Legally On The Move: The Lawyers Retreat is Back in Ibiza 2026 - Ryan Hopkins - E02

0:00Welcome to Legally on the Move, the Lawyers Retreat Ibiza 2026, a special Legally Speaking podcast miniseries sponsored by Clio. We're back here in Ibiza as the official media partner for the Lawyers Retreat. And if last year taught me anything, it's this. When you get the right people in the right environment, good conversations quickly turn into real opportunities. Across this series, we'll be bringing you voices, ideas, and honest reflections from a retreat built around leadership, well-being, AI, growth, business development, and the future of law. So whether we're poolside, post-panel, or catching up in between sessions, expect practical insights, fresh thinking, and conversations that go beyond the surface.

0:45So let's get into it. Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast, recording live here in Ibiza for the Lawyers Retreat. And I'm joined by name, title and organisation, please.

0:59Ryan Hopkins:It's actually Ryan. Ryan Hopkins, author, speaker and CEO of Healthy. Absolutely. And a fantastic speaker at that. So firstly, what brought you to the Lawyers Retreat? Well, Kirstie actually came to my... Kirstie, one of the organisers of the event, who's done an unbelievable job with Kate. First, they have to say, like, next level, right? Yeah. She came to my book launch a couple of years, two and a bit years ago. And it was an amazing event. Since then, it's just grown arms and legs. It's going live in Uzbek, as I shared with everyone. Not where I was expecting to be going. Hopefully a trip to Tashkent on the agenda.

1:35Ryan Hopkins:But she said, we're running this event. We were looking for speakers. Would you come and do something? I was like absolutely I would love to you get asked to do something like this you have to do it right and they have got their money's worth they've got me running around with a multiple session we're doing this and I love it good people good vibes everyone here wanting to like develop their business business but also work on their inner game as well and that's what it's all about absolutely and I've loved your your talks and your engagement with the community here generally but for our audience could you just tell us a little bit about your journey and what brought you to the work that you do today yeah we better be quick you know i mean not like we did earlier right so i really care about this i struggled a lot growing up as a lot of us have no one gets into this game not having been through it and i really really care about it i previously set up and led deloitte's well-being consulting business taking that thinking around the world built and built the strategic well-being business at bupa as well led at jack and this thinking has just evolved and evolved and the well-being space it's either so woo-woo that engages no one or it's incredibly clinical and dry and often it's very difficult to engage the normal person the busy person help them understand what it means and that's because we conflated wellness and well-being yeah as we were just saying wellness is the pursuit of optimal health that can be a hot stone massage the wellness industry is worth 9.2 trillion dollars but we've never been worse off from a well-being perspective and for me well well-being is that essentially it's one subjective satisfaction with their life and that's completely unique and these are practical things that we can do every single day and it's been over complicated within an inch of its life and what i intend to do is make it so so simple and help people understand it's about understanding yourself creating quality time focusing on the little things of regularity job done now you don't need a 12-week course yeah love it and what i loved about your talk as well as you gave such practical tactical advice which we're all about on the show so two things that i want you to talk about and to give a bit more context let's start firstly with the spotlight theory because i really like that.

3:31Ryan Hopkins:Yeah, I love it. Especially when we're talking, you do a lot of this, right? I imagine you weren't quite as confident as you are now. Not the Rob Haller that's standing in front of us today. And nor was I once. And that's because we all believe we're the star of the show. I always like to compare us to Taylor Swift. Yes, Rob's doing a great job in the legal freshman, but he's no Taylor Swift. No. You know what I mean? Never will. Everyone's watching her. Everyone is concerned with what she does. She put on a show that created an earthquake. It had actual tremors that were captured on the Richter scale.

