Why we need to end things

“Everything has a time to burn because it invites new life.”

During his talk at Summercamp 2022, Ben Johnson shared his thoughts on the importance of creative destruction. Whether you’re talking about corporate innovation, the eventual demise of capitalism, or the maintenance of an ecological system, old things need to die in order for new things to live.

In 2015, Laurence and Carlos experienced their own phase of creative destruction. They’d been simultaneously running both the Happy Startup School and their digital agency for 3 years and in order for one of them to thrive, the other had to die.

They had to stop doing things the way they’d always been doing them.

And so, in June that year, after coming back from their Alptitude mountain retreat, they started to wind down the agency. T’hey had 5 staff at the time and many active clients. This made the ending challenging, but it had to be done.

Since then, Laurence and Carlos have hosted six more Summercamps, over 10 international retreats and run dozens of courses, programmes, and micro events. They’ve started podcasts, coached people one-to-one, spoken at events on four different continents and grown a global online community of purpose-driven entrepreneurs and professionals.

Ending the agency gave them more time, energy and headspace to focus on and grow the Happy Startup School. It hasn’t been easy, and they’ve had their fair share of ups and downs. But they’ve learned so much about themselves and collected new friends and collaborators.

On this episode, Carlos and Laurence are joined by Ben Johnson to talk about how we can invite change and creativity into our lives by being more prepared to end things.

Links

• Join the conversation live
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort