How to be more productive & less stressed with Emily Austen, Founder & CEO of EMERGE

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy found that 96% of UK entrepreneurs admit to ‘bottling up’ the stress of running their business. Many founders are clearly overwhelmed with too much on their shoulders, leading some to feel a sense of unproductive busyness. 

So, I wanted to hear from a founder who has cracked the code of productivity. Emily Austen is the founder of leading PR agency EMERGE and the author of SMARTER: 10 lessons for a more productive and less-stressed life, publishing this autumn. Having founded EMERGE in 2012, Emily has navigated entrepreneurship and discovered a tried and tested formula for avoiding unproductive busyness. 

Keep listening to hear Emily’s advice on how founders can avoid becoming busy yet unproductive and why tracking your energy rather than your time can help unlock your productivity. 

Emily’s advice:

• Set boundaries, which will be different for everyone (soft ones which are ‘crossable’ and hard ones which are not)
• Be vigilant with your time; Emily uses a desk timer to time tasks and she maps out her day in minutes
• Prioritise
• Don’t be performative; it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about your working hours
• Know when to move aside from the top job
• Don’t allow small things to annoy you; take the long view
• Know your own energy cycles and plan work accordingly

FF&M recommends: 

• LastPass the password-keeping site that syncs between devices.
• Google Workspace is brilliant for small businesses
• Buzzsprout podcast 'how to' & hosting directory
• Canva has proved invaluable for creating all the social media assets and audio bites.

FF&M enables you to own your own PR. Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2023 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason.  Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason. 

MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod.  Link &  Licence

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to season 11 of How To Start Up, the podcast helping you start and scale your business with advice from entrepreneurs on what to do now, next, or never. This season, we'll be hearing about all things productivity from amazing entrepreneurs sharing how they've hacked theirs. Hosted by me, Juliet Fallowfield, founder of the B Corp certified PR communications and podcasting consultancy, Fallow, Field & Mason. Our mission is to enable you to master your own storytelling, whether that be via PR or podcasting, all with a long term view.

 The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy found that 96 percent of UK entrepreneurs admit to bottling up the stress of running their business. Many founders are clearly overwhelmed with too much on their shoulders, leading some to feel a sense of unproductive busyness. With this in mind, I wanted to hear from a founder who has cracked the code of productivity.

Emily Austen is the founder of leading PR agency EMERGE and the author of SMARTER 10 lessons for a more productive and less stressed life, publishing this [00:01:00] autumn.Having founded EMERGE in 2012, Emily has navigated entrepreneurship and discovered tried and tested formula for avoiding unproductive busyness.

Keep listening to find out how Emily has managed to do this.

 Emily Austen, the famed PR guru who has led the way in the UK market for how to do PR well. And this will be really interesting because it's a PR talking to a PR. 

but what I would love to chat to you about today, given this season's all around productivity and it's a kind of It's a buzzword and it's also got a massive stigma attached to it, but you have written a book all about this. And I think PRs typically are magic wand makers, CFOs that kind of look at them and go, oh, they'll fix it.

We don't know how, they're magicians. You have many, many different stakeholders. You have teams, clients, brands, journalists. You've got so many people you're constantly in contact with. How do you do it all? This is a big leading question.

That's a huge question. I think what [00:02:00] I have learned from, I've run this business for 12 years, but I've worked in the industry for 15 and worked with some of the most successful people on the planet. People like Sarah Blakely from Spanx, Julian from Huel, you know, particularly those first five years of Huel, brilliant businesses. And the reason I wrote the book is because. Most people I know who are successful are not trying to do less. They are not editing things out of their life necessarily, they are not trying to be smaller or step away from things. What they have done is effectively create smarter systems and processes that allow them and enable them to do all the things.

So they are, hyper vigilant with their time. They are very deeply connected to their value system. They are very well boundaried,

which I think is something I find people struggle with the most. What is a healthy boundary? How do I enforce it? What happens when someone tramples all over it? They are structured, but [00:03:00] have the right amount of flexibility. And I think also something I have sort of observed is very productive, very successful people are capable of working out the difference between what's urgent and what's important. And that prioritisation or deprioritisation is really, really important. So there are, there are skills there, I think crucially and probably most relevant now, they are not performative.

They are not on The Apprentice wearing a suit posturing as what they think a successful person, you know, like deals, deals, deals, sell, sell, sell. They are embodying what they consider to be how a successful person would behave. So, you know, presentable, punctual, prepared, all those types of things.