4:01Ryan Hopkins:She's an unbelievable star, time person of the year. We are not. No one is watching. Everyone thinks they're the star of their show and they are the star of their own show. But the comforting thing is that everyone is a star of their own show. No one is worried about this stain Rob has on his shorts. He doesn't really. Right? But this is so freeing. Yeah. When you really start to realise and then when you're stepping out and you're really worrying about the second sentence or getting it wrong or the little slip up or you're not as polished as everyone else which i'm not but i've come to embrace that so i'm going to turn up exactly as my are and as i am and do my best and when you really really start to integrate that wisdom it's incredibly freeing and you realize actually that people are then concerned about what they're doing this afternoon or what they're having for tea later so you turn up you can bring what you can bring on the day and that is enough and that really it helps me a lot and i just love that you're encouraging embracing your true authentic self i did say two things there's actually three things there's another thing or another thing i want to ask you because these are notes that i was really inspired by your talk listening to i wrote down the letters c d e which is career curate digital environment so again put some context to our listeners and watch it around that and what your talk was about and yeah your thoughts on it yeah definitely there's the talk that's happening tomorrow actually we're called digital sanity and it's creating space in an incredibly attractive world everything wants our attention non-stop in the workplace we exist on laptops right we spend the entirety of our day looking through one but we don't consider that when we think about a well-being strategy in the workplace for me the greatest thing that any organization any legal business can do for their people is focus on giving people space letting the smart people you've employed because you wouldn't have employed them otherwise do the role they're paid for we're not paid to sitting meetings most of the time some of us might be a little bit but we spend the vast majority of our time responding to instant messages emails and sitting on calls 59 of our day actually leaving 41 of our day to do the actual work that we're paid for we respond to emails within two seconds and we know better outside of work the average person in the uk spends an hour and 49 minutes on social media every day yeah hopefully watching your content fingers crossed but we can cut that down right i was saying in the evening i find myself triple screening i'm watching something on tv i got my laptop on just one more email it never is and i've got my phone in my hand so we do it all day and then we step away to relax on more screens but we can be intentional about creating space be that in the workplace or outside of it the magic happens in these moments right now it happens from the connections that you make and we but we have to be intentional and intentionality for me is the absolute key when it comes to creating digital space so for instance if you've got six meetings per day and you also schedule each finish five ten minutes early you will save 4.8 work weeks worth of time this year now that's a lot of time to get up to stretch to move to breathe to be to text a grandparent or your mom or your dad or a loved one and check in well-being is no small thing but made up of small things that's all there ever is that is the secret yeah and we can create that and it takes small changes but the key is if you make your meetings finish five to minutes for the hour people will run straight through them because that's just what we do so a good trick is actually getting to start five minutes after the hour or the 30 and people will mess you saying well the hell where the hell are you be like check the canada invite yeah yeah love it nice little hack there that's good okay and another thing that i wrote down i think we talked i pulled you after your talk um because you gave some really good analogies and and general context i wrote b2b broken to better so again you were talking a lot about um well i'm going to butcher the story so you tell us a little bit about it and give context to what i'm going going through there the kintsugi piece yes yeah of course so for me i was i really struggled in my 20s i had a an eating disorder i had an accident almost off my life at a time as well prior to that and that was a complete shame that enveloped me the only person I told was my mum for many years and often with the things our insecurities what we've been through they thrive in the darkness and the more we talk about them the easier it becomes and sure hopefully you won't be on stage talking about the things that you've been through but you might and those things that caused me so much anguish and pain many years ago are the reason I get to come and do events like this and I would have done anything for many years to step into the shoes and be someone else but now i wouldn't change a thing and there's a metaphor for this and you might have heard this story already called like kintsugi it's the japanese pottery art essentially in the 16th century in japan the shogun was having his tea his servant dropped his pot and in 16th century japan that is a death sentence she said let me put it back together he put it back together with gold with staples and the shogun was like that is absolutely horrible you're gonna die he said give me one more chance he's like one more chance but you're about to get it all right yeah so you put it back together and they put it back together with gold glue essentially holding this pot together so where the pot was broken it's now stronger and more beautiful as a result of the things essentially where the breaks essentially in the pottery and that's a metaphor for ourselves so perhaps the thing that you're really struggling with today will be your reason for being in a year's time or perhaps if you look back 10 years ago and you think about what you were struggling with then i imagine it's part of the reason why you're doing what you do now so give yourself some forgiveness and it's a good way of looking back and showing that younger person some love as well because they did what they could with what they had and look at who you are now you're not all that awful are you love it love it okay i want to give you a chance to talk about your book because it's incredible the work and effort you put into that and actually to encourage others to start a book as well because you believe everyone can write a book yeah it actually started on the toilet like all good ideas so i wanted to create content a bit like rob and it's a nervy thing to do at first you put yourself out you agonize over every second word yeah the minutia yeah yeah of course you do and i've been to you know i now look at him right but i started this show it's gonna be toilet break well-being partly in homage the fact that when i was really anxious i felt like i was neither we every two seconds and actually to trivialize almost the seriousness around the subjects it's about the little things done with regularity so apparently you go to the toilet eight times every day and if you did 10 press-ups every time you went to the loo you do 29 ,200 press-ups and you'd look almost as good as Rob.

