Jake's Notebook | with Write A To DON'T List, Being Willing To Fail & A Listener Question

0:00All right, we're back. Hey everyone, welcome back to my notebook. Look, if you haven't listened before, this is the place where you basically get the real me. This is my innermost thoughts. It's the things I'm struggling with, the breakthroughs I've made in the last week or so. The unfiltered truth, really, about my life in business, about my life as a 47-year-old man, as a parent, as a son, as a friend, trying to figure everything out. And you catch me a little bit later than usual. I normally record this on a Sunday evening, but it's actually Monday morning because last night we just had a lovely bit of family time.

0:34The weather's got a bit colder here in the UK. and as soon as that happens, for some reason, my kids get the Monopoly out. So we played that till late last night. So it's Monday morning. I've headed upstairs to the top of the house with just two things, a cup of coffee and my trusty notebook. Notemaking has been a vital part of my life now, forever 20 years. It's helped me build one of Europe's biggest production companies. It's given me clarity when I fought to grow a global podcast brand, helped me process parenthood and made me feel better when I feel like I'm failing all three. so this is only about 15-20 minutes long it's unscripted, unpolished, unfiltered they're the notes that I've taken from the past week so no rehearsals or second takes and this week I'm going to be talking I'm going to share a couple of things I've done this week which I think is cool I'm going to talk about why you need to be kinder to yourself the best list that you can make the importance of collaborators I'm going to tell you a little story about when I was just suddenly desperate to make it in television and why desire was the most important thing.

1:37I might also share a story about being fired from McDonald's and also tell you about an amazing guest who joined me on Room Where It Happened for a recording just a few days ago. So welcome to my little home office. Welcome to my notebook. Look, I hope you enjoy it. I hope you come back week after week and I hope it provides real value for you. And please reach out to me and share what you love, what you don't love, and also the areas that you want me to talk about. And towards the end of today's episode, I'm going to share a message from a listener as well. So without further ado, time to open up the notebook.

2:11So I thought I'd just share a couple of things I've done actually this week. I've written in my notebook, the first thing is be prepared with a big exclamation mark. And it's a message to myself really, because I spoke last week about how the final 5 % is more important than the previous 95%. And then last Monday, a week ago today, I had a couple of meetings in London with some people and I honestly couldn't believe how unprepared they were. I asked them a couple of questions and the only answers that I was given was the kind of, you know, like the standard response that you get from anyone. It wasn't sort of tailored.

2:45It wasn't personal. And I kind of felt like they were given the same answers to anybody. And this is just a reminder for me about the importance of just being prepared. when I first got the job on Formula One right I was a kids TV presenter and I was given the job on Formula One and I remember when I was offered that job my boss said to me they said they were going to announce that you're the new Formula One presenter in a few weeks time so for now can you not tell anyone please so the only person that knew was Harry and my wife and I remember it was a Thursday at 10 a.m that they made the announcement and I was excited about this announcement this is like years in the planning oh one day I'll tell you the story on here about how I ended up landing that Formula One job.

3:24But it was a long time in the planning and the preparation. And obviously on that Thursday morning, I was very excited. And 10 o 'clock the news came out. This is mostly in the days before social media. I certainly at that time wasn't using Twitter as it was then, Instagram, anything like that. But the internet was obviously up and running. And at half 10, my phone rang and exactly this happened. So I answered the phone. I was like, hi. And it was my wife, Harriet. I said, hi. And she was in floods of tears. I said what on earth's the matter you know this was a big exciting day for me I said what on earth's the matter and she said have you just been on the internet everyone thinks you're gonna be shit and then started crying again and I had to kind of explain to her that you know this job was a step up from doing kids tv this was a step up from running around the blue peter garden dressed head to toe in a lobster outfit popping balloons filled with foam for kids to win points right this was like the next level up and it was going to come with scrutiny the challenge for me personally was that um and I'll tell you this in more detail sometime financially what that job should have done for me it didn't for various reasons which I will one day tell you but also I was given a one-year contract and it was made very clear to me that that contract only gets extended if people like what they see from this new formula one presenter so suddenly the pressure was so great on me and and that's really a big moment for my note-taking because I became obsessed with preparation I saw a lovely quote at that time from Louis Pasteur and the quote was very simple it said chance favors the prepared mind like you preparing for the things that might be around the corner doesn't mean those things are going to go perfectly doesn't mean that you're going to have the conversation you want or get the outcome you want but chance favors the prepared mind it certainly increases your chances so I just wanted to start with the importance of being prepared really um and that was my monday a couple of basically disappointing meetings where i felt people came in unprepared and then some good stuff man um harry and i get very few nights away together or evenings out together and we got a call from dan murray serta who's my friend who's the founder of heights inviting us to go to oasis on saturday evening as the guest of nicola kilner actually whose episode funnily enough is on room where it happened an amazing episode please listen to it she built the most incredible business um and along the way had heartbreaking trauma and challenges um so we went to oasis they were just utterly incredible i mean you talk about preparation you know their geniuses years in the making um and then i went to watch seb playing football on sunday which is my happy place and on sunday afternoon until we played monopoly i did absolutely nothing and that never sits easy with me and i had to remind myself of a quote that i've written down quite a few times that I got from Robin Sharma.

6:08We need to be human beings, not human doings. I just spend my life, I think, as a human doing. So it was nice just to have a chilled out day yesterday. So that's been the week. But the main thing I want to mention at the beginning of this is the following. I wrote here, why do you only clap yourself when you win? And this is a reminder to me, I was watching some athletics and some track cycling in the last few days and the amount of noise as those athletes made it towards the finish line in both of those events was deafening and it reminded me that I certainly and I bet you're not dissimilar you reserve your clapping for when you win when you're actually successful when you get the outcome you want and if if that's if that's the right way to do it why do we feel the need to clap throughout a football match why do we feel the need to cheer a runner on down the final 100 meters of the 400 meter race why do we feel the need to be ringing the bells and jumping up and down and waving sirens as the cyclists come towards the end of the stage on the Tour de France.

7:09And it's because clapping before you win helps you to win. It gets you closer to the result that you want. And what you will find as you go through life, and I've certainly noticed this myself, is that you reserve your applause for yourself when you have a successful moment. But as soon as you have a successful moment, suddenly there's a greater thing to suddenly achieve. And the thing that you've been striving to achieve, you no longer celebrate because that's just a distraction from the more exciting thing that's around the corner. So you achieve something in business and suddenly there's something better.

7:39Your kids do something incredible, but they're now older and they can do more remarkable things. Whatever it is, you spend no time rewarding yourself or clapping yourself for what you've just achieved because you're suddenly trying to achieve something bigger. And therefore the smaller goal, which was achieved mere moments ago, distracts you from the new now bigger goal. And that's the way the human brain works. And you can fight that. Or you can remind yourself that you don't just save your applause for yourself when you win, but you clap yourself for doing your best. You applaud yourself for coming up short.

8:11You remind yourself that you're your own biggest cheerleader as you're on the journey, rather than that moment of glory. And the great thing about this is that the human brain will naturally take you to the next win or the next victory or the next moment of growth. But because you've been clapping yourself along the way, you've enjoyed the journey. And I think that is that is true high performance so please don't just save your applause for when you win um

8:36the next point that i want to make is it was something that i picked up from my co-host on high performance damian hughes he told me to start creating a to don't list and at the time when he first spoke to me about this i thought well that seems kind of negative a to don't list all the things you don't want to do but the great thing about a to don't list and here is mine it actually sits at the back of my book it's either the things that i thought were exciting but not for now or the things that i was offered and i turned them down and actually it's quite useful to then keep track of the kinds of things that you say no to but the reason why i had to don't list is really important is that to really achieve greatness if that's what you're looking for is not being derailed from your main thing matters and there will be people with opportunities but that's their main thing that they want you to be involved in or there will be things that look really exciting but they take you away from the main aim that you're striving for.

9:29And without a to-don't list, you can find yourself pulled in a million different directions. And if you're a people pleaser like me, and you feel like when you say no to someone, no also needs to come with a 100-word explanation as to why you've said no, you find that it can be really draining. And then you don't give your all to everything. I remember once talking to David Cameron, who at the time was the British Prime Minister, and it was a very brief conversation. I said, how do you manage to juggle everything? And he said, well, you have to get comfy with being able to kind of give 40 % to every area, because you just can't be 100 % in any one area.

