn't matter who you are, whether you're David Goggins. This is where a lot of people get it wrong. A lot of people think that person, whoever it might be, is must be made of something else because there's no way that they have the same narrative internally as I do. And it's the same narrative. Sometimes I'm on a 10 or 15 K run and sometimes you just feel like [BLEEP] and you want to stop. It's exactly the same narrative. I know this is hard to understand. It's exactly the same narrative as when you're there at 120 kilometres into a race. It's, I want to stop. These are the reasons why. That all makes sense. It's okay. All of these things. So all of that will happen and the listeners can experience that on a 10 K run or it can be 120 K. It's just the same narrative.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  A completely different person than what I was when I started the whole ultra conversation. A completely different you. I look at things differently. I approach things differently. I value things differently. Like everything, everything changed.

• 0:54Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's a good place to start. So what has changed? You have done multiple ultra events. What like? And what's the impact been on you?

• 1:03Speaker 00

  In terms of races, the first bit, the first bit one for me actually went really badly. And so myself and Marcus flew across to Wales and we did a 80 kilometre run across the Brecon Beacons. First time I'd done anything like that. It was a little bit last minute in terms of deciding, that looks like fun. Let's have a crack. Training was terrible for it in terms of when I look back now. And body kind of fell to pieces, head fell to pieces. And it was, it was one of those situations that we've all been through, like you have to kind of hit the bottom before you can start to realise where you want to go. And you look back on that later in life and you realise that's exactly what needed to happen for me to then sort of evolve from there. So that, that didn't go well. And like I said-

• 1:44Chris Williamson?

  What's not well?

• 1:45Speaker 00

  No, I just, just body broke down, which is fine. I mean, that happens if you haven't trained for something, then obviously you can't expect to get through very well. Finished it, but like weak head, complaining, just moaning about shit. I'm, I'm done with this. Just like- As I suppose you'd expect, somebody that hasn't worked on any form of mental strength or tried to sort of build that side of themselves up, you fall to pieces when you get into an environment like that, when you're however many hours we were in. So that was a first experience and it haunted me, it really stuck in my head.

• 2:17Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, a lot of people might have just turned back after that.

• 2:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, to be honest, it was one of those situations where I knew, I know myself well enough to know that that was gonna sit with me for a long time. And it sat with me for a while and I realised that I had to do something bigger and I had to do something fairly soon to fix that. And it was, it's gambling, right? You're like, I'm gonna go bigger.

• 2:37Chris Williamson?

  It's called the sunk cost fallacy.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, there it is.

• 2:40Chris Williamson?

  On the casino floor, yeah.

• 2:41Speaker 00

  Exactly, right. So let's throw more money, good money after bad money. But it's a risk, right? Because you're playing with your own mental space then. You're like, if this works out, I'm good again. But if it doesn't work out, I've had two losses here and they're getting bigger. So, you know, it's the same as gambling, like good analogy. So the next thing I signed up for was Marathon de Sart, which was 250 kilometres across the Sahara Desert. I'm not sure if Marcus was chatting about that earlier. And that was the first big thing. That was when we're talking about like Reborn and the entire change of mindset. I sat on a charter flight out of Gatwick into Morocco and I was nervous as hell. I looked around, the only people on the flight were those doing the Marathon

• 3:22Speaker 00

  de Sart. And you see guys with like Iron Man tattoos all over them, just like, you're just like elite athletes, extreme people. And I'm just sat there thinking, shit, what am I doing on this flight?

• 3:32Chris Williamson?

  I'm a guy who complained about racing.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, last time, yeah, last time I tried this, it just fell to pieces. And I literally, I sat there and I wrote a few notes on a piece of paper. And it was, there were behavioural goals. It was, yes, it was finish, yes, don't die. But then it was, you know, inspire others to finish. So another one was, don't complain once. So I was putting myself, I was challenging myself to the extent that it wasn't just about, you need to try and finish this race. It was going far beyond that to say, you're not gonna utter a single complaint, a single word that's negative for eight days on what the Discovery Channel has termed the toughest footrace on earth. And you're going to inspire other people to finish. So, which was so

• 4:15Speaker 00

  far removed from where I'd been in the previous race, that that was the challenge I was trying to set myself to really push limits and boundaries. It was that, it was, it was sitting on the flight out afterwards, yet not necessarily having a physical medal or anything like that, but I still had that dirty, half torn piece of paper that I'd kept with me the whole time. And to be able to look down at each of those things and say, I achieved that. And that was, that was a real defining moment or pivotal moment in terms of my journey, in terms of improving mindset and headspace. And it went from there, really. And I did the marathon to Saab again, this time down in Peru. So another 250K self-supported, you carry everything on your back. And they only give you water for, for six days. Everything else you're carrying with you and you're

• 4:59Speaker 00

  running through sand. So you can imagine, I'll get into all the details, but you can imagine what that's, what that's like. And then the most recent one, which was a while back now, which was the 137 kilometre down across the Hatter Mountain Range in Oman, the borders between UAE and Oman. And that was, that was, that was a whole different ballgame. The 250 across the Sahara sounds crazy, but you break that down into 30 to 40K a day. Apart from on the fourth day, we did 92 kilometres, something like that, which was pretty intense on, on the fourth day of running. Because you're basically sleeping on the floor for five days at that point. So you can imagine like, there's no showers, there's no nothing.

• 5:37Chris Williamson?

  In a good way.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's not, it's not the best. But the one in down in Oman was a completely different ballgame. That was, it was, it was single, single leg. So 137K straight through. And the combined elevation of that race was 8,000 metres. And to put that into context, you know, Everest is 8,800. So that was a different ballgame.

• 5:58Chris Williamson?

  How long did that take?

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Forty-two hours straight.

• 6:00Chris Williamson?

  Without sleep?

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Without sleep. I was awake for 56 hours. So yeah, that was a different ballgame.

• 6:07Chris Williamson?

  What is it like to be awake for that long with physical exertion?

• 6:11Speaker 00

  You hallucinate. You, you start to have out of body experiences. And it's not just, I know that sounds dramatic, but that's, that's literally what happens. So like during the second night, we started at 7pm. So you run through the night, you start to feel a little bit like all over the place as the sun's coming up because you're still going. Then you go through all the heat of the day in the mountains. Then you go through sunset again, when your body's starting to tell itself it needs to sleep because of your circadian rhythm, as you well know. And then you, you're still going. And then you're going through that next night. Now your body's like, hold on a second, we've been through two of these nights and you're still not in bed.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  What's going on?

• 6:46Chris Williamson?

  Something's happening.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Something's happening. Um, so they start, you know, your body starts to do certain things to try and get you to stop. You have all the logical conversations with yourself around why it's okay to stop and why you should stop. And that pain is actually, or you don't know what that could be. That could be something really bad. All this negative self-talk, all of the reasons, logical reasons as why you should stop. Um, and then you start to hallucinate. And that's a really interesting space. So the second night from around about, um, I'd say midnight to about four AM. I went, only went through one checkpoint and I was completely on my own because they'd had, God, I think it was fif- fifty to sixty percent of the race had dropped out by that point. Um, it was the first time they'd ever run that race. And I don't think anybody realized how horrific it was going to be.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Um, uh, National Geographic did a, a whole documentary on, on the race. Um, it's only been run once at that length. So they, they did it one more time two years later, but, but that's it. Um, it's, it's, it's the most ridiculous thing and we didn't realize, right? I mean, we're talking, the, the distance is almost irrelevant, the, the hundred and thirty seven K, because people can only conceptualize that on a road. And that sounds pretty crazy. It's hundred and thirty seven kilometers on a road. It sounds pretty ridiculous. But when you put in to context of eight thousand meters of elevation, that means you're talking one point two kilometer down gorges. So you get to the edge of a gorge, you've got to go two kilometers as a crow flies, but you've got to go one point two kilometers down into this gorge and one point two kilometers back up.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  You go for five K, you hit another one. So you, you're talking, it takes you six hours to go the space of six kilometers sometimes, or even longer. Like it's, uh, we were clipped in with carabiners, climbing up cliff faces as part of this race. Um, it, it, it was the most ridiculous thing. Like we got the, the hundred and twenty K mark. There was a checkpoint that I came into, blown to pieces, like, you know, hallucinating through the night. Um, you know, eyes gone, legs gone, just in, in, in bits. And that was a hundred, so that was a hundred and twenty kilometers. The next three kilometers from a hundred and twenty K was straight vertical, one point two kilometers straight up. We were scrambling, poles had to go away.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Um, and we were scrambling with like literally hands like climbing, like scrambling up a, a cliff face. And we were, we, I mean, I'd been awake. I don't, I don't know why I say we, because I was on my own, but.