10:10Ryan Hopkins:I paid him for that. But it's these little things that matter. And this works across every facet of our well-being, be that physical, mental, emotional, social, financial, relational. It doesn't actually matter. It's about those little habits. So I started this show with a selfie on the toilet. I said, you flush and you flourish. I did 100 episodes of this show, engaged almost 20 million people on socials, like getting used to it. That turned into the book proposal, which I put to the publisher and they said this is not this is never a book well at least I tried yeah I said give me another shot and then we settled on 52 weeks of well-being a no-nonsense guide so I'd researched the book essentially over years by developing the content in public and then when we signed the deal for that the book ended up with 52 different subjects of which originated from the toilet 171 different tips inside the book and the whole premise is what works you won't work for another as i said well-being is completely unique and subjective and what works you today probably won't work for you in five years and that's good because it means you've evolved hopefully and not regressed and the whole book is around that concept and you've got bits on kintsugi another piece on meetings and you take what works implement that into your life i like to make it super practical because i find as with events as well people can come and they share their stories and they might trauma dump and fair play they've come through it but i want to make sure it's something practical yeah people think where am i in the context of this story what is this mean for me and how can I make some small change after this and that's everything for the book and it's like online the seven languages became a bestseller was up for a couple of awards and yeah never quite expected it but if I can do it then I think you definitely can and I wrote it in Wetherspoons in Putney I like to tell the story at table 212 when every Saturday and Sunday while working full-time leading the business at Deloitte and I love the process and I think it's about finding something that you enjoy and if you have that strong sense of why or that project then it's going it's going to be like work and you're going to gravitate towards it and that is the key for change in well-being or health it's about finding enjoyment in it and i try and force myself to be a swimmer i'm an awful swimmer i try and go a fair bit big breath sucking in chlorine water i don't like it i'm not going to do it but i tried and now you've got to learn right and then you're going to gravitate towards the things that you do but give yourself permission almost to say no sometimes as well and that's just as powerful yeah learning the power of no is super powerful i'd like to finish with a with a learn and a give because i always say before you drop before you earn you must learn if you drop the l you spell earn uh what's been a learn that you've picked up from being in the lawyers retreat i have really really enjoyed we've got people here running businesses between like 20 and 50 people most people and it's the attitude they take those organizations and from my perspective right now my business is growing and i'm looking at people with 20 thinking that is incredible that's the business that's sorted but it's the attitude they're taking to continuous development of themselves yeah and taking that time out even when their business is performing as they are i'm trying to really control a lot at the moment i'm going through an investment rounds the business is coming off the ground and i think i actually need to ease up a little bit because if we can create the space and people who are further ahead than me are creating space and doing it eloquently and holding that i think that's something that i can do better love it appreciate the honesty as well okay and finally what's one practical thing you would give to people who have been here and to our watchers and listeners to really work on their well-being give us one practical step they can take so i know we've talked a lot about compounding the one percent changes what's one thing they should start with immediately for me the the unobvious thing is subtraction i think it's one thing you shouldn't do okay and i think actually most of us busy professional people listening to this the people that are here have got full plates and i think the greatest thing and gift you can give to yourself or to a smart person is giving them the chance to do something else and to do so you need five minutes so I would actually look through the last week see how you spent your time and see what's not adding any value be that in the workplace or outside of it and you can take that off your agenda for next week have some space try and own it and leave that space perhaps don't even get your phone out don't watch something exist in that space give yourself a chance to think to reflect you deserve that time and often will do anything apart from sitting in it so for me that would be a big gift people can have fantastic well it's been an absolute pleasure hosting you and listening to you and watching you live here from Ibiza If people want to know more about yourself, your business, or indeed your book, where can they go to find out more?

14:25Feel free to share any social media handles, websites, et cetera.

14:27Ryan Hopkins:Yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. That's often the best platform. Or on Instagram, the Ryan Hopkins. Ryan Hopkins was taken. I don't like to talk myself in there, but it is what it is. That's the best place. And, yeah, thank you very much for having me. I think you've been excellent here and created a wonderful energy. So I'm excited to watch more of the episodes now. Absolutely. So from all of us here on the Leeds Beating Podcast, sponsored by Clio, for now, over and out. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration of the Legally Speaking Club over on Discord.

15:01Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com. There's a link to join our community there. Over and out.