10:03And I think that's the real challenge for you, and certainly for me, is how do we stay focused on the thing that really matters? Because come the end, when we look back and think, did I really manage to get the juice out of life? Did I really squeeze that orange to the absolute limit? The only way that you will be able to judge whether you achieved what you were capable of is whether you fully dedicated yourself to the thing that you want to do. So a to don't list is just as important as a to-do list. And remember that no is also a one-word sentence, which I'm bad at. Next point. Say thanks to your collaborators.

10:49The reason why I thought about this this week was that I drove past a school that I went to in Norwich and it was a high school that I went to and I had a really bad time. I lasted two years. The bullying was just another level and one of the teachers once thought the best way to stop the bullies was to ask me to stand up in an assembly so that they could announce to all the other people in the assembly that I was being bullied and it had to stop. I'm sure you can imagine the outcome, right? but the reason why I wanted to mention this if I hadn't driven past thought school and been reminded of the bullies I don't think that I would have been sitting in now if I wasn't bullied and I know that sounds like the weirdest thing because how can trauma lead you to having conversations like this on a podcast I think in life we need to understand that we need to thank our collaborators and I think that we think people who are collaborating with us are the people who are cheering us on, the people who are telling us that we're doing a good job, the people who are in our team, the people who are going in the same direction as us, the people who are the facilitators for the things that we want to do at home, in life, with our friends, with our family.

11:59But you know what? I want you to be thankful for everything that's happened to you in your life. I want you to thank all of your collaborators. And when I say your collaborators, I am talking about, in my case, the people that bullied me. Because those people that thought it was great to bully me and some of it was horrendous well they built a resilience in me that I don't think anything else would have created I think there's nothing else that could have happened to me that could have built resilience like the bullies created I was fired from McDonald's for a lack of communication skills right when I was doing my A-levels I am so grateful to the manager who fired me for a lack of communication skills which at the time was really hard and really challenging he is absolutely a collaborator because he lit a fire in me that I was never going to allow someone to do that again I am grateful for the criticism I've had across social media because I think feedback is a gift and actually um sometimes they were right other times they were wrong and they had no concept of how wrong they were and they reminded me that other people's opinions don't matter because they have about 10 of the knowledge so therefore I'm grateful to them you know it's a reminder that these things that are hard for you are not necessarily bad for you these people the first boss that told you you weren't good enough well he or she created something in you that I'm sure still burns brightly today the bullies that were hard on you at school the parents who were tough on you when you were a young person the friends who let you down when you thought they were in your corner those things are painful but all of those people are your collaborators because all of them have helped to create the person that's with you today the person that you are so instead of being really grateful for the people in your life that guide you in the direction that you think is the right way to go and help you out and then being critical of or being triggered by or holding on to resentment or anger for the people that you think sent you down a path that you didn't want to go down how about you just reframe your thinking to be thankful for all of your collaborators because those people that have been tough in your life have actually done something for you that um that you might not even realize until you stop and you think about it right now so maybe just think of those tough times and think of the things that they gave you and be grateful that you went through those difficult times and the power there is that it leads you to a place where you stop trying to avoid challenge you stop trying to avoid difficult conversations you stop trying to avoid failure or let down or disappointment because I can promise you right now those things are always going to be there for you because that is the human experience right that is existence but as soon as you stop running away from those things and you realize that it's part of your story that those bad moments will be collaborating with you towards a great future uh then you're empowered and i think it's i think it's really really good for you what's next

14:55okay so this um i wrote down after interviewing crept uh the musician i'm sure you've heard of crept he had a great partnership with crept and conan well did you know that he is the owner of the i think it's the 10th fastest growing business in the uk um he won an award for it or he went to an event for it a few days before sitting down with me for a conversation on room where it happened which you can hear soon and the reason why crept inspired me to write this um is because we spoke about the mistakes that he made before he was successful and what i wrote down was how good you become at something depends how willing you are to be bad at it for a long time so let me ask you that question how long are you willing to be bad at something because that will determine how good you become you think of everything that you're good at in your life Think of all of the things that you do well.