It sounds like a lot of the ego isn't there either. It just got rid of that.

I think it's understanding your role. I mean if we're talking [00:04:00] about sort of, I guess there's two types of people generally, there's the entrepreneur who runs their own gig and is the CEO or the founder and then there's the hyper ambitious person who works within an organisation. I think for the founder, CEO, it's about them understanding their role within the context of the wider business. And some of the most successful people I've worked with, people like Julian at Huel, the first time it was financially and structurally possible to hire a professional CEO. That's what he did because he didn't want to do that.

And he has an amazing CEO. And there's other people that I've seen not want to step away from that who've, raised hundreds of millions of pounds and then their businesses have hit a wall because they haven't really been able to understand that it doesn't make them less than to move aside, you know, as a business grows.

And often the person who starts that company is a very different person to who will, run and maintain it.

As [00:05:00] someone said, I think it was episode five, season one, which is a very long time ago, said, you may be the person to get it to five million. You might not be the person to take it further. Is it a lifestyle business? Are you going to sell it? Like, what is the end goal here?

What are you trying to achieve? And I was off the back of redundancy and making up as I went along. I don't know. But that really stuck with me of like, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why am I working this hard? It has to matter and it has to be important. But that busy fool, especially in a PR business is typically natured very proactive and you can never do enough in PR.

You can always pitch another angle, another story, try and get another piece of coverage. You mentioned earlier about boundaries and how to enforce them and make sure they're not trampled over. How do you do boundary setting or even work out what your boundaries are?

Boundaries are connected to our value system. So for us as individuals, there tend to be different categories of boundaries. So emotional boundaries, physical boundaries, financial boundaries you know, there's sort of obvious [00:06:00] things that feel like they would cross a boundary or our bodies can tell us that. So to give you an easy example, if I were to send my team on a press trip, some of them would say, Oh, I'm really happy to share a room with a colleague and others would want their own room because they just innately have a sense of what would cross a kind of physical boundary for them. Similarly, some people feel very uncomfortable if other people pay for them, or so there's, there's ways that you sort of can connect with them because your body kind of tells you to. And those are the easy ones.Categorisation of hard boundaries versus soft boundaries. So hard boundaries are the ones that you would feel very violated and very uncomfortable if they were crossed. And soft boundaries are ones you're a little bit more willing to compromise on.

 I think the, initial issue with boundaries is that they're not prepared for the idea if someone disrespects their boundary. They're [00:07:00] almost uncomfortable connecting with it and enforcing it because boundaries ultimately are connected to self esteem. So boundaries are not about making other people do things.

They're about you setting out very clearly what those parameters are so that other people can then better interact with you.

So getting to know yourself really well, your deal breakers.

It is that connection to values and there's a section in the book about it of sort of how to work out what your values are and there's sort of word searches and connecting with words and thinking about things that are meaningful to you that help you then kind of create that mapping system. But there's also an innate fear which is connected to the self esteem piece about what do I actually do if someone disrespects my boundary, the first thing I would say is that the idea of boundaries is really loaded It's like you're you're not gonna show up on a date and be like right these are my boundaries, you know it kind of it it presents negatively I [00:08:00] think.

But I guess going, knowing in your head what yours are, and you can look for green flags, red flags, and at some point, trust your gut feeling of when you need to communicate it.

Yeah, and also like whether it's a soft or hard boundary. So like for me time management soft boundary. I work in an industry where people cancel last minute people say they'll come to a press dinner they don't. Influencers don't get on flights. Like if I had rigidity around that boundary, I would constantly be crossed.

So 

you're in the wrong job. 

Yeah.

or if a friend of mine i'm running an hour late for dinner, like I have an iphone i'm fine 

So it is a communication thing and it's like a skill to interact with people. I think also it's about identifying what the right questions are.So like dating is an easy one, for example.

So if you have a person who lives in East London and they're dating someone who lives in West London and they are saying, Oh, you know, like he never comes to my house. I always have to go and travel there. The question isn't, do you want to go to West London to go on a [00:09:00] date? The question is, why do you want to be in a relationship with someone who won't make an effort to travel the distance to come see you. That's the real question, but people don't want to ask that question because the answer might be, cause they don't like you that much.

And that hurts because the small version of ourselves somewhere along the way has been told that they're like not enough.

So it's the avoidance of that.