• 9:13Chris Williamson?

  Me and the hallucinations that I had of being awake for ages.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  It was just next level and then, you know, it was, it was scary as hell because during the day it was thirty two, thirty four, which living in the Middle East, that's, that's okay, you can, we trained for that. But it was at night, winds like howling and it was between six and eight degrees. So the, the, the difference, you, you, you know what it's like, you just start to get tired, you start to get cold. Now we're not used to the cold in the Middle East either. So now you're on a cliff face, it's blowing, it's pitch black, it's three in the morning, you're hallucinating, you're trying to scramble, you've got a hundred and twenty kilometers in your legs. And, and you, I mean, you barely know what day it is, so you just keep trying to move. So that was, um. I suppose that was the culmination, my personal journey of that first race in, in Wales and Abba Gavenny, where I just fell to pieces on an eighty K. Wasn't flat, it was a Brecon Beacons, but it was pretty sedentary.

• 10:00Chris Williamson?

  Walk in the park compared to this afternoon stroll.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Then you end up with that thing and it was just like, no, finishing it was, was just about survival and it was, um, it was, it was, yeah, it was an interesting place.

• 10:10Chris Williamson?

  You spoke about the logical, rational reasons to stop that your brain throws up. And I'm fascinated by those because as someone who's never done an endurance race like that.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:23Chris Williamson?

  Um, but exercise is a lot. Everybody knows what it feels like to hear that voice. Oh, that's a, that's a twinge, that's, that's where you injured yourself three years ago, that might be coming back.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 10:35Chris Williamson?

  What do you, what is going through your head? How do you deal with that negative self-talk and that doubt?

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Look, it's a really good question and, um, one thing I really want to drive home for listeners to take away from this is that. Everybody experiences that negative self-talk. It doesn't matter who you are, whether you're David Goggins, whether you know, it doesn't matter who you are. And, and this is the, this is where a lot of people get it wrong. A lot of people think. There, that, that person, whoever it might be, is must be made of something else because there's no way that they have the same narrative internally as, as I do. And it's the same narrative. Sometimes I'm on a, a ten or fifteen K run and sometimes you just feel like shit and you, and you want to stop. It's exactly the same narrative. I know this is hard to understand. It's exactly the same narrative as when you're there at, at, at a hundred and twenty kilometers into a race. It's, I want to stop. These are the reasons why. That all makes sense. It's okay.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  All of these things. So all of that will happen and, and you know, the listeners can experience that on a ten K run, or, or it can be a hundred and twenty K. It's just the same narrative. And it's understanding that it's okay to have that negative self-talk, accept it. Don't, don't think that you're a lesser person because something in the back of your mind is telling you that you should stop when you're uncomfortable. At the end of the day, our brain is, is programmed to protect us. That's what it does throughout time. It protects us. So when you're putting your body through excessive strain, your brain's job is to stop you from doing it. Your brain's job is not to push you harder. Your brain's job is to keep you within inside your comfort zone.

• 12:00Chris Williamson?

  In very inventive ways.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  In very inventive ways. It's crafty bugger. So you've, you've got, you've got to accept the fact that that's gonna happen. And, and it's, it's accepting that narrative and then, and then allowing, allowing yourself to, I suppose not allowing yourself, bringing different tools into play to, to get through that and get past that. First thing is acceptance of that narrative and just being like, cool, I, I hear you. I'm not gonna listen to you, but I hear you. It's okay. And then it's also, you know, there's, there's all sorts of tricks that you can like, you start going Jedi mind tricks on yourself and you start thinking, right, well, you know, there's, there's internal motivation, there's external motivation. And external motivation can be, okay, but when I get to the end of this race and I'm sat down with my support crew, you know, my wife, my girlfriend, my coach,

• 12:46Speaker 00

  whoever it might be, external motivation is like, what, what conversations do you wanna be having with them? Oh, these are all the fifteen reasons why I dropped out of this race and I didn't feel so good. So there's your external motivation right there. If you can visualize that, then straight away, you're gonna be like, no, I'm not having that conversation. No, I'm gonna keep going. I'm not having that conversation. That's the external side of it, right? The internal side of it, and there's always a, a, the ratio can, can change depending on a number of things, but the internal side of it has got to be like, why am I actually doing this? If you're gonna put yourself through a very difficult situation, you need to know why beforehand. And the reason being is because it's inevitably going to get very difficult at some point. And if you don't have a reason why you're doing it, that's valid, then what are you gonna do? You're gonna stop, right?

• 13:30Speaker 00

  You're gonna pull out of it. Cause why am I even here? I don't understand why I'm here. In the same way, uh, uh, maybe an understandable example of this, you sign up for your first marathon. It scares the shit out of you. You wake up at five o'clock in the morning. You know exactly why you're waking up at five o'clock in the morning. If you hadn't signed up for the marathon, and I said, wake up, I mean, you'd probably do that anyway. But if I said, if you weren't an athlete, and you said, right, wake up tomorrow morning at five AM and go for a run. Cool, okay, I'm motivated. Day three, what are you doing? Wake up at five AM, you're like, what the hell am I doing? Okay, I'm not doing that. There's no reason to do it. But if you signed up for a marathon, then you're actually a bit worried about completing it. And you've got sponsorship and you've got all these things. You now have both internal and external motivation for for getting through that. So

• 14:15Speaker 00

  it's understanding that that narrative internally and playing those those Jedi mind tricks on yourself to get you through to to complete the run or to get up in the morning or whatever it is that that's causing you that pain at the time.

• 14:25Chris Williamson?

  What was the transformation that you saw in yourself pre endurance time and post endurance time as a day to day?

• 14:34Speaker 00

  Um, not feeling sorry for myself about anything. Uh, so not feeling that. Let's say you're in a negative situation. Let's relate it to business or to life. Break up with a in a relationship, whether it be a that, whether it be a work situation. Not feeling sorry for myself in terms of this is happening to me. The conversation with myself is this is happening. And then how am I dealing with it? Not this is happening to me. So for example, if we put it into a business situation, if we lose a contract for for whatever reason, it's objectively looking at it and understanding why. If somebody does wrong by you, you can sit back and say, okay, you you can take that victim's mindset of saying, right, why are all these things happening to me?

• 15:17Speaker 00

  Woe betide me and and you can sit in that little pool of self pity for as long as you like. That's not going to get you anywhere. Or you can understand that this is what's happening. How do I deal with it? Twenty twenty is a prime example. We've always we've already said it's a suboptimal year, you very well put. Um, as we look at that, there's a lot of people and and I'm very conscious. Everyone's going through a different experience with this, right? For some people, it's devastating. For other people, it's it's moving in their direction. And there's a whole range in between. So certainly not being flip into that fact at all. But also understanding that there is a there is a way of dealing with this from a mindset perspective that will either benefit you or will not help you in any which way. And that's understanding that it's happening and.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  The dynamics have changed, so therefore it's just how you react to it. If it's a negative, if it's affecting you and whatever your scenario is negatively, it just is what it is. And it's now understanding, okay, well, if this is the new set of scenarios I have to deal with, how am I navigating it? Or you're sitting at home and you're like, this isn't my fault, look at the world. Uh, I'm reading, I'm reading the news every day and the whole world's melting and I can't possibly find a, a single positive story in this and I can't positively, possibly achieve any of my goals. Or I can't think of new goals to set and, you know, we, I'm sure we all know people that are, that are sitting in that space and just saying that none of this is my fault, therefore I can't do anything about it.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  And that, and that's the key difference is the mindset of like, is it, is it your fault or is it your responsibility? Like, it's not your fault that the world is melting down, but it is your responsibility to do something about it. Whether that be for you personally, whether that be for your, for your business, whether that be for your, for your family, whatever it is. Like, that's your responsibility, right? Um, and I suppose that's the mindset shift of going back to a run. Everything, you know, all hell's breaking loose, you know, your knee's gone, you've, your waters run out, it's just a different set of scenarios. And you can't constantly play the victim's mindset of this is happening to me, therefore I give up. It's just a different set of scenarios that you've got to approach.