15:47You weren't good at any of those things at the beginning. Yet you had to work hard to become good at them. Now you're good at them. You forget how hard you had to work. So when you do something new and you find it difficult, you think you're bad at it. You're not bad at it. You're just learning it. And Krept set up a restaurant in the early days with his music partner. They're called Krept & Conan. The business was called Kreps & Cones. It was like a dessert place and some kind of soul food and stuff. and he spoke to me on the episode about how wrong he got it and it's interesting actually the things that he said um how wrong he got it and uh and I just thought it was a great reminder that he wouldn't now have created Nala's baby which is his currently very successful business if he hadn't had that bad moment and a few other subsequent bad moments so it's a good story really for you that people that you see outwardly successful yes you you see they're successful because the success is what you see.

16:43You don't see the failure. Therefore, you just assume there are people in the world that are good at stuff and you're bad at stuff. And it isn't true. Those people have all been bad at stuff at certain times. You were bad at everything at the beginning, stuff that you used to find so draining and difficult. And you have to go through difficult times to be good at stuff. Otherwise, how are you developing your skills? So how good you can become depends how long you're willing to be bad at something. And thank you, Crept, for that message. I loved the conversation with you. And I really, really look forward to people seeing it very soon.

17:11Let me read a quick message that's come in this week from people listening to the notebook thank you so much for your kind messages let me please remind you that i want this to be our place i want you to tell me about the things um i want you to tell me about the things that you want me to hear about the moments in my life that i can go back into my old journals and find because i've been journaling for the best part of 20 years and i can just go and open up a page about walking away from the bbc creating high performance whatever it is um but i've got a nice message from you and also thank you to everyone that's reached out this week and said how much they are enjoying these podcasts hi jake i want to reach out to thank you for your vulnerability and courage in sharing your notebook thoughts on the podcast i very much appreciate hearing your thoughts and stories i've taken a lot from the last two episodes thanks you and i've recently been promoted and if i'm honest i'm struggling to step up and lead the team the way i know that i can and should i'd love to hear more of not so much the big moments but the little points that actually prove pivotal where you had decisions to make or you had to push through and make something happen i'm pretty sure that you're not struggling i'm pretty sure that if i went and spoke to most of the people in your team you would they would say yeah you one's doing a great job because he really cares and it's obvious that you really care because you've reached out and asked this message because you care that much and it's also obvious that you're good at your job because you've just been promoted so the first thing you and is evidence leaves clues so please don't believe the story that you've written in your head that you're struggling to lead the team the way that you can and should and start looking at the truth because that is just a story you've told yourself it's a feeling the fact is that you've been promoted the fact is that the people in your business around you believe that you're the person to lead this team it's also a fact that you felt the need to reach out to me because you care so much so what's that about well that's about the fact that your brain and human beings have been taught and told that if they're nervous or anxious about something then it's a bad thing so if you're feeling imposter syndrome which is what it sounds like you're feeling you and please let me tell you right now imposter syndrome does not exist it's not a syndrome people that have told you imposter syndrome is a syndrome are lying imposter syndrome is a feeling imposter syndrome is not a fact what are you feeling imposter syndrome about the things that you care about leading the team being successful doing yourself proud doing your family proud, doing the best you can.

19:34And we all feel like this. We all feel, am I doing what I should be? Am I the person for this opportunity? Have I got the skills? And I think we all feel like we reach a point in life where our skill set doesn't match the level that we've got to. But you know, when you're a kid and you think that everyone who's an adult knows what they're doing. And then when you become an adult, you realize that everyone is just making it up. So Ewan, my message to you is that you're feeling this way because this matters to you. Therefore, reframe your thinking your thinking should be i've been piqued by this i've been excited by this i've been challenged by this and that's all good that's a great thing so look you and thank you so much for reaching out thank you for listening to the notebook you want to hear more of not the big moments but the little moments that prove pivotal the little moments are the conversations in your head and every single time a conversation the little voice in your head says you and you haven't got this you're not good enough for this team you haven't got the skills just say to that voice well for a start you're a feeling you're not a fact secondly the fact is i've been promoted thirdly the fact is that i care and that's why i'm feeling this way therefore i'm going to take that care and i'm gonna and i'm gonna make something out of it and you know what i actually think that your desire to be successful is what really matters here i see people talking a lot about belief right and i think belief is an overrated emotion in human existence i'll tell you a really really brief story you can probably hear the fighter jet flying above my house right now i don't know whether you can hear that they're out on some monday morning training sorty it happens a lot in norfolk we've got a lot of us air bases here if you can't hear it that's also unnecessary information anyway um why does desire beat belief i remember when i failed my A-levels and got a job working at a local TV channel and ended up getting a chance to do some presenting.