So I think people wouldn't show up with a list per se, but I think being connected to and understanding your triggers, what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and that kind of physical feeling, you know, like when a boundary is crossed, people often feel it and it's, you know, our gut relationship is really strong.

And just to listen to it, not ignore it. I think a lot of founders get into that busy fool state of as long as I'm busy, I'm, I'm doing work and actually it might not be the right work at the right place at the right time and listening to that gut feeling, I think a lot of people ignore it. Bring it back to that productivity to you.

How would you define being [00:10:00] productive?

That is a great question. I think the ultimate definition of productivity is input versus impact. And I think that for me, I'm very focused on the impact. So I can, with my years of experience, create things at work in less time. I don't have to spend the same amount of time I did when I was earlier in my career, but actually my measure of productivity is, is impact or, you know, some people might perhaps say output, but I think there's a negative performative culture that exists around productivity. I think people focus on the wrong thing. They focus on input. How much can I put in? How much can I put in? How busy am I? Oh my God. I've never got time for anything. And I did that for 10 years. I would show up having, you know, I was in the office till 10 last night.

And it's like, you know, I wasn't, like, Elon Musk, I was just like sat doing some shit PR at a computer but it was I thought that performatively if people thought that I was working late and that I was [00:11:00] exhausted and it was pride. 

 This is where I've learned the hard way. You do all of this. I remember working at Burberry and I was there till midnight every night and it had lights that were motion sensitive, so sort of every half hour I'd have to roll my chair back to turn the lights on and then roll back to my desk to carry on working.

I was like, no one will even remember my name, let alone the output. They might talk about that campaign, but they're not going to know the people behind it. And I was like, I'm an idiot for working that hard.

But it's it's a mistake that people make around fullness and busyness. And we talk about like, there's a difference between a busy life and a full life. And I think it's really, it's also quite industry specific. Like I think we work in a, and it's interesting because the Labour government have just suggested this right to switch off idea, which has been quite widely panned in sort of PR agency industries, because well, number one, these aren't nine to five jobs.

And I think broadly speaking, we can all agree that bosses [00:12:00] texting people at 10 p. m. is a sort of toxic thing to do but if you work in an industry that does events in the evening and things like that is unrealistic to sort of leave at five. Secondly, I think probably good employers already have those systems in place and bad ones will ignore them so that's sort of pointless and actually that flexibility we've seen particularly for people who've had children to be a really positive thing because they disappear from four till seven to sort of be go do the school run and bath and put people to bed. And then actually quite like having an hour online if they need to. So I think the issue people have with defining productivity is in part in relation to them being able to connect with their values. Because for me, what was important really in my twenties was that people thought I was successful, whether I was or not.

I mean, I, I did want to be, but it was about whether people sort of validated me. 

 That for me was very detached from my own value system. And it was very, you know, connected to what other people thought of [00:13:00] me. 

I had this moment it was year two. So I started April 2020. Lockdown, everyone was at home, no one.

Perfect time to start a business.

It's great, there's literally nothing else to do. And it was Jeffrey Kent from Abercrombie and Kent, it's like, you're brave. It's like, there is no distraction, there is no FOMO, there's nothing. No money is going out the door anywhere.

I don't need an office.

But it's not a growth economy and our businesses are reliant on that. So it's a very hard time to start a company.

Yeah. I figured it's going to be, you know, as bad as it's going to get, so it can only get better. And it was off the back of redundancy. So I felt like I didn't have a choice. I had to make up a job, I started the podcast and I started putting the content out there and suddenly, Oh God, you're doing so well, you don't have access to the P& L, what does, How do you define well?

And that really resonated. It's like, what does success look like? What matters? What's important? And I still haven't got the answers, but I think trying to work backwards of what good looks like, what success looks like, and everyone had their own perception of what that might be and leaving big brands and Bond Street [00:14:00] behind these people saying, you're doing really well.

I was like, it means a lot. It's like, it shouldn't matter. It should be what I think of me, but in PR we're typically people pleasers because we have to whack a mole every crisis and everything at the same time. That boundary setting, I've been quite strict with our clients and I think having B Corp certified to back us up on this of how people communicate with our team, some deal breakers on that front, but it's learning to do it for yourself, I think is the hardest part.

I think it's also evolving. Like you asked me earlier about, you know, does it feel like dog years? Cause I'm in year 12. And I think it's interesting. The answer is no, because it feels like I've had, chapters and they've all felt quite distinct, but I think that evolutionary piece is fine. I think there's a reality when you start a company that you, it's something my dad said, like you do work harder than everyone else and you should be more tired and you should be more stressed than someone you're paying in a junior role because you've taken on that job.