• 17:19Chris Williamson?

  And that endurance experience has then transitioned across you into everyday life?

• 17:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, massively, massively. So same with, with, you know, whether it be work, whether it be personal relationships, all of these things. You just approach it that this is a, a changing set of scenarios. If it's a mistake that you've made, own the mistake. You know, none of us are perfect, whether it be business, whether it be fitness, whether it be personal. We've all got our flaws, so own any mistakes that you make. But just try and make a positive impact wherever you can for yourself and for, you know, for the scenario that you're trying to affect, whether that be business or personal.

• 17:52Chris Williamson?

  I was reading the Almanac of Naval Ravikant again the other day. And in that he says, you are born, a set of stimulus occurs and then you die.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:03Chris Williamson?

  How you choose to respond is completely up to you.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Perfect, perfect.

• 18:07Chris Williamson?

  And it's so simple, like.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  I wish I'd said that rather than the last fifteen minutes of conversation.

• 18:11Chris Williamson?

  That one was, that was much more insightful, right? That's one of the problems that I have.

• 18:16Chris Williamson?

  Unsure how I feel about this pithy aphorism maxim world. I like the fact that you can deliver an entire concept and maybe everyone that's listening, when they think about you're born, you receive some stimulus and you pass away, how you choose to respond is up to you. Maybe that will be what they take and think, ah, that tells me all about the lessons that Tom gave me. In that element, I like it. In another element, it can become quite a sort of masturbatory, um, showy game of who can cite, cite the most sort of cerebral cool quote. But yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  They're important though.

• 18:52Chris Williamson?

  I think so. I think, I think that there must be little mantras that we keep telling ourselves. And that's something that I asked your good buddy Marcus Smith earlier on today. Is there anything that you keep in your mind as you're going through particularly painful sections of these events? Is there something you go back to, a little mantra?

• 19:14Speaker 00

  To be honest, it's in, in terms of terminology, it's not, it's not one single mantra. It's just understanding that the, the concept is very well put by yourself just then in terms of, I don't wanna, I don't want to, I don't wanna live with regret at the end of the day. Um, and that's what it, that's what it comes down to. It's like, no, forgive yourself for your flaws. Um, but if it's coming down, if you're talking specifically about a race, it's just understanding why you're there. It's just understanding that, um, that you don't wanna be looking back on this and that you failed. And that drives me in business, that drives me in, in, in everything. Um, and that's an approach to life.

• 19:49Chris Williamson?

  You, as you've just suggested there, have got a lot of irons in the fire and extreme endurance events. You've also, is it forty-sixth fastest growing company in the, like unbelievably quick growing company, which has got multiple offices all across this area of the world and. Family life and then also just trying to exist as a human.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:11Chris Williamson?

  How do you balance all of those things? I and a lot of the people that are listening will think like, I couldn't do one of those things full time and somehow this guy is, have you got the cheat code to fit thirty six hours into a day?

• 20:27Speaker 00

  I wish I did mate.

• 20:28Chris Williamson?

  You know, is there, is there a doppelganger that you've got, like a secret identical twin that you're not telling us about?

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, it's, um, it's a number of things, mate. I mean, look, it's, it's, it's certainly putting the hours in. Um, you know, over the years, they say you've got to, you've got to choose your pain, right? In terms of what do you want out of life? Anything that you choose, any direction you choose to go in comes with pros and cons in terms of. We good with it?

• 20:58Chris Williamson?

  All good man.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  So in terms of direction you want to go in with life, right? If you choose to set a goal, that comes with, uh, that comes along with, um, different types of pain. So what can that look like if we're, if we're talking in this context? I've missed so many social engagements. I've let friendships that have fizzled out. Uh, I, I know far less people than I, than I used to.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  But I'm okay with that as well because I'm very focused in terms of where I'm going and, and what I want to achieve out of life and what I'm trying to get to. So it just comes down to prioritizing a lot, a lot of things, you know? It's, it's trying to be as organized as possible, but like, I'm certainly not the most organized person. People probably think I've got an agenda for everything. I don't. Um, and, and it's, it's funny, I have conversations with people and people think that I must have everything like covered and, and crossed and T's, T's crossed and, and, and, and I started and the truth is I don't mate. Um, but I do put the hours in, I do work through the weekends and I do have a, I suppose an outlook on life as we touched on earlier when I first arrived and we're talking about this and it's, it's understanding that, that all of it just fits into, into life.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  And it's easy to say when, when you own the company and, and you know, whether you're working or whether you're not working, it's all kind of the same thing. It's just, I have a goal with the business and, and I want to get there and that doesn't fit into a nine to five. Sometimes I'm sat one o'clock in the morning writing ideas down and sometimes I'm off running for three hours in a day. You know, it's, it just depends what's on that day. The agenda evolves.

• 22:30Chris Williamson?

  Do you pity people who haven't found this level of passion in their life?

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Pity would be the wrong term. I do, I do feel that even like close friends, I feel that there's, there's a lot of opportunity for them to grow into that space. You know, I think it's really important that people find their passions. I've been lucky to find it in a number of different ways. You know, my personal relationship with my wife, my business and running. And I absolutely love all of those things. And to be able to explore all of them to the extremes, to go from meeting someone to getting married, from running as for a bit of fun to exploring, you know, places in the Sahara Desert that very few people will ever visit, to being able to have the opportunity to grow a business like this. And it's, I know that I'm very fortunate, but I know it's also because I've focused

• 23:20Speaker 00

  on these things. And none of these things have just happened. It's been a conscious focus and a constant effort to try and drive that. And that comes, as I go back to the choose your pain thing. It's like if you're, if you're going to be really focused on something, and one way to explain it is that, that you can't, you can't be half in on everything because that just results in average, right? So if people have this concept of a balanced life, and if you try and remain balanced with all of these things, what actually happens is you hit a median level across all of them. If you think of them on a, let's say, a table chart, you only hit median level on everything. So my focus and my kind of concept, and this isn't new, but it's certainly something I followed for a long time, is

• 24:03Speaker 00

  this constant level of imbalance. So micro imbalance for macro balance. So if you look at my life across the board, I'm very happy with a relationship, with a business, and I enjoy my passions and enjoy my friends. But at a certain time, I'm completely imbalanced. So if I'm gearing up for a long race, you won't get a hold of me because I'm either running or I'm working. If there's a huge thing going on at work and we're opening a new office or we're moving to a country or something that's happening, I'm all in on that and I won't be seen so much around the running track. But then, and then sometimes, you know, if I'm getting married or something, right, as you do, you're all in on that. And then, so it's focusing on whatever the goal is in a certain timeframe, going all in in

• 24:45Speaker 00

  that space to try and be the best version of yourself in that space. So with running, you can only get to be, having the capacity to run for forty odd hours and run ultramarathes if you're purely focused on that. But the thing that I see is that The community I spend time with, and I'm not talking the NFI community, but let's say when we go to those races, the only people there are like absolute Uber running geeks, right? They're all in, it's their entire life. But I'll step into that scenario and then I'll step out of it. And then I'll go into the business space where there's business owners and, and, and business leaders that that's all they do for like ninety percent of their life. And they really struggle with any form of fitness. They really struggle with, with balancing anything. And then there's, it's, that's easier to quantify than their personal relationship. But you can see,

• 25:31Speaker 00

  you can see that. What I try and do is find the time and dedicate the time to be the best I can in this space, but then pull back from it. I can't be, I can't have the capacity to run an ultra marathon all year, unless that's all I did. So I pull, I go in and I go out. And that's how I try and achieve as much as I can in a certain space, pull back from it, focus on a different space, and then maybe go back to that a few months later. So macro, balanced, but micro, very much imbalanced.

• 25:55Chris Williamson?

  Is that done in advance? Do you look at your year? Is this very, is it a very structured thing? You can't just decide to run an ultra marathon tomorrow, but similarly, there's a lot of inputs that we don't have control over. The new catastrophe that inevitably occurs at work, the injury that throws your training schedule out, the argument you have with your misses, et cetera, et cetera. What is the process that you go through to kind of set that out? Because it sounds fantastic. Everyone that's listening should have listened to the episode they did with Greg McEwen on essentialism. Focus on the vital few, not the trivial many. Where is the single highest point of contribution that you can have in your life? And go for that.

• 26:37Chris Williamson?

  Naval Ravikant, uh, become the best in the world at what you do, continue to redefine what you do until it's true.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 26:44Chris Williamson?

