The Happy Entrepreneur

I love the following excerpt from this week's podcast. It fully captures our work with early stage entrepreneurs who are stumbling along trying to get their idea out into the world. Maybe they're slowed down by the feeling of imposter syndrome or perhaps it's their need to make sure their idea is perfect and a fear of failure? In the end though you just need to get clay on the wheel..."You can’t make anything if you don’t put anything out. You need something to work with. So if you’re holding everything in and holding everything back and you're stopping yourself before you've even written a line on the page then nothing is ever going to happen. If you do want to make something, if you do want to make a shape and get a bit messy then you do have to get some clay on the wheel. And it’s just clay. It doesn’t have to be fully formed yet."In this episode I talk to Sophie Develyn. She's worked for us for over 3 years and is now off on a new adventure. We talk about the time when she first joined us and about her journey with the Happy Startup School. This is a story of not knowing, confidence, alignment, feeling left out, feeling her way forward and trusting her gut. While she hadn't been sure why she should be working with us it also "felt like home".It's been amazing to have Sophie support us for the past 3 years and her contribution particularly on our Alptitude retreats and our Summercamp has been awesome.We wish her luck on her next adventure to Nepal and I have a feeling that we'll be staying connected.

In this episode I share the audio of a live webinar Laurence and I hosted where we discussed whether to change our name.We've been running The Happy Startup School for over seven years and during that time we've evolved from delivering workshops on how to build a startup to hosting transformational retreats on the beaches of Goa. We run an online community where we support entrepreneurs at different stages of their journey and host an annual festival that attracts people from all walks of life.It's been a fun filled journey and along the way we’ve made so many friends and learned so much. We have now gathered around us people who aren’t just startups but also seasoned business owners and experienced professionals. They come from diverse backgrounds but with a common need to find more meaning and purpose in the work they do. Our work has therefore evolved beyond supporting startups to also supporting individuals who want to grow personally.And so we’re wondering whether our name is limiting us because there are people out there who’d benefit from coming to our events or being part of our community but don’t identify with the word startup.So this is our effort to share our thoughts and get feedback from our members and followers. We’d love to know what you think and so if you identify with our situation or have thoughts about our name ping as an email on hello@happystartups.co.We're not done with startups yet though and if you're London based why not come to our FREE event Lightbulb to Launch: From Idea to Action. In partnership with General Assembly we're hosting a one day workshop to help budding entrepreneurs launch their ideas - https://ahappy.link/lightbulbtolaunch

The Map of Meaning is a very simple map that can create powerful insights.In this episode of the podcast I talk to Lani Morris, one of the co-creators of the map and we discuss what it takes to create more meaning in our lives. Along with her fellow co-creators they’ve discovered that there are four common elements to meaning: integrity with self; unity with others; actualising self potential and service to others. By consciously addressing each of these areas we’re able to fully express what it means to be human and find more meaning in our day to day lives.Along our journey of building the Happy Startup School we’ve met many purpose driven entrepreneurs who are creating good in the world but are also burning out. They believe that they’ve defined their purpose but for some reason something is still missing.What does it mean to do meaningful work? It’s easy to conflate the ideas of meaning and purpose but just because you work in a purposeful organisation does not immediately mean that your work feels meaningful. For Lani purpose is about inspiration and service to others and if we neglect the other areas of meaning then that’s when problems arise.Being able to identify the missing pieces is the purpose of the Map of Meaning.Each of these areas can be depicted as four quadrants on the axes of being and doing. When we look at our daily lives using the Map of Meaning we’re able to identify where we’re spending too much time and how we can reclaim some balance by addressing the areas we’ve neglected.To find out more about the Map and Lani then follow these links:https://www.themapofmeaning.org/TEDx talk on meaningful workThe Map of Meaning - A Guide to Sustaining our Humanity in the World of WorkIntroductory workshop to the Map of MeaningOnline course - The Heart Beat of Business: Creating and Running Meaningful Start-ups and Small Businesses

Marianne is an entrepreneur, coach and author of Be a Free Range Human. I first met Marianne at our Summercamp in 2015 where she ran a workshop about escaping the 9 to 5 and creating a lifestyle that aligns with your business. In this episode we talk about her journey since then and discuss how leaving employment to create our own businesses can mean unintentionally swapping one cage for another. While building a successful business can bring you more autonomy we can also get trapped by that feeling of success and the fear of losing it. When we over identify with our businesses we lose sight of where our success ends and where we begin. We forget that we’re enough, no matter what. Marianne remembers being triggered by the question “If your business didn’t exist anymore, who would you be?” Losing touch with who we really are can trap us in a cycle of overwork as we strive to maintain our past levels of success. Marianne talks about rooting down as well as growing the business. Because without roots our feelings of success can be easily blown away. Rooting down is an inner journey of self discovery and defining your inner compass. You can see how her message resonates with what we’re about at the Happy Startup School. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Over the past 7 years of building the Happy Startup School I’ve met entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes. Some are motivated by looking at the market and creating what’s wanted while others are motivated by an internal need to create what’s true to them. In my mind they’re at the opposite ends of the spectrum. At one end is the businessman and at the other end is the artist.In this episode of the podcast I talk to Max St. John who’s spent time at the busines end and is now transitioning to the artist way of living. He talks about the locus of evaluation. This is the place where we look to find out whether we’re doing the right work.For Max it’s less about understanding what moves the market but more about what feels true to him. While he accepts the need to make money he also believes that we can’t force work to come our way. Despite what marketers and sales people tell us we can’t control whether clients appear or not. What we can control is how we turn up in the world and where we place our energy, and where we place our energy is where things will grow.We explore these ideas through the lens of Max’s journey of entrepreneurship. If you’re a creative entrepreneur trying to understand how to straddle the two worlds of artist and businessman then you’ll appreciate this conversation and identify with Max’s story.