So comparatively that's a reality that you just are going to have to accept, [00:15:00] but it's also evolutionary. Evolutionary. I think the challenge I had was aligning my professional persona and my personal persona. I definitely had a lot more personal work to do that then subsequently has helped me sort of refine my business persona or my professional persona. But it's understanding that at some point businesses evolve and grow and you actually can be more focused ultimately. And when you hire more people and when you get better at your job, and when you start asking for the money you deserve and all those kinds of things, and having the confidence to do that again, because you're probably more aligned with your values and your boundaries. But having said that, there are exceptions to that. You know, we might take on a project, that's slightly less than we would normally like to be paid because it looks amazing on our creds or because it will lead to something in the future or but you know whatever it is so it's like there's [00:16:00] there's sort of context to all of it but I think I shouldn't be working in the same way now as I was 12 years ago.

No, because it would mean you wouldn't have progressed. And if you're working for someone else, you wouldn't expect that at all. I caught myself in our coworking office the other day and someone's saying, Oh, how are you? It's like, yeah, just really. And I was like about to say busy. I'm like, I can't wait for the day.

I'm like, yeah, not busy. I'm really relaxed. Clients are happy. Team's happy. I'm not busy. That to me now will be success because that busy fool thing where you're frantically running from Zoom to Zoom, it's not fun.

 It depends on industry. I'm very aware that I'm very fortunate that I have managed to create a career out of something that I'm good at, that I really like

But it's not fortunate. You've worked hard to do that. There's no luck involved in this. You've done it because you've done it.

 It's like that some people don't get to monetise what they're good at and you, you know, some people are amazing athletes that never quite are able to [00:17:00] make the money that they would want to, or, you know, have a passion. So I'm fortunate in that I do something I really like. So that's sort of part of the battle, but I, got my business to a point where it sort of works. I mean, COVID was awful for everyone, but it works and had a little bit more time and therefore decided to write the book. But, you know, it wasn't about working till midnight and overloading and burning out and all that kind of stuff. It was just about filling up my life with things that were really enjoyable and really interesting and allowed me to connect with people in different ways.

And, you know, it's obviously a great marketing tool for the business.It's not performative.I said at the beginning, I mean I didn't say this to the publisher when I was negotiating my advance, but I said, I honestly don't care if one person buys the book, I would like more people to buy the book, because I do think it is a good book, and I think it will help people, but it was as much about me kind of creating this piece of work that was, [00:18:00] interesting and dynamic and challenging and got me thinking and engaging with my team in a different way. And actually if we sell the books, fabulous, but it wasn't, you know, I'm

not a jobbing author. It wasn't about a kind of paycheck. It was like a passion project, really.

 I've interviewed the head of neuroscience at Oxford for sleep who was amazing and he's like, everybody's different. No one is. No one is a seven hour. You could be five hours. You could be 12 hours, but given we've got these hours, it's how you choose to spend those hours.

I've got myself into the weeds where I'm trying to do 10 things at once and nothing's being done well. And actually getting out of that and trying to focus and find that flow state where you do something, one thing well, and then finish it off. And using Toggl to track our times helped me with this, cause I can't be bothered to toggle to the next thing.

So I just stick with the one thing until I finished it. 

I think 

you protect your time?

 I will say I don't have children yet. Even when I was 22, I was so conscious. I was brought up in an environment. I mean, my parents met when they were 11, they've been married, [00:19:00] like 40 plus years. 

Penguins. 

I know, I know, it's so sweet. They're both amazing role models for that kind of partnership piece. But I was one of those people who was, very much of the mind that I would probably be in a long term relationship at university, get married at 28, have children. That was what was sort of happening around me. And so that was what I expected and realised that actually that wasn't what I wanted. And it also wasn't sort of what happened for me, but I was very conscious when I started EMERGE. Okay. I'm 22 now. So by the time I'm 30, I'll have had this business for eight years. So I'll probably be able to buy a house. And then, you know, it was, I was very thoughtful about how much can I do before I have children because of the realities of, you know, people probably, when I talk about, you know, not getting up at 5am, I always think sort of parents probably roll their eyes, which I do, you know, understand. In terms of protecting my time, latterly, I have a PA, [00:20:00] which is a luxury

and is 

important. 

very good by the way.