  Um, and all of these different things take us to the same place, which is deep focused work, single task focus. Multitasking is bullshit. You can't do multiple things at once. And even if you try to spread that out really across month periods, you can't open the new office whilst you train for the ultra marathon. It's just not going to happen.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:01Chris Williamson?

  But. Implementing that, actually taking it from it being a concept that everybody can really understand cerebrally and getting it into their life, is this a pre-commitment? Are you looking at quarters and thinking, right, okay, I have this event coming up, I have this office opening coming up, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to allow and notice the discomfort from knowing that my fitness is dropping off, or from knowing that I'm gonna have to miss some emails, or knowing that me and my wife are maybe gonna have a more strained relationship because of this focus elsewhere. Is that, is that something that you have to plan in advance?

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, really good question. I mean, it's, it's something that I, that I do plan. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that there's a, there's anything that's written down in structure. No, there's not. But it's, there, there are certain pillars, going back to your points there. A race, the race dates is the race date, right? If you want to run that race and you've signed up for it in six months, then that dictates a lot of the training program already. But also, you can choose different races to, to do throughout the year based on what else was going on in life. So there's, there's, there's a focus in terms of what does the year look like? When is a good time for us to be, when, when is a good time for me to be training? When is a good time to be, to be racing? And what's going on in, in, in business? And have that rough

• 28:17Speaker 00

  schedule to say, right, these are the things, but sometimes it'll go wrong. But you have to have that, that approximate structure. But then sometimes I'll have to bail on a race four weeks before the, the race, even if I've done three months of training for it, because I realise that right now the priority is something going on in business. We might have won a big account, or lost a big account, or, you know, whatever, whatever happens, you know, it's, it's chaos, controlled chaos every day. So with, with that side of things, like that has to take priority. I don't put myself and my running over business because I'm beholden to a hundred people at the agency. Like, my job is to look after them. So if I'm being selfish and going off and doing ultras, that can't be at their detriment. And so that's, that's always a bit of a challenge. My wife is amazing, so she always, she, she gives me the, the

• 29:02Speaker 00

  freedom and the space to do as I want to when it comes to all that side of things. But, but yeah, sometimes you just have to pull the plug and, and refocus. So it's always just this constant reprioritising of what's in front of you. But it should be built on a, on some sort of a structure, even if it's just in your head. Because if you don't have any goals, how are you going to achieve anything? Like I say, it's In business, we sit down at the start of the year and we structure or at the end of the previous year, we structure. This is what we want to do next year. Financial plans and goal setting, right? We want to open a new territory, whatever that might be. And that's a very structured process because that's what's needed. That then gets assimilated through the business, senior management buy into that. This is what each of them need to do in order to achieve that wider goal. So that's all very, very structured.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  There's an element that you should take from that understanding into your personal life to say, okay, if I want to. Whatever it is, if I want to run a marathon this year, if I want to do X, Y or Z.

• 29:53Chris Williamson?

  Lose fifty pounds.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  Whatever it is.

• 29:55Chris Williamson?

  Get a partner.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:56Chris Williamson?

  Start finding.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  There we go. If you want to, if you want to get a partner, for example, and you might have been meeting the wrong people, you're probably going to the wrong places. So now how, these things don't just happen. A business doesn't just build itself. A marathon doesn't run itself and. No, finding a partner, sometimes you can be lucky, but quite often you've actually got to start to think about it. Especially as we get a little bit older, we're not meeting the hundreds of people that we're used to because we're not going out as much. You have to be a little bit more considerate of being like, great, well, if I want to meet the right people, where am I going to put myself into the situations? Of hopefully meeting those people. So everything needs to be thought through to an extent and then life happens, right? So then you've got to roll with the punches sometimes. Sometimes that serendipity and it all works out and it's amazing and you're like, wow, I could never have scripted it.

• 30:39Speaker 00

  Another time is the shit hits the fan and you've got to deal with a new set of scenarios as we discussed earlier. But at least have some sort of structure because if you don't, what are you doing? You're just bouncing off the walls.

• 30:49Chris Williamson?

  You know what I've just thought of there, which would be a really cool thing to do and I'm going to maybe suggest to some of my buddies that we might do it this year. Would be to have an AGM on your life.

• 30:59Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 31:00Chris Williamson?

  At the end of the year.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:01Chris Williamson?

  And do it, you know, around about Christmas time when everyone's back home and say.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  What have you achieved?

• 31:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. How was your year, man? What went well? You know, present to the board. Like the floor is yours, Tom. Like, you know, step up and tell us what did you, what did well, what did badly, what do you wish that you could have improved on?

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:15Chris Williamson?

  And what are your goals for next year? What do we all want to achieve next year? How can we help? How can, oh. You want to do that ultra thing. Well, actually, I happen to have two complete psychopaths in Dubai that I'm buddies with. Who can tell you about the best training plan or this thing. Or you want to start a creative agency. Have and have an amazing videographer, whatever it might be.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:35Chris Williamson?

  I think that would be a really cool thing to do. And one of the issues that I have and many people may do as well. Those of us that like being self-sufficient often get stuck in ruts more than I think people who are pulled out by other stimulus. So the advantage of having the AGM is that you will get that different input. We all know what we think. It's very rare that I actually have a new thought. I think the neuroscience suggests that 90% of the thoughts that you had today are the same as you had yesterday.

• 32:06Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 32:06Chris Williamson?

  Which actually means that existing in your mind is a lot like being trapped by the most boring repetitive captor in history.

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:13Chris Williamson?

  Um, and thinking about that makes you realise that learning is a very slow process. 10% of the thoughts that you have are the different ones from yesterday. Compound that over years. I don't actually spend that much time thinking of new stuff. It's still the same traumas that I had from when I was in school. It's still the same fears that I used to have from when I was at uni and all that stuff. Um, yeah, I think that the influence of people like that could be a real.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  I think it would be really powerful and that's an interesting point about the, about the the concepts and the thoughts being so similar. I think that's why it's so important to read, to listen to podcasts, to, to start to expand your, I suppose, level of content consumption that pulls you in those different ways. Cause you're right, if you're self-sufficient mentally and you set your life up to be like, I'm cool as I am. I've got everything I need, et cetera, et cetera. And you're not going to get pulled in all of those different directions and all the different stimulus is going to affect you so much. So as you said, you can get stuck in a rut. And if you're constantly thinking about trying to solve every problem yourself, you're only going to get so far with that, right? We all need support. We all need help.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  Um, and to succeed, it's always a group effort and no matter who it is, no matter how, how single focused they are, no matter how, how much they seem like they've done everything themselves, it's always a team effort because they've had support from someone along the way. And I think going back to your point about the AGM, I actually used to do something with Marcus and another friend, and another friend of mine a few years ago, when we were all kind of coming up. And we'd have monthly sessions where each of us, each, um, each time it was another person's focus. So let's say we meet on Wednesday, this is, this is your, your, um, your meeting, basically. You would send out a brief to us. It was all written up. We had documentation for it. We would read it. What's the scenario? What's the problem you're facing? What are your challenges?

• 34:03Speaker 00

  And we would then think about it. And when we come to the meeting, we discuss it and we're all prepped.

• 34:06Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, and we'd, we'd support. I can help with this. I can help with that. Um, so I think. For listeners as well, I mean, I think you've always got to audit the people that you're spending most of your time with. We've all heard that you're the fifth person and et cetera, et cetera. So the people that you're spending the most time with are the most important group of people. And as we get, as we get older, it starts to change, it starts to evolve, it has to be a conscious decision. You can't just be friends with someone because you're friends with them at school. If that friendship's no longer serving you, then you can still obviously be acquaintances, be friends with them. But they shouldn't be in your, in your circle of five people if you're not helping them grow and they're not helping you grow. Like you have, that you have to be supporting each other.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  And I think it's really important to, to understand who those people that you have around you, that you're learning from. And how you're supporting them and how they're going to support you. So if you create that environment with this AGM with the four or five or six people that you've got in your head.

• 35:02Chris Williamson?

  Annual growth meeting.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  There you go, annual growth meeting. There you go, perfect.

• 35:06Chris Williamson?

  We've nailed it, man.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it's, it's a super important concept. If you've got those people in your life, you're lucky, right? Unfortunately, a lot of people that are going to be listening might be thinking, wow, I'm thinking about the people I hang out with every day. They don't really help.