21:23I had never thought about it in my life. I grew up in a family where my mum was a teacher, my dad was a charity worker, people like me didn't become TV presenters. Someone then said to me, why don't you take your TV presenting that you're doing here at this little channel called Rapture TV and make something out of it. And I ended up making a show and sending it off to London and going, suddenly this guy who'd failed his A-levels was going for like auditions for the big breakfast and um a show called pop world on t4 which i thought i was going to get and never did um but i suddenly had this incredible desire to make something of myself and this is kind of a weird story and probably easy to take the piss out of but this happened so let me share it with you briefly i remember being in a nightclub in norwich called ritzy's and i'd done little bits and pieces of presenting and i was hosting a show called gamers which was on ITV on a Saturday morning.

22:13So it was like, it was a little bit of evidence that, a tiny bit of evidence that maybe I could do something from this. But that was the only tiny bit of evidence I have. There was nowhere near enough evidence there for me to believe that I was ever going to make something out of myself, right? But the desire was such that a couple of people were talking about famous TV presenters. I think it was Dermot O 'Leary or someone else who was on the telly at time it was johnny vaughan so we're talking about johnny vaughan and denise van outen who were hosting the big breakfast at the time and none of my mates knew that i'd been for an audition to be like the holiday filling i hadn't got the job but i'd gone to the big breakfast house sat in that famous room i still remember the emotion of it now and auditioned on a show that i religiously was obsessed over and i remember going to the toilet right in this nightclub while people were talking about you know the big breakfast and i was so desperate to make a success out of what i was doing i got my mobile phone out in the very early days of mobile phones some nokia 3210 or something and i just banged all these buttons all these numbers on the phone and it was like frustration like anger and frustration and disappointment right but this but the biggest emotion was desire and the reason why i did that as i said to myself remember how this feels remember how it feels to really really want something and not have it and then that phone number i redialed it on my phone every week and every week i would see that number sitting in my uh contacts but obviously it wasn't anyone who was in my contacts it was just a number that sat there every time i saw it it reminded me of this like fire burning inside me sitting in that night club toilet like i want to make something of my life guys i'd grown up in a tiny village in Norfolk, right?

23:59I had failed my A-levels. I had just floated through. I had no great plan in life. I just used to go to school, come in and watch cartoons. And for the first time ever, I just felt this like, oh, you just need to make something of this. And I'm sure many of you will relate to that feeling. So don't talk about desire. Oh yeah, you need to. So don't talk about belief. Oh, you need to have the belief to make it. How can you have the belief if there's no evidence? It's not about belief in the early days. Belief comes later. At the very beginning, it's about desire, a deep rooted, desperate desire to make something of your life.

24:34And I remember my parents around that time were going, something is different about you. What's going on? This isn't the Jacob that we know. I just floated guys, floated through life. And suddenly I was a different person, desperate to make something out of my life. And that's what I did. Got my phone out, dialed a load of numbers and used it as a regular reminder. So please focus your life around desire. Have a desire to do something. And I actually think having that desire will really help you to create that to don't list, right? Try and spend some time doing stuff that you love. Don't be a human doing, be a human being.

25:10Remind yourself that you are doing just fine as you are. And the more you clap yourself now on the journey, the more likely you are to reach the place that you really want to be. thank your collaborators and remember I'm sitting talking to you here as a failure who got fired from McDonald's and failure is a comma not a full stop have a great week if you enjoy the notebook please pass it to someone anyone that you think will benefit I particularly love younger people to be listening to this people who are at uni people looking for their first job people desperate to make their mark in the world and I really appreciate all the support it's a slightly longer episode this week I'm going to head back downstairs thanks for listening