Honestly, I like her so much and she's become my friend and she's so thoughtful and intuitive um, 

one step ahead of you on your calendar. Yeah. 

 But yeah, I like her very much and she's amazing but I obviously that's slightly more recent before that

I think one of the things so I do have lots of thoughts about this and I'll try and simplify them. As you said PRs talking to PRs will be here for this. We have four day pod live stream

Entire season together, it's 

yeah, I would I would honestly love that. So the first thing is I always put my time estimation against tasks because if you're working with an eight hour day, I convert my days to minutes so I work a 480 minute day and I will say okay that task is going to take me 25 minutes plus five minutes of faffing or sort of, you know, trying to get the printer to work or [00:21:00] whatever. And then when I look at my day or my week,  I cannot put tasks in that physically take more time than I have. So I'm very connected to how long things will take. And I use a desk timer as well. So I say, this will take me 30 minutes, 25 minutes, put the desk timer on when it goes off. I'll either say I need another 20 minutes or it's sort of done but it keeps me accountable and it means that I then better understand next time I do that task what the actual time it will take is.

 I'm fascinated by this because time is the most limiting factor. I think, and I think my brother sent me that book about how many weeks that we've got left on the planet and how we spend that time. But I was listening to a podcast about how if you're cohabiting with someone, a friend, partner, and they really annoy you and they just never empty the dishwasher, time yourself emptying the dishwasher and you've got 20 minutes of anger for them not emptying the dishwasher, which actually only took you a minute and a half, but in your head you think it takes you 20, but being accountable to your time and knowing actually it's [00:22:00] only a minute and a half, I'm only going to have a minute and a half anger worth for that.

And you just do it.

Also for me, it's a lot about, I mean, we talked about sort of definition of productivity or success or, you know, variations of that. And for me, one of the markers of success is choice. It's very important to me to have agency, to have choice. And that comes down to financial freedom. It also comes down to being able to choose how and where I spend my time.

But I also feel very in control around choosing sort of what to be annoyed about. So, well, like I said earlier, if someone's late, I don't care. I, people say to me, you should be really, it's really weird that you're not annoyed. It's like, no, I'm just, it's, I'm just not annoyed. I just find it quite easy to not be annoyed by stuff.

 Maybe when you have a job where you're interacting with people all the time and it's kind of a lot of social energy. And in the book I talk about it as decision fatigue. It's why Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day. And it's, [00:23:00] it's a kind of automation thing, where you just think, well, there's only so many good decisions you can make in a day. And so often in the evening, people sort of find it more challenging to do that with tasks that seemingly should be smaller. 

You run out of mental hard drive and, and care factor as well. I think something where I was sort of Chanel trained and everything was perfection and trying to then start a business in lockdown with no idea what I was doing, having to let go of that a little bit of, I'm not going to win everything, some things aren't going to be perfect.

There will be a typo, accepting these things and then not wasting time on worry, whereas previously, and it was, I think it was Hugo Chance in his episode said. Send the proposal. Don't sit on the pricing. Don't talk yourself off of that. Just send it. Don't not oscillate. You haven't got time to waste. And that like fear of I can't waste time.

I can't waste time. I was a bit like the rabbit in 

Headlights.

yes, thank you. And it's that wasting time on worry where people can go round and round in circles, like, Oh, I'm not sure about the branding on the website. It's like, just crack [00:24:00] on, move on. Next, next, next.

 When we were talking, you mentioned sort of, how do I protect my time or manage my time? The game changing thing for me, which is in the book is to track your energy, not your time. And that has been a really important shift for me, because I think so many of us And interesting that your experience with sort of luxury, that's not so much my experience.

I have worked with some of those brands, and it just wasn't really for me, and I've got friends who do it, and it is, it's almost monstrous, the way that they're sort of talked to, I remember a friend of mine worked at I think it was Prada or she was doing some stuff at Miu Miu And like a sample got lost and it was literally like someone had left someone's baby like in the park without you know It was

like 

yeah, and it was like tears and I just I didn't care enough about that for that to be something I was sort of willing to do.

There were versions of it which I did care and it [00:25:00] felt like kind of live or die. But I think a lot of us are hardwired to come in and view our day as once you get to your desk, if you work in the desk job how much can I do before I go home at five, six, seven, whatever time. And so it's this, I, it's this kind of maximum input for seven, eight hours.