• 35:17Chris Williamson?

  My AGM is going to be a board meeting of me and the cat.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  So, so it's super important. If you can't think of people to put on that board, let's say, in this concept that we're talking about now. Then you need to start to think about that because that will have such a significant effect on your future. That you need to start thinking about it and thinking, okay, I need to spend time with people like that. That will make me think, make me feel good about myself, that will challenge me, that will allow me to grow, that will push me to grow. That's going to be the, one of the single biggest, that and your own mindset, going to be the biggest factors in determining your success.

• 35:49Chris Williamson?

  Where do you see people around you going wrong the most with motivation and with staying on track?

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Sure, victim mindset all the time and it, it, it blows my mind and it frustrates the shit out of me. It's people feeling sorry for themselves, thinking that, no, everything's happening to them, that life is happening to them. And not, and it's not happening because of them. They're not actually taking those steps forward. They're, they're, they're seeing what's happening. They're saying, hands up, I give up, this isn't my fault. I'm allowed to quit because of these things that are. Happened and it's it's that going back to that is it your fault or is it your responsibility? Going back to that thought process and it's that that frustrates me at the end of the day. Um. It's people not taking ownership of whatever that problem is and it's it's very easy.

• 36:36Speaker 00

  It's very easy to be negative, right? There's a there's a thousand reasons as to why and why you can't achieve what you want to achieve. There's there's always so many reasons as to that you can point to. Uh. Cause we all we all have stressful lives, right? We've all got we all none of us have enough time. None of us um have all the resources that we want, whether that be financial or otherwise. Um. So it's it's it's that mindset of of saying I don't have enough. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough whatever um to achieve what I want to achieve. And because of all these scenarios and these things that I have no impact on, I therefore can't achieve X, Y or Z. And that to us may frustrate the shit out of me.

• 37:11Chris Williamson?

  That point of people realizing leaning into that discomfort and actually thinking what's the next step? Trying to get over the inertia of noticing that there's something wrong. Is it for you? Is your solution not looking to have regrets? Is it an aggression like leaning into discomfort? Is it a I'm grateful to be here my sort of mindful acceptance? You understand there's multiple different ways that people could get over that because as you said already. Everybody feels like that, like why is this occurring that thought note it pops up? It's how you deal with that and then move forward. What's your sort of personal strategy with that?

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Look, I mean, for for me, it's it's just. Yeah, I mean, to be honest, it it goes back to that that that same thought process around around feeling sorry for yourself or not. It's just um now, how do you get yourself out of that rut? How do you focus on moving forward? How do you keep? How do you keep challenging yourself? How do you keep wanting to grow? I mean, for me, um. There's a few, I mean, you touched on something before we started the podcast actually about, around leadership, right? So 2020 has been a challenge for leadership in a number of different areas. Now, as you can imagine, without me going into all the details, if you're dealing with a hundred people that I look after in the agency that are remote working now, so that was one thing.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Everyone come together, right, as of forty eight hours time, no one's coming back to the office. Everyone's going remote. So the thing of the operational challenges, because the clients don't give two shits, whether you're in the office or whether you're at home, like they want the work done.

• 38:46Chris Williamson?

  Deliverables are deliverable.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, deliverables are deliverable. And if you're late, you're late. So like, you know, that was a challenge anyway, just navigating that side of it. But you know, you're right. When I'm having clients phoning up and saying, oh, we've got to put this on hold because X, Y or Z, or our funding's been pulled by the government, so we've got to stop this contract. And all this chaos on one side, but yet you've got to be a cheerleader to the entire team on the other side and be like, you know, we're in this together and we're going to drive through them, we're going to run through walls together and trying to get everyone motivated to really pull them together and really build the culture within the agency. Now, that's, that's a real challenge. And multiple times, whether it be that scenario of like, you've got to lean into that uncomfort, you have to lean into that, that, that pain.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  And that is how you grow. That is what a leader does. And so you can have these, you can have this internal dialogue. And this is often, this is one that's really worked well for me, is imagining what the ideal leader would do. So don't put yourself in the situation at this point. Let's say, okay, X has happened. You happen to be the leader of this scenario, whether it be your business, whether it be your team, whether it be, you know, whatever your scenario is, you're the leader in this particular scenario. X has happened and it's, and it's, and it's bad. Now, you, you should look at that. This is how I do it. I look at it and be like, okay, let's remove myself from this, remove the emotion from it. And look at it and be like, if I was reading about this in a book, what would the ideal leader do? How would they behave?

• 40:14Speaker 00

  How would they act? How would they engage with their team? How would they engage with whatever it is that's the challenge? And I build that little framework. And sometimes this entire conversation can happen in my head in one minute before I, whilst I go quiet, figure it out and then, and then act. Or you might have a bit more time. You might have a few days to understand what's happened and work out what you're going to do next. So it's, it's understanding, taking the emotion out of it, figuring out what that blueprint looks like. And then putting yourself back into it and saying, this is what I have to do. So it's like you create the blueprint of what you need to do next. You create your plan in your head and then you say, but I'm the leader in this scenario, so I have to do these things. I have to be the one that stands up and puts my hand up and say, actually, this is a scenario. And it could be, I mean, we're talking about,

• 41:01Speaker 00

  often when it's a particularly uncomfortable situation, you might not know how to deal with it. It could be something at work that's happened between two people. It can be a social situation within work, but let's say a worldwide social movement. And you're like, how do I engage with what's going on in the world and relate it to my team? And be the figurehead for it? And do I bring everyone together to discuss this? Or do we pretend like it's not happening? How should we do it? So again, going back to I sit on my own, I think about what would the ideal leader do here? And then I try and do it and I try and emulate that. So and that's mostly leaning into uncomfortable things. So if you have that mindset, that often will dictate, because you've already made the decision to yourself.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  I'm going to always try and do the, once I've come up with a plan, I'm the guy that's going to do it. So constantly doing that, you remove the choice of saying, oh, do I feel like this? Do I not feel like this? Because nine times out of 10, if it's worth doing, you don't feel like doing it. But you you look back on it and you think, shit, I'm really glad I did that. And someone else is there going, that was a really good move.

• 42:03Chris Williamson?

  That was the decision to make, yeah.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  That was the decision to make.

• 42:05Chris Williamson?

  There's a few things we've been through recently that tie in with this. The third party perspective, as it's called, which is a mental model that doesn't take your side or the opposite side. It imagines you as a third person. There's a famous Joe Rogan video on it called Be the Hero of Your Own Story. He says, imagine that your life is a movie and the movie starts now. And the hero's downtrodden and overweight and depressed and like, doesn't have a partner and is lonely. Like, what would the hero do? Like, you're that guy, do that now. You can be that hero right now. And then James Clear talks about identity-based change. So the way that James gets people to change their habits, especially difficult and ingrained ones, is he gets you to ask.

• 42:50Chris Williamson?

  What would the person I want to be

• 42:53Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 42:54Chris Williamson?

  Do in this situation? So rather than being a smoker that's trying to quit smoking, it's I don't smoke. I'm not a smoker. What would not a smoker do right now? Not a smoker wouldn't have a cigarette.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:06Chris Williamson?

  So not a smoker Tom or not a smoker Chris wouldn't do it.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 43:10Chris Williamson?

  Decision made. It does help us to cut through. I've been fascinated this year thinking about just how much noise our brains create. And that having these very, very simple heuristics, George McGill, my good buddy who was on the show yesterday, said Elon Musk, every decision he makes, there's one rule, one heuristic that he follows. Will this get the human race closer to Mars?

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 43:35Chris Williamson?

  Jeff Bezos, Amazon, one rule. Does this improve the customer's experience?

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 43:41Chris Williamson?

  That's it. And when you run all of the noise, all of the, and you think these guys must have such a complex decision tree of what it is that they're doing. It's like, no, no, no, no. The two, two of the most famous entrepreneur innovators on the planet are relying on a rule each to guide everything they do, business and personal life. And trying to bring it back to that simplicity, and this goes back to the maxim aphorist stuff that we were talking about earlier on.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 44:06Chris Williamson?

  Having a little mantra, having these small pithy quotes and, and concepts that you can distill down to rely on actually help to remind us that all of the, the chaos that's going on can actually be simplified down.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, very much so. And it comes down, you know, what you said there about Elon Musk and, and Bezos is it's that comes, that simplicity comes from a goal. And that that goal is so well defined in both, in both of them in terms of what they want to do. Right? So if you have a, a goal and let's take it, let's make it a little bit more, let's say, uh, conceptually understandable for, for us that we're not.

