12 How to be more productive & less stressed, Emily Austen

0:00This is our last 12 Days of Christmas episode and we hope you're well and truly restored and ready to take on 2026. This is why I have saved one of the best episodes to last. In Emily Austin's own words, in today's world, there's a negative performative culture suggesting that unless we're burnt out, miserable and constantly busy, we are not truly successful. Emily discusses why one of the key markers of success is actually choice. And very successful people know the difference between what's urgent and what's important. This discernment allows them to focus on meaningful progress instead of perpetuating a cycle of burnout.

0:38I highly encourage you to continue listening to Emily Austin's episode of How to Start Up because she really knows how to make her point. Emily Austin, the famed PR guru who has led the way in the UK market for how to do PR well. What I would love to chat to you about today, given that this season is 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 don't look at them 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 oh it's a huge question I think what 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.

1:54They 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 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.

2:50And that prioritization or deprioritization is really, really important. So 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 about sort of, I guess there's two types of people generally.

3:35There'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 organization. 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 Huell, 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 someone said I think it's 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 it up as I went along I was like 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 it has to be important but that busy fall 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 not connected to our value system.

5:18So 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 things that feel like they would cross a boundary. 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, I'm really happy to share a run 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.

5:58So 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. Categorization 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 of someone disrespects their boundary so they're almost uncomfortable connecting with it and enforcing it because boundaries ultimately are connected to self-esteem.

6:36So 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 and sort of how to work out what your values are. And there's sort of word searches and connecting words and thinking about things that are meaningful to you that help you then kind of create that mapping system but there's also a innate fear which has 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 going to show up on a date and be like right these are my boundaries you know kind of it it presents negatively I 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 you know they don't people influences don't get on flights like uh if i had rigidity around that boundary i would constantly be crossed and you're in the wrong job yeah well 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 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 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 because I 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 don't share with the list per se but I think being connected to you 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 has crossed people often feel it and it's you know our gut relationship is really strong just to listen to it not ignore it I think a lot of founders get into that busy full state of as long as I'm busy 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 but bring it back to that productivity to you how would you define being productive?

9:31That 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 impact or you know some people might perhaps say output but I think there's a negative performance of 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?

10:08How 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 exhausted and it was pride this is where I've learned the hard way you do all of this I remember working to Burberry and I was there till midnight every night and it had lights that were motion censored 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 they're not going to know the people behind it and I was like I'm an idiot for working that hard 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 full life and I think it's really it's also quite industry specific like I think we work in uh and it's interesting because the labor government have just suggested this right 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 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 it's unrealistic to sort of leave at five.

11:40Secondly 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's 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 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 20s was that people thought I was successful whether I was or not I mean I did want to be but it was about whether people sort of validated me for me was very detached from my own value system and it was very you know connected to what other people thought of me.

12:31At this moment it was year two so I started April 2020 lockdown everyone was at home no one perfect perfect time to start a business. It's great there's literally nothing else to do and it was Jeffrey Kent from Abercrombie 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 I figured it's going to be 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 and I started the podcast and I started putting the content out there and suddenly oh god you're doing so well it's like you don't have access to the pnl what does how do you define well and it really resonated like what does success look like what matters what's important and i'm 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 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 because 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 like 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 but it's also 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 kind 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 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 no I caught myself in our co-working 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 and like I can't wait for the day were like yeah not busy I'm really relaxed clients are happy teams happy I'm not busy that to me now will be success because that busy fall 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 it's not fortunate you 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 monetize what they're good at and you know some people are amazing athletes that never quite are able to 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 that it works and had a little bit more time and therefore decided to write the book.

16:54But, 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 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 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.

17:25But it was as much about me kind of creating this piece of work that was 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 can be five hour you can be 12 hour but given we've got these hours it's how you choose to spend those hours and I think 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 toggle to track our times help me with this because I can't be bothered to toggle to the next thing so I just stick with the one thing until I've finished it how do 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 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 was 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 realized 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 5 a.m I always think so parents probably roll their eyes which I do you know understand in terms of protecting my time lastly I have a PA which is a luxury and is important she's very good by the way honestly I like her so much and she's become my friend and she's so thoughtful and intuitive and she's one step ahead of you on your calendar 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 so this will be a four-day live stream the entire season together it's absolutely yeah 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 whatever.