And the reality is, is that your day oscillates and your energy goes up and down and so people talk about a 3 pm slump I've always found this such a weird thing people say. It's just an undulation in your day in your energy cycle, so I go to the gym at that time or front load my meetings in the morning that require a bit more headspace. And I don't try and fight that kind of natural energy. And it doesn't mean I don't do anything at 3 PM. It just means that I might do something that requires a little bit less brain power, like if I'm having to kind of review people's expenses or do something, that kind of comes in that time. And I think being more connected to your own circadian rhythm, your own energy [00:26:00] cycles, and realising that not every single day is about that kind of maximum output,

You're not a robot.

input.

Yeah. And also like, you can't sustain that, you know, if you're, if you think about, I think sport is obviously a great parallel for analogies relating to business, but no one sprints for the whole time, there is not an

exact, I mean, they might for, you know, a hundred meters, but that's, that takes nine seconds, you know. 

Oh my goodness, you've just blown my mind because I'm like, why was I thinking I was a marathon runner every day of every week for every year? It's not sustainable.

This is the thing. And it's also like setting those timeframes. I think a lot of young people I meet feel these pressures around time, which I just don't feel anymore. And it, it. Is important to feel that at the beginning you you know, you should feel like you're in a rush and it's exciting and you're you know bursting with ideas I am still bursting with ideas.

There's still loads of stuff [00:27:00] I want to do but I'm only 34 and I'm not trying to sort of sell something and put my feet up So I think, again, being connected to your own understanding of what success is, sort of, you know, selling your company or having a moment where you get to tell everyone that you sold your company, who's that actually for?

 My personal feeling is businesses should make money. I don't think someone should run a business for 10 years and make no money. I think there has to be a gain that is financial. Again, you have to work out what that is for you, that works for you.

And for someone like Ben Francis at Gymshark, it's being the youngest billionaire in the country. And for other people, it might be paying off some of their mortgage and, you know, being able to have fresh flowers once a week or affording childcare, you know, but, but again, it's like the book talks about having our own definitions.

So if we use the fitness [00:28:00] analogy, if your definition of fitness is running a triathlon and mine is walking around the block because I'm recovering from injury, if I use your definition, I will always be a failure. And if you use mine, you'll never think you're doing enough. So it's like, mine's irrelevant to you, you know? So it's about really defining what is health, what is fitness, what is family? What does that look like to you? What is success? What is, you know wealth or whatever, and not kind

of plucking it from someone else's definition.

I completely agree. And the success and wealth thing I had gone through job after job, brand after brand, work my way up and did really well and suddenly found myself redundant and it was a massive slap in the face of like, but I work so hard and I do such a good job and how, how could they? It's because they're a business.

They're there to make money. And my salary wasn't needed to be spent at that time. And it really, the last four years during lockdown, various personal [00:29:00] crises and learnings. Working out what really matters and yesterday I found out I exchanged on a house and I'm moving to the countryside and it's a bit of a I'm 43.

I'm single. Can I move to the countryside alone and buy my forever home on my own and I can and that to me is success and it's not a mansion. It's lovely and I love it. And I think it is the best second date I've ever been on in my life. And I turn up and I'm like, it is true love, but it's that success metric of like, I don't need more.

That is plenty. And that's enough. And it was a real, with the business people like, well, you're going to grow. You're going to expand to New York and Sydney. It's like, nope. Less is more, less is more, less is more. I've shrunk the team, I've shrunk our client base. I want to do good work with good people and that is enough.

Which brings me on to, we have a question from our previous guest who founded Klyk, a sustainable technology company, Asad. His question was, when is it enough? When money, scale, glitz, glamour, pacing, even said with news articles around your business, when is enough enough for you and your [00:30:00] business?

I think for me there's there's sort of two enoughs which I know this is like it's like I'm a politician. I can't answer a question with a straight answer, but I think there's two enough so for me, there's a practical enough with my business, which is it cost me over a million pounds to run my business a year I have people to pay I have rent I have you know, dependents as it were. So there is a very practical kind of fiscal enough, which is, can I pay everyone? Can I run my business? And can I take something out of it that allows me to live? And I am at that stage with my company. It goes up and down and, you know, markets move, but generally that is enough. I think there's also, certain types of clients or work. So I think that that feels a little bit more practical to me because it fits into a P& L and it's a kind of business thing.

The math's puzzle is complete, you know, [00:31:00] ins and outs. 

Am I making more than I'm spending? Is sort of the, is it enough? And I, you know, it's a good sized business. I think it doesn't, it doesn't curtail any ambition. Steady growth is interesting and important and there's definitely opportunities. But I think for me, it's important to edge forward, but in terms of enough at work, it is just getting that balance, right?