• 44:44Chris Williamson?

  To Mars.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  We're not those guys, right? We're not going to Mars, but let's go, let's use the marathon as an example again. Right? So if you've set that goal of, of running a marathon or whatever the challenge is for yourself, every decision you make either takes you closer to that goal or further away. So once you define exactly what it is that goal is in your life.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  Every decision falls within the framework of getting you closer or further away. So it doesn't surprise me, I hadn't heard that about Elon Musk. But that doesn't surprise me at all. And that's what goal setting is all about, right? Because if you have a clear goal, then everything else becomes so much more simple. With the ultras, someone will say, "Do you want to go for a beer tonight?" No. Very, very simple, very simple to make that because if I do that, it's getting me further away from my goal. And if you're super focused on where you want to go and it goes back to the micro imbalance and the macro balance, at that time, if that decision gets you closer or further away, it's a very easy decision to make, isn't it? Hmm. If you're fully bought into it. What advice would you give yourself 10 years ago? Good question.

• 45:51Speaker 00

  Focus on people. And what I mean by that is, that's used across so many different ways. There's any success we've had in the agency over the last few years is purely because of the people that we have in the business, but the focus on people within the community that we have. We have an outstanding internal team culture. It's the thing that I'm most proud of, more than any other accolade of fastest growing and the clients we have or anything like that. It's the culture we have in the business that there's no bullshit, there's no politics, there's no backstabbing, there's none of this. And we're operating in an environment that's notorious for it.

• 46:32Speaker 00

  Agency life is notorious for all of the things that I just said, especially in this region. So we've created this environment where we have a very, very low staff turnover. And we focus on people over profits. And that's not just a nice thing that is put up on the wall, but it really is the deciding factor of everything that we do. And there's a number of reasons around that.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  I'm personally not motivated about chasing money. It's not why I get out of bed in the morning. And and it allows me to make decisions really easily with regards to, okay, that's going to cost us more money, but it's the right thing to do for the people. So we just do that time and time and time again. And 10 years later, you end up with a culture where everybody in the environment knows exactly what's, um, I suppose what's championed and what's, uh, you know, what's celebrated and what's, you know, what's promoted within the business. And it's, it's not sales, it's not bringing in a big contract. It's not, it's not all of those financial drivers, although they're important because we're still, you know, we're still a business and, you know, that has to work for, for everybody to be able to come to work. But the focus is always, always about what people have done for each other.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  I'll give you an example. We used, we do, I do a full agency meeting every Wednesday. So got everybody on the call. Anywhere from 80 to 100 people on a, on a Zoom, on a Zoom call. And we start every single meeting with 10 minutes. We call the compliments circle. So everybody in the Zoom chat, um, everyone in the Zoom chat writes down what they're grateful for and to whom they're grateful. So from a work context. So, oh, thanks so much for Jenny. She went over and above. What were you grateful for this week? Can you remember? What was I grateful for this week? Um, for me, yeah, to be honest, it's, it's, it's literally the management of the workload that we've got on right now. And we're in a fortunate space where we spent 10 years of building our, our digital credibility and, and, and pushing the business into that space. Covid has accelerated digital.

• 48:28Speaker 00

  So, you know, we're in a fortunate space that we're very busy right now. Um, because we're managing all, it's changing dynamics, but we're, we're, we're busy in that space. And I'm incredibly grateful for the amount of work that the team is dealing with, because we've got people that are, that are burning themselves to the floor. That my job is to facilitate that as much as I can, hire as many people as we can to try and depressurize. And we're a growing organism. We're not perfect. Like, we make mistakes as a business, but the intent is always correct. We're always trying to do the best by our clients. We're always trying to do the best by our people internally. And because of that, We're given leeway internally. Our team will run through walls for us because they know that we're not trying to, we're not asking them to run through the wall because we want to make more money.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  We're saying that this is a scenario. How do we, how do we get through this together? And they're putting their hand up and be like, well, I'll run through that wall. Oh, cool. Okay.

• 49:20Chris Williamson?

  You take that one.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  John's running through that wall and Bob's like, I'm going to run through that wall. And because we've got this, this, this culture internally, that's what's happening. Now, for me, that's great. Firstly, that's a successful business culture internally and it's the right thing to do because it's the right thing from a human and empathetic perspective.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  But I don't want to build a business on, on people burning themselves and running through walls. That's, that's not what I want to do because then that defeats the purpose of my goal, which is running a, a human focused empathetic organisation. So my focus is right, shit, okay, let's focus on recruitment. We need more people in. That person needs support. That person needs support. That account. The client's not paying for those extra two people, but we have to put them on it because these guys are getting killed here because the, the client's that much more demanding. It's a government client. We can't really say no. We're stuck in a bit of an awkward place. Throw more resource at it because yes, we'll lose money on that account perhaps, but the people will be okay. And then over time, we'll work out how to bring it back into a profitable space. So we don't run the business from a spreadsheet.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  We run the business from looking at people and saying, okay, what do we need to do right by people whilst at the same time, running a good organisation. And that's allowed us over the last two years to, to win those accolades of, you know, fastest growing agencies and blah, blah, blah. And, and that's what we're trying to do. It's just, it's just focus on people.

• 50:37Chris Williamson?

  That's your going to Mars?

• 50:38Speaker 00

  That's my going to Mars. Yeah.

• 50:40Chris Williamson?

  I really like it. I think to hear in, especially this year of all years, a year where people have been made redundant, left, right and centre and had job and career challenges. That focusing on people first has been anti fragile is a very reassuring thing to hear.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean. That served us so well whilst coronavirus like just decimated everything, right? Now, we've got it's i- in terms of like how people, people knew that the company had their back. And that helped them in many, many ways. We paid for professionals to come in and do uh mental health workshops for the team. We were sending Deliveroo credit once a week to everybody in the agency. So that um so that everyone could get Deliveroo to deliver their lunch and then everyone would get on Zoom. We'd all have team lunch together. So we honestly, we we did, we did so many things to try and focus on on bringing everyone together and making everyone understand that, you know, the company's here for you, like we as an agency, well, we'll get through this together.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  And and that definitely helped. It definitely helped the team. And as things started to get better economically with the business. Now, we were losing clients because of major events. Expo got put on hold, for example. We're the social media agency for Expo. I had six people on that account full time. And then they sent us a letter saying, as of next week. Expo twenty twenty one now. Yeah, but there you go. So, you know, we had a few things like that where sort of revenues got hit. But, you know, we didn't cut anybody's salary. We didn't let anybody go. We didn't do any of those things. And we said, right, we're going to pay for this. We're going to fund this as long as we can without affecting anybody in in the organization because that's the right thing to do. And that's going to cost myself as a shareholder, and that's going to cost us. But

• 52:23Speaker 00

  it's the right thing to do. It'll allow, from a selfish perspective, it will let me sleep at night to know that I'm not basically borrowing from my team by cutting their salaries to then keep that money here for a rainy day. We said, right, if we need to put all of this back in to keep these guys safe, and that's what we're going to do. And the market fortunately started to come back a little bit earlier than it has for most because we're in the digital space. We picked up more work. And then as that happened, what did the team do? They started running through walls because they saw what we did. You know, so it's not even just a, I mean, it, it, it sounds like it's a good business decision, but it wasn't, that's just, that was just the payoff for doing the right thing from a human perspective. And that's what's, that's what's the most important, and that's why, why we're where we are today. We've, you know, we've hired forty people since January.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  And, and that's because we've, we've focused on, on people and they've run through walls, we've won it, we win accounts because of that and then it's just, I'm proud to be part of that team, not to run the company and own that company, it's, I'm proud to be part of that group of people where I can walk in and everyone's high fiving each other and you just think, shit, you know what? This is a good place to be.

• 53:27Chris Williamson?

  I've seen some companies that I think, you say, dictatorially try and achieve the same thing. So I've seen some companies during my experience where they have a autocratic forced level of socialization and people are walking along and they're always, they've got to high five everybody.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  They feel like they should.

• 53:53Chris Williamson?

  When they make a sale and the whole thing stops and stuff like that. And I always wonder, it feels a little bit like America, sorry to all of the Americans that are listening. You know, when someone's in a brand new relationship and all they do is post about their relationship.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  It's not just America though.