20:31And 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 tells 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 only a minute and a half I'm only going to have in 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.

21:50And 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 like I said earlier, if someone's late, I don't care. People say to me, well, you should be really, it's really weird that you're not annoyed. It's like, no, I'm just, 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.

22:27It's why Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day. And 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. there you run out of mental hard drive and and care factor as well I think there's 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 yeah whereas previously I think it's Hugo Chance in his episode said send the proposal don't sit on the pricing don't talk yourself off that just send it don't not oscillate you haven't got time to waste yeah and that like fear of i can't waste time i can't waste time i've said 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 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 and interesting the 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 less sort of talk to I remember a friend of mine worked at I think it was Prada or she was doing some stuff at Mimu 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 world ending 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 felt like kind of live or die but I think a lot of us so hardwired to come in and view our day as once you get to your desk if you open the desk you're how much can I do before I go home at five six seven whatever time and so it's this 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 p.m slump I've always found it's 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 I 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 p.m 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 cycles and realizing that not every single day is about that kind of maximum output you're not a robot maximum 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 100 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 time frames 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 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 that might be paying off some of their mortgage and you know being able to have fresh flowers once a week or affording child care or you know but but again it's like the book talks about having our own definitions so if we use the fitness 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 like mine's irrelevant to you 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 yeah 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 worked 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 crises and learnings of 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 I think it is the best second date I've ever been on in my life and I turn off I'm like it is true love but it's that success metric like I don't need more that is plenty and that's enough And it was a real, with the business, people were like, well, you're going to grow, you're going to expand to New York and Sydney.

29:04It'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 Click, a sustainable technology company, Assad. 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 in your 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 and 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 dependence 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.

30:28The maths puzzle is complete you know 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 size 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 it's that I think on a personal level I do feel that there is a piece that I have found which is you know thanks to therapists and things that I've done but there's actually a piece with understanding that I am enough and I think that that was something that I really struggled with my position in my family is I'm the reliable one and I don't drink I don't take drugs I would be the 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 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 have been times where there's that fear of if I lose my job or if or if or if you know if you if you have an abundant mindset 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 whereas 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 lots of other things that make up the reason why that person is doing what they're doing and it doesn't take 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 realized 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 celebrate that yes 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 only really you that cares and I didn't realize I think it was my mum told me when I was 15 at a girls school it was horrific she's like you do know not everyone's gonna like you and you're not gonna 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 the worst three years of my life 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 it to go somewhere but I hadn't found the thing to attach it to and that was really confusing and I see it now as some of my team and people I work with who are sort of around the age of 30 around 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 time yeah and you get sad and my counselor said to me he's like well where are your life boys 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 boys and it's like oh it's conversations with my mum it's a run 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 structured my December in a way that that sort of accounts for that whereas perhaps in the past they 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 20s 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 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 dose what do you need to do daily that makes your life better so for me it's buying an expensive coffee buy 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 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 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 100 meter men's race had the same goal they wanted to win the gold medal the size of the goal 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 literature around business and growth focuses on that kind of final moment and less about the sort of chapters in between well autonomy comes in many shapes and forms and people 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 the ones that sent me linkedin links in the first year i'm like but i've got a job rejecting their fears about what you've chosen to do on a team and it was hind in i think it's four episodes ago he 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 people have said you see much more you now and i was like i don't know what you mean by that but I'm sure I think that's a good thing but he's like I'm just happier and it's more authentic way of living for you I guess it's more connected to that value system for yourself 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 Icky Guy 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 holden to clients and it's actually going no no we're adding value to your business and you are allowed to say thank you yeah there's a stat that's like I can't remember what it is which is you know not helpful but it's more than 50 % of businesses fail because no one needs them yeah 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 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 about it 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 um so i think it's interesting it sort of connects to like if you have that luxury you know what how would you allocate it yeah right i'm gonna go and find it and then put it into my 24 hour day and make time for it because it's important thank you for listening to our 12 days of christmas from how to start up if you have enjoyed this episode please rate and review the show because it honestly makes a massive difference to the podcast being found by other people and to me as your host it's nice to know you're there our normal scheduling will resume in january 2026 and we wish you a very very merry festive season and hope you get some rest