Learning about Non-Violent Communication has been a game changer for me. As a child I’d always struggled to deal with difficult emotions and so would either lash out in anger or, what was more often the case, would cry with frustration. I learned that expressing emotions was weak and so I decided to suppress them. However, in doing so I limited the development of my own emotional vocabulary and the ability to practice empathy. This was ironic since I had a deep need for connection and community.In a world that feels ever more divisive and disconnected the ability to practice deep empathy is fundamentally important.In this conversation with Beccie D’Cuhna, Happy Startup community member and professional mediator, we talk about the importance of empathy when helping others navigate periods of conflict and change. We discuss the difference between empathy and sympathy and how when we judge and try to fix other people’s emotions we end up invalidating their experience. We then lose the opportunity for deep connection and make it harder for them to process what they’re feeling and move forward with clarity.Sometimes we just need to sit in that turbulent space and feel what needs to be felt without judgement or resistance. This takes practice and requires us to learn more about why we feel what we feel.

Petra Smid is a consultant and facilitator who helps organisations and individuals navigate change. She believes that by living our values we’re able to overcome our fear of uncertainty and by trusting in ourselves we’re able to tackle all the challenges we’ll face.Petra joined us for Alptitude 2019 because she was looking to create space for herself. In our business lives and our personal lives we can find ourselves giving time to everyone else but not giving enough time to ourselves. By creating space for ourselves we create an opportunity to check in with what’s important to us and to reassess the direction we’re going in.Maybe you’re too busy climbing the corporate ladder or building your high growth startup but if you don’t take time to look up from the busy-ness how can you be sure that you’re doing the right thing. And if you believe you’re not doing the right thing where do you get the courage to change direction?One thing that’s in common with all the attendees of our retreats and events or members of our community is the need to live a life that’s true to what they believe. Defining our core values and believing that the work we must align with these is what binds our community together.During this episode Petra talks about her own journey to entrepreneurship. She shares how being clear about her core values has enabled her to make the jump and create work that aligns with who she really is. We discuss why she joined us at Alptitude and what she got out of being there.

Alan is a business coach and mentor on a mission to help and empower as many entrepreneurs as he can. His focus in on owner managed businesses that want to scale up and he’s been amazing support for myself an Laurence. On a previous episode Alan and I discussed the idea of building a minimum viable audience, essentially gathering people around you that love what you do. While many early stage entrepreneurs think of scaling up from the beginning the MVA approach is about first niching down and getting really focused on who you want to serve. One aspect of this is to think about demographics and targetting your audience based on traits like age, geography, education, gender and income. This helps you define who you want to appeal to. However, to understand what motivates and moves these people, you also need to think about psychographics and explore their needs, wants and behaviours. Understanding why people really want what you offer will help you communicate what you do in a much more effective and engaging way. By putting out the right messages you won’t want to have to go hunt for your customers they’ll be looking for you. Listen to find out more.

On this episode of the podcast I talk to Ebonie Allard about self knowledge and creating more alignment in your life.“No matter where you go, you’ll be there too so it’s useful to know who you are.”If you’ve ever got to a period in your life when you’ve looked around and asked yourself the question “is this it?” then you’ll be interested in Ebonie’s journey of going from misfit to maven. This story is for anyone who’s felt like they didn’t know where they fit and is searching for their unique place of contribution in the world, a place of authentic success. During the conversation we discuss the process of adulting and the idea of shifting your perspective from life happening to you to life happening for you. Enjoy the episode!Ebonie will also be speaking at our Happy Startup Summercamp and if you haven’t signed up head over to the site (http://happystartupsummer.camp) to see if you can get one of the last few tickets.I put together some sketch notes of my conversation too. Download them at http://ahappy.link/adulting

In this episode I have a very honest conversation with Ed Barton, cofounder of Curiscope, about what it’s like to build a venture backed startup. What starts off as a classic tech startup story and a window into the world of venture capital evolves beautifully into a raw story of what it's like to be a leader at a personal level.We talk about the struggle and overwhelm that comes with investment and the need to grow. We also discuss how burnout can creep up on you and how difficult it is to recognise until you're on the cusp.Ed offers some very sage advice for any founder, whether you’re running a non-profit or a rocketship, about how to make business life less hard and less effortful. Following on from the last episode on coping with struggle Ed's story is a real world case study of what it's like in and what you can do to make sure you thrive rather than just barely survive.