• 54:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but so, so I'm getting out of America, wait, I haven't forgotten about the Americans.

• 54:15Chris Williamson?

  Someone's in a brand new relationship, all of their Facebook photos, then they get to a normal level of Facebook photos and then they start popping back up and you think, I think there's something wrong in that, I think that that is what they're holding on to.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 54:26Chris Williamson?

  And when I hear the way that people from America who are quite rightly proud of their country, it, it's a little bit like the lady doth protest too much, it feels a bit sort of like, I really like all the time, I love my country, I miss that, and you think, well, there's quite a lot of problems in your country.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:43Chris Williamson?

  And but. When I see these companies who operate in the same way.

• 54:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:49Chris Williamson?

  It feels incredibly forced and realizing that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Happens so quickly for people. Like, one of the interesting insights I learned the other day is why we have white as humans around our eyes. And it's so that we can see where the other person is looking. Because gaze is such an important indicator of truthfulness.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 55:12Chris Williamson?

  If you look at all of the other primates, you look at gorillas and chimps, black eyes.

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:17Chris Williamson?

  So you wouldn't be able to see where someone's looking. And because truthfulness is such an important part. Uh, we have fourteen million sensory cells in our body and eleven million of them are dedicated to sight.

• 55:27Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 55:28Chris Williamson?

  Same again, massively, massively skewed towards what we're looking at. And my concern for companies like that, and also for other ones who maybe don't have this customer, this employee centered focus.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:42Chris Williamson?

  Is that if it's not there, built into the source code, emergent, coming out of the day to day activity. People are so quick to pick up on hypocrisy.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:54Chris Williamson?

  And it's a dangerous situation to be in.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  It is, and I, I, I listened to your podcast the other day about, um, about WeWork as well.

• 56:01Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was really interesting. Jesus. And that's, I suppose, if you're talking about a, a spectrum, that's the, you know, the furthest end of the scale where it is forced, right? And it was forced and it was.

• 56:11Chris Williamson?

  Very much so.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  There was a lot of, there's a lot of, um, yeah, a lot of hypocrisy, as you say, there was a lot of, um, uh, just.

• 56:18Chris Williamson?

  Talking about saving the planet while we've got three private jets.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  There we go, yeah.

• 56:21Chris Williamson?

  Ten holiday homes, yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Exactly that sort of thing, right? And it's, it, it is that. But if we break it back down into, into a more granular level and we talk about, okay, well, the cultures inside organizations and, you know. Is free lunch is gonna, gonna do the, do the thing? Is it like, is it, um, is it all the perks? Is it the, you know, whatever you go into Facebook, oh, wow, you've got a whole kitchen here, you can make your food. Is it all those things? No, it's not. People want to feel safe. That's it. Like if they feel safe when they come into work, that they're not going to be judged. They're not going to be ostracized for for whatever reason. They're not going to be fired because politically it was the right thing to do. And if they feel safe coming to work, they can really bring themselves to work as humans.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  And that can be anything that goes with that. So we focus on the fact that this is something that that I speak to every single person in an interview about. I say, look, if you you've you're choosing to come and work here, and we really respect that because you're choosing to invest your time, which is the most important element that any of us have. You're choosing to invest your time in the agency. You're choosing to invest your career in this organization. And we we're firstly very grateful for that, but we understand that this is a two-way relationship. Yes, you're getting paid a salary to do that, but you're investing a huge amount of who you are. And I know how busy the agency is, so I know what you're going to be investing in this. And that comes from a new joiner or existing. It's the same dialogue, same conversation.

• 57:45Speaker 00

  So therefore, as an agency, we have a responsibility not just to say, cool, well, at six P M. Us, you're not our responsibility anymore. You go and you keep your personal life out of this because that's that's your life and we're only interested in the hours that we pay you for. That's that's not how we operate, but that's how a lot of businesses operate. You should be able to come in and start crying at work because something's happened at home. Like you have to be human in the workplace. And if if you if you create the environment where someone can really bring their humanity into the workplace and say, I'm having a really shit day because of A, B, C, or D. And when we're dealing with the size of workforce that we have, we have parents dying. We have scenarios of someone getting terminally ill.

• 58:28Speaker 00

  We have whether that be the workforce or their their their sister, their brother. You know, there's there's things going on all the time. And we had a core focus from from early on of saying, right, we need to look after them in in in their entirety. So we've like, we've gone to pick somebody up from an office because we've been told something has happened in their family before they've been told. We've had to pick them up from a client meeting with a plane ticket and be like, you need to go home. And take them to the airport, get them on a plane. Like, we have to look after people to that level. Because at the end of the day, how can, how can we ask so much of people in the workspace? When I know that they're working on weekends, I know that they'll be working in the evening for that pitch tomorrow morning, all of those things.

• 59:10Speaker 00

  So as a company, we've made the decision that we will look after the entirety of that person, whether that be sometimes financially, giving them. Like, something's gone on at home, will that help? Cool, that'll help. And and that's not something we talk about across the business and from one person to the other person, they don't know that we've done it. It's not something that we celebrate, but it's something we do on an individual level often. Because we'll have someone in the office crying their eyes out because of A, B, C, and D. And if if myself or as a as a company, we have the opportunity to fix that problem by telling that person that. What do you mean you're you're waiting for a week to get on the plane because of X, Y, and Z? Like, absolutely no workload off, money, there you go, go. You know, we've had scenarios where someone's not wanting to say that they're waiting for their salary to come through.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  In a week's time to get on a plane to go and see their sick father. I was just like, what? They were new, they didn't know that they could actually ask for these things. And I was like, there's a plane ticket, not even taking it out of your salary, what if you go, come back when, you know, when you're okay.

• 1:00:07Chris Williamson?

  One thing that I've thought about a lot recently, and this ties into it, is.

• 1:00:12Chris Williamson?

  How athletes and sports people have a lot of mental models that we probably should port across into real life. And think about what every group sport is called, team. What's a team do? Team works together to achieve the goals. I think team in a business context, a lot of the time, is just a title.

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Chris Williamson?

  I've been a part of teams, and I'm sure you have as well, where. No one cares. You turn up. How many people know that I can't be myself at work? I can't say what I mean to say.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Chris Williamson?

  And the team isn't working together. You're pulling in that direction. I'm pulling in this one and John's pulling that way and we're getting nowhere.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Everyone's pretending to be robots, right? Because everyone's bringing their work selves to work. So that's, there's a problem there already. And like you said, there's, there's high performing teams and there's certain indicators of high performing teams that are similar across all. So on one of the Wednesday calls that I do, I, I talk through different things that I might have picked up during the week that I think will help the, help the organisation, help the team. And one of them the other day was actually the All Blacks. So it's the tenants of the, of the All Blacks rugby team.

• 1:01:18Chris Williamson?

  What other?

• 1:01:18Speaker 00

  And I can't remember all of them. Um, but one that certainly stands out is no dickheads.

• 1:01:23Chris Williamson?

  Fine.

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  That's the actual words.

• 1:01:25Chris Williamson?

  What, what an unbelievable rule to live life by.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  And they're literally like, it doesn't matter how good you are, if you're a dickhead, you're not on this team. So you can be the greatest rugby player that the world has ever seen. If you act like a dickhead, you're gone. The other one is sweep the sheds. So sweep the sheds is, doesn't matter who you are, could be Richie McCaw in this case, is the, is the captain of the team. You should still be the guy that's sweeping the changing rooms after a game. You should be able to do that and you should do that at times. So it's about understanding that nobody's too big. Nobody's bigger than the team itself. Nobody's more important than the team itself. And myself included, I might own the business, but I'm there, sleeves rolled up with the team when it, when it needs to. And that's, that's what you need to, that's what you need to be able to do. So the way that we talk internally is we're somewhere between a family and a high performing team.

• 1:02:11Speaker 00

  We do more on the family side than most companies would, but don't think that you can come, come into work day after day and not perform because you will be asked to leave. And everyone knows that. I know we've, we've, we've moved people out of the businesses. They're just, I, A, the only, the only thing we're ruthless on in the company, the only thing is culture. So we've had people that have come in, done a great job. I'm getting WhatsApp messages from the clients saying how happy they are with this new person that's running their account. But they're being a dickhead internally. Three weeks later, they're gone. I phoned the client, I'm sorry, I know they were really good at their job. I know you love them, blah, blah. But internally, they were gossiping, they were just niggling, just, they were the sort of cancer that you need to pull out very quickly before it starts to poison the well.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  And, and that was, uh, yeah, that, that's the one thing that we, that we focus on.