I don't want to be in debt. So,

so there's that. I think on a personal level, I do feel that there is a peace that I have found, which is, you know, thanks to all the therapists and things that I've done, but there's actually a peace with understanding that I am enough. Okay. And I think that that was something that I really struggled with.

My position in my family is I'm the reliable one, I don't drink, I don't take drugs. I would be the [00:32:00] last person to do something kind of spontaneous or reckless or irresponsible and we have our positions in our friendship groups in our families that that represent something and for me it was feelings of low self esteem very sort of troubled relationships with my weight.

I lost 40 kilos. I weighed over 100 kilos So I had sort of really negative relationship with food and it was about, I think, understanding and someone said to me, you've spent a decade proving to everyone else you can do this.

It's like, it's okay now, you know.

It's okay, like you don't need to do that anymore. And it was a peaceful moment to sort of think I have enough I have I have all the things and if parts of my life moved or changed I'm confident and comfortable that I would be able to fix them and be fine and I think that knowledge is important because that there there have been times where there's that fear of if [00:33:00] I lose my job or if or if or

if you know, if you, if you have an abundant mindset that there's enough for everyone and, and you can make it happen and you have sort of self belief, then, then those problems actually get a lot smaller. But yeah, I think it was probably understanding what a full life is and then understanding that I have created that. And there's, there's a lot of noise

we've connected so much from literature and film and, social, cultural, political, sort of cues that the harder it is the more impressive it is or the better it is and like we've just had the Olympics, you know you watch these athletes like what they give and you know the hardness of what they're doing is why it's so emotional and exhilarating and exciting when they win but I think there's also huge natural ability and there's DNA and there's there's lots of other things that make up the reason why that person is doing what they're doing and it doesn't take [00:34:00] anything away from their achievement, but it just doesn't have to be hard all the time.

And I think I've spent probably the entirety of my 20s thinking unless I'm burnt out and miserable and busy and it's really hard, then I'm not successful. And when I had whatever transition I did sort of early 30s into that newer mindset, which sort of led to the book and realised that actually, It's okay to say it's easier now and it's more enjoyable and I don't have to be late to everything and miss stuff and you

know whatever else is on the list to, to be successful and that piece I think is enoughness.

I've got to work out how to say that in a more concise way.

No, I think it's brilliant and it's, I feel lighter even after this conversation because I think we're taught, especially women in industry and in communications, you need to do more and more and more. And actually no, [00:35:00] there is a boundary, there is a line, there is enough and it's only really you that cares.

And I didn't realise, I think it was my mum told me when I was 15 at a girl's school, it was horrific. She's like, you do know not everyone's going to like you and you're not going to like everyone and that's okay. I was just trying to make friends with everyone.

Like, I didn't care about being cool and I didn't care about being thin and I was probably more mature when I was younger and I didn't have my rightful place and when I was at university, which was probably worst three years of my life. I I felt so lost and so unanchored and it wasn't lack of motivation.

It was lack of direction. I had all this energy and I wanted to it to go somewhere, but I hadn't sort of found the thing to attach it to and that was really confusing and I I see it now as some of my team and people I work with who are sort of around the age of 30 around [00:36:00] the age and they're almost like I don't know what I think about anything.

I don't know what my values are I don't know what type of haircut I want or what style I want or do I even want kids and it's like and it's not because they're valueless. It's because the values they had they've outgrown. And it's about resetting them and saying, well, what's important to me now?

But it is this kind of anchorless phase where, you know, we ultimately want to belong to something. And so when you don't feel like you belong, it can be a very disruptive

so lonely. 

And you get sad and my counselor said to me, he's like, well, where are your life buoys? You're out at sea. And this is quite a good thing for founders to think about as well, business. You're completely out of your depth. You're completely at sea. You have no idea what you're doing, but if you can see your life buoys and it's like, oh, it's conversations with my mom.

It's a run and just seeing them on the horizon, knowing that I could get to them if I needed to. 

 And I think the difference now is I have a book coming out in November, so I have [00:37:00] structured my December in a way that, that sort of accounts for that. Whereas perhaps in the past I would have been like, I'll just keep going or I'll do another book. I think it's interesting potentially to hear me talk about it now.