• 1:02:57Chris Williamson?

  To back that up, I remember reading an example about.

• 1:03:02Chris Williamson?

  Putting problem students in with groups of high performers. And what the researchers were trying to look at was, does one bad apple spoil the lot?

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:03:13Chris Williamson?

  Or can an overwhelming number of high performers bring up? The person who is lazy or unmotivated or negative or transactional. Ah, and it turned out that it was one bad apple spoils a lot fairly robustly across a number of different studies.

• 1:03:28Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 1:03:29Chris Williamson?

  They found if you put into a, I think it was academic work in like creating a portfolio for some masters program.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Chris Williamson?

  And um, you could put one underperforming student in with a group of five of the highest performing students.

• 1:03:43Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:03:44Chris Williamson?

  And all of the high performing students would start to down regulate. Um, so being, how would you say? Being dictatorial with culture and liberal with emotion.

• 1:03:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Chris Williamson?

  I think.

• 1:03:57Speaker 00

  Good word for it.

• 1:03:58Chris Williamson?

  Seems like a nice, a nice idea. My final question is what are you working on personally over the next year? You've still got areas of yourself that you want to enhance and reduce. What have you got sort of on the personal AGM for the next year?

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, good question. So there's a couple of different areas. So firstly, um, so you know, easier, easier. Area of that question to answer, uh, the fitness side. So, you know, I'm, I'm focusing on running the fastest marathon that I can. So. I'm focused on goals for that. So I, I changed all of my training from some of the longer ultra stuff to, to trying to run as a.

• 1:04:29Chris Williamson?

  Feel like a sprint to you now.

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a very different way of training, it's a very different mindset. It's.

• 1:04:34Chris Williamson?

  What you're hoping to hit?

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Um, my, my, uh, my PB at the moment is three fourteen for the, for the marathon and I wanna get a sub three. So. Got a bit of work to do. Um, so yeah, so we'll see. But it doesn't help the bloody races get, keep getting cancelled. Abu Dhabi got cancelled, Dubai got cancelled. So. So we'll see. So when I get back to actually, you know, being lined up for a race, then, then that's gonna be the, the goal. Um, outside of that, look, my focus is, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm fairly newly married. So. It's making sure that I'm balancing that side of things with everything that's going on with work because. You know, we're, we just opened an office in Saudi. We're, you know, in the process of, um. Uh of opening in Egypt, so that that's sucking up a lot of my time. So it's just trying to balance

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  everything that I've got going on um with, you know, focusing on on the work because I need to push that as far as I can right now. It's one of those points where I have to go all in on it, but not to the detriment. Whereas before I had girlfriends and stuff, I was a lot more relaxed. It's like, hey, let's push that. It goes, it goes, yeah. Yeah, you know, now I need to be. Bigger commitment now. Bigger commitment, I've got to be more focused. So just trying to be the best I can in that space and and to be honest, just constantly growing, you know, from from a leadership perspective. Every day is a new set of challenges. Every day I've never done X before. As as a company grows, right? You know, you you've never looked after thirty people before, then you've never looked after thirty one before, then you've never worked after thirty two. So we're getting to the stage now where there's what I've noticed, and obviously the business books say this, but it's only when you really get to it that you really understand that

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  when things get to a certain scale and size, everything changes. So the difference between like X and Y is not a huge, it's just more hours of the same. Now all of a sudden, my role completely changes. So I'm now further out of my comfort zone than I was six months ago and I'm. Exponentially. Exponentially, and it keeps challenging that, right? So I'm not doing the stuff that I feel I was good at. So you know, you start off doing whatever X is, whatever your artistry is, and you build a business around it, and then you do more of it and more of it and more of it. And then you actually start to do less of it. Because you start to bring people in, right? And then it gets to a point where you don't do any of it. And your job is completely different because you don't do any of these things anymore. You your your your focus has to be completely is is

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  driving the strategy of the company forward, looking after people, making sure that resourcing we're set up, making sure that where are the problem points, where where are things maybe falling between the gaps? And as we're scaling so much, like we grew ninety one percent headcount last year. So you can imagine it's. It's a different business. It's it's a completely different organisation. And like I said, we're not, we're not perfect in in any which way. We're trying to be the best that we can be. And sometimes there's there's things that we do incredibly well and and, you know, we get that visibility for it, which which is down to amazing people in the organisation. And other times we get it wrong. And my job is to look across the business and try and pinpoint where we're going wrong.

• 1:07:28Speaker 00

  Or where we're going down a path that's wrong, or where we've got the wrong people doing the wrong things. So my job now is mostly resourcing of just literally. Get not not letting us put square pegs in round holes. I need the round pegs in the round holes. And and that's if you get that right. Then everything works well. As soon as you get high performing people doing the wrong thing. They might they're not high performing people anymore. So you can end up losing really really good talent. Because you haven't focused on what they're actually doing day to day and would they be better over here. So it's a constant. Move because this person is on leave and then this person's sick and then this person joins. So it's constantly evolving. So being better at that. Is is my core focus. So try and consume whatever I can to to just improve.

• 1:08:13Chris Williamson?

  Couple of insights there. The first one being you were talking about your relationship and I was thinking about the analogy with the team. And don't let bad apples spoil the lot. Internally, especially when you're spending a lot of time with one person. All of different dials and knobs of emotions and resentment and undealt with trauma that you have. Are kind of like different players or different team members. And what you don't necessarily want actually is to set the tone early on, early on in this marriage that you've got. With some of those bad apples actually starting to. You know, plant and get some roots in there and then I've stopped it for a bit and then it comes back and it's much harder. You know, as we've spoken about, use the word exponential. That can grow into a real big problem. So I think setting the tone in relationships.

• 1:08:57Chris Williamson?

  Early, very positively and doubling down on that, front loading the lack of. The lack of arguing, I think, or front loading the harmony is a way that you could look at doing that. I think it's a very, very smart way to run a relationship. Uh. And the second thing was you were talking about doing something new that I've never done before, which is imposter syndrome, like feeling. I am unprepared, unqualified and inexperienced at all of the stuff that I have to do every day. I had Seth Godin on the show a couple of weeks ago and he gave this wonderful example about imposter syndrome. And he said, when you feel imposter syndrome, say thank you. If you're doing something that you've never done before, you have every right to feel like an imposter.

• 1:09:40Chris Williamson?

  Feeling like an imposter is a sign that you're doing good work. It means that you are breaking new ground. It means that you are doing things, pushing the boundaries of what you have done before. So say thank you. I was like.

• 1:09:53Speaker 00

  Such a good way of looking at it, isn't it? I did a whole podcast, myself and my business partner on imposter syndrome. And it was one of the most downloaded shows that we, that we ever did because everybody feels it. Every time you get a new job, every time you get a promotion, any of these things, you always feel like that surely there's someone more qualified than I am. And no, I've gone through it multiple times, but now I'm going through, like I said, all these new challenges of where we're at with work. But I'm totally cool with that because the, the, the freedom I give myself and the freedom I give my team is that it's okay not to be great at anything. Like anyone on the management team can be like, I know that's within my remit because I look after X, but I haven't got a fucking clue about that side of things because I know that they're really good over here. And nobody's good at everything, right?

• 1:10:38Speaker 00

  And you have to, you have to give yourself, you have to be easy enough on yourself to understand that if you're going to grow, you're, it's, it's growth for a reason. It's because you don't know how to do it. And it's, it's, it's understanding that. And I think he put it really, really well with, with saying thank you. Because if you have that gratitude mindset as well, to know that, okay, well, I'm going into this space. I should be thankful that I've either put myself in it. So gratitude to yourself or thank you to X person that believes in you enough to say that they feel that you can do that. So you should, yeah, you should be grateful for that and that's how we all grow.

• 1:11:09Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Tom, man, today's been fantastic. Thank you for joining me. People want to check out your stuff, where should they go?

• 1:11:14Speaker 00

  At Tom Otton on Instagram would probably be the best one. Anything professional on LinkedIn as well, I know I'm on there. And then, and yeah, podcast, the creator sessions. So yeah, that's it.

• 1:11:26Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic. Thank you, mate.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

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