Because I do feel like I'm slightly on the other side. But make no mistake, I mean, most of my twenties was a sort of poisonous cocktail of severe anxiety. I would be, you know in this job that was very social, but having panic attacks in the bathroom, I would physically be sick from anxiety because it had such a physical effect on my body. You know, horrendous sleep, hormones out of whack. I mean, you sort of lose hours to who knows what because you're just in this kind of mix of and it's it's exhausting and it's emotional and I think  that is a reality for founders particularly because you have this very aggressive [00:38:00] perception of what it should be like and then you are matching up to that or falling short whatever version

With no experience, you made up a job that's never been done before. Like it's completely unrealistic.

Yeah, but also because I think of borrowing definitions, I think that being more connected to what you actually need. 

And I think it's just the, this goal setting, and we, I talk about it. I'm quite sort of rude about big goal setting and vision boarding and stuff in the book. Because for me, that's completely unrealistic. You know, great. You want to be all these things in 10 years sure, but then what are you going to do,

wait 10 years till you congratulate yourself. We call them at work, the daily dos. What do you need to do daily that makes your life better? So for me, it's, buying an expensive coffee, buying a four pound coffee in central London, or it's speaking to someone in my family, or it's going to the gym, or sort of moving in some way, or, you know, whatever your day looks like that, that's sort of good for [00:39:00] you. And then you just sort of try and do that every single day. And it's the sum of those small, smarter systems, processes, habits, the repetition, the automation, that will get you to

the goal that you've Yeah, it is. And I think there's a big focus on this idea of like, how big is your goal? And it's like, well, look, successful and unsuccessful people have the same goal. Like everyone on the start line of that a hundred meter men's race had the same goal. They wanted to win the gold medal. The, the size of the gold doesn't determine whether or not you win. The determination of whether you win is the training, the diet, the coach, the whatever else is on that list.

So it's like, it's cool to say you want to win a gold medal. You want to sell your business for a million pounds, but most people who start a business want to do that. So it's definitely not the marker of whether you're

going to achieve it. It's the incremental stages. And I think a lot of the [00:40:00] literature around business and growth focuses on that kind of final moment and less about

hmm.

the sort of chapters in between.

Well, autonomy comes in many shapes and forms and people are like, oh, you're no longer employed. I'm like, I am just by business I started, someone else taught me that in the podcast. It's like, I have a job 

and ,so lots of my best friends actually are the ones that sent me LinkedIn links in the first year.

I'm like, but I've got a job. 

But are they projecting their fears about what you've chosen to do

Yeah. And it was Hind in I think it was four episodes ago, who said, there is no risk. I'm betting on myself and I know how I work and I know I'm reliable, so I'm fine. And it's that, it's that self belief to the point where that autonomy is like, I've chosen this way of life, which doesn't mean endless holidays.

It doesn't mean it's risk free in any shape or form, but the autonomy of, I can choose which clients I work with. I can choose the team I work with. My brain is happier. My heart is happier. like. Okay. People have said, you seem much more you now. And I don't know what you mean by that, but I'm sure, I just think that's a good thing.

But [00:41:00] he's like, I'm just happier. And 

it's, a more authentic way of living for you, I guess. It's like you're more connected to that value system for yourself. I, I do think that and I think that there's so much posturing and I know lots of people who sort of pretend that they earn more than they do and they're actually miserable. and

 Ikigai talks about what you're good at, what people pay you for, what the world needs. And there's a Venn diagram of like your purpose, but it has to work for you as well as other people. And I think, especially in PR where we're constantly feeling a little bit beholden to clients and it's actually going, no, no, we're adding value to your business and you are allowed to say thank you.

like, I can't remember what it is, which is, you know, not helpful, but it's more than 50 percent of businesses fail because no one needs them.

Totally. 

And what would your question be for our next guest?

My question for the next guest would be, if you had one extra hour in the day, how would you spend it?

Oh, I love that. This is what's [00:42:00] so interesting that every single question is different and every time I'm like, Oh, I don't know the answer. I need to go away and think 

Well, everyone wants to find the 25th hour. Everyone wants to be more productive. Everyone, you know, it's the kind of aspirational place to be. So I think it's interesting. It sort of connects to like,

A value. 

had that luxury, you know, what, how would you allocate it?

Yeah, right. I'm going to go and find it and then put it into my 24 hour day and make time for it because it's important. Thank you, Emily, so much. It's been fascinating talking to you. 

 I really hope you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find a recap of all the advice so kindly shared by guests in the show notes, along with our contact details, we'd love it.

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