The lies we all tell ourselves about our careers with Jemma Sbeg (LIVE)

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3:13Grace Beverley: what is up i'm grace beverly and welcome back to working hard the podcast shape guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

3:27Grace Beverley: What is up and welcome back to Working Hard. Today is quite a fun episode because it is something a little bit different for us. You are going to be listening to our first ever live podcast recording. We held it back in the summer and we have just got the live recording back through. I loved it so much and I always get major FOMO when my favourite podcasts do live recordings and then never release them so I just thought we'd pop it live. For context we held this in the most unbelievable skyscraper which was at 22 bishopsgate and I spoke to the incredible Gemma Spegg who is the host of the psychology of your 20s podcast who you will know from our episode in 2024 if you've been around these parts for a little while.

4:04Grace Beverley: We got into perfectionism, career planning, ambition, just a good old like girly chat around all of those areas so I hope you really enjoy it and if you are into these types of live events please let us know. That was the first we ever did and I loved being able to do it. We did like 20 pound tickets but there was food and drink and it just felt like such a nice evening but I don't really know how much people go to live events and things like that so if it's something you're interested in please just shout. Anyway let's get into it.

4:39Grace Beverley: Welcome to our very first live podcast ever. Obviously you guys snapped up tickets incredibly fast last week which made us very, very happy. And we just thought when the opportunity came up, really, like what else should you be doing at nearly eight months pregnant in a heatwave than trying new stressful in-person event? So here we are, and I hope you will really enjoy the evening. We are here for a little bit more context at Horizon 22, one of the most incredible views in London. And I genuinely cannot think of a better backdrop for this conversation, particularly because this room has aircon.

5:10Grace Beverley: But tonight, we have a very, very exciting and special conversation for you. I am joined by Gemma Spegg. She is the host of the Psychology of Your Twenties podcast, which is one of the most listened to podcasts in the entire world. In fact, it recently ranked in the global top 20 and was launched on Netflix last year. But what makes Gemma even more interesting and a person who I have had so many incredible in-depth conversations with who I feel you will really enjoy kind of what we get into is that she started the podcast as a side project while she was working 80 plus hour weeks in a corporate job.

5:48Grace Beverley: She built it episode by episode using her background in psychology to break down the things that make ambitious people feel stuck, anxious and like they're falling behind. And what I particularly love about Gemma is that she doesn't deal in platitudes. She goes straight to the research. So tonight we are going to get into the psychology of ambition, the traps that high performance fall into all too often and how to achieve your goals without losing yourself in the process. And so all that is left for me to do is to welcome the wonderful Gemma Spurg.

6:24Grace Beverley: You know the question I always start with, but it's been a while since I've asked you. So are you currently more working hard or hardly working? Grace, I'm right down the middle. I'm towing the line. Yeah, it's been great. I just moved to London this year. So it's like, this is kind of an insane experience to have in London, like in your first year of living here. And I'm really taking advantage of Ryanair. And I don't even know how many pound flights to like Italy and other places. As you should. I've been to Italy, so. As you should. And obviously, we've talked about your podcast here. But I have to obviously say for the room that I find it so incredibly impressive that in the early days you built it working a full-time corporate job in consulting whilst doing you know 80 hour plus weeks um and there'll obviously be a lot of people in this room who look at you now saying oh it's a balance like I'm doing halfway down the middle um balancing kind of with with looking at the fact that you were balancing the way you did before what did that kind of time teach you about the idea of dare I say work-life balance like to say split between working hard or hardly working?

7:43Definitely was just working hard back then. Any management consultants in the room? No. It's a made-up job. That's literally what it is. People pay you to solve problems they could only solve themselves. That is literally what it is. If anybody wanted to know what a management consultant was. Yeah like you said I worked as a I'm gonna say consultant for the seventh time in a row but I worked as a consultant and I would work these crazy hours I would be there at seven home at like eight or nine and sometimes what I would do is I wanted to be seen as like a really diligent worker so I would actually finish at like six and then I would stay behind and like work on scripts and work on the podcast on the side using like their cone and the free wi-fi of my of my firm and i think it taught me really hard work is is great for a small period of time but it does not sustain you and so i think it's like a it's a it's a burst it's such a great like i don't i don't know how to explain it it's just such a great like okay i'm gonna speed for a little bit but you can't go 120 kilometers an hour or miles an hour i forget the miles like all the time.

8:53So yeah, I think that was the biggest lesson.

8:55Grace Beverley: Yeah. And I guess being able then to operate in more in like seasons where you're able to know that maybe this is a time where you're doing 90 % work, 10 % personal, but it can't be that the whole time. Like that's just not maintainable. Oh my God. Absolutely not. I'm sure you've had seasons like that as well. Probably right now where you're like, oh my God, so much to do before baby comes. And at one point did you realize that you wanted to kind of take a turn in your career? Yeah. Okay. Can I tell you a funny story? Please. Okay. So my firm had this like website, as firms do. And I had to have a meeting with HR one day because they were like, we need to know if you have been involved in an out of work scandal.

9:38Because your profile on the website is getting thousands of clicks a day. And our CEO is a bit annoyed about it. Because we have to give him the metrics of like how many people view his profile. And Gemma Spegg, the consultant, is getting more because I didn't have any like social media or anything. And the podcast was kind of blowing up. And I think that was the first sign of like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be in this environment anymore. Like maybe I've kind of outgrown it and maybe it's probably not wise to like keep pretending that I am actually still kind of doing my job when I'm more in love with this other thing.

10:16So that's kind of when I knew. And also when it was just like, I just can't do both. And I love this one too much.

10:22Grace Beverley: Yeah. Yeah. How do you feel like our kind of ability to or desire to take risks in our careers have maybe changed based on the fact that a career used to be maybe doing 10, 20 years in one job, then 10, 20 years in another. And that would kind of be the trajectory versus now where people are having a lot more pity or kind of whether it's a gig economy, whether it is you know, a journey from one thing to another, whether it is kind of multi-hyphenate. A lot of people are exploring many different things over the kind of course of their career. How do you think that's made people feel about the risks that we take when trying to build that career over time?

11:02You know, it's really interesting because I think it's harder to get like career advice from our parents in one way, the same way that they're, you know, they got career advice from their parents. Now it's kind of difficult. I also think that we kind of started to realize that loyalty doesn't really matter anymore and I think our parents generation our grandparents generation that was like the most important factor was like who you're gonna work your entire life for and that counts like putting in hours working hard accounts and now it's like actually it's about being very very strategic and it's about it's about making it's about not necessarily making friends anymore but making smart choices um but I think we're in like this middle bit where we see all these people who have done it really well and they're super successful but there is still this old school mentality of like no just stick it out and no just like progress and this is safe and this is risky and now we're starting to realize wait a job can fire me at any moment I'm sure heaps of you guys have experienced redundancies in the last couple of years or people you know like your friends or the people at firms near you have like experienced these major redundancies and it's like oh so loyalty doesn't take me the same and working purely working hard doesn't take me to the same places as taking risks does.

12:13Grace Beverley: And I also think there's an element of that that is part of that social construct that we used to know, which was that if you worked a job and earned an average salary, then you could buy a house, you could have children, you could have childcare, and you could, you know, essentially be very comfortable. And obviously, that social construct breaking down pretty much completely, particularly in major cities, I mean, actually, in a lot of the world, I think kind of that breaking down also means that it's like, well, if me doing ABC that I've always been told to do and I'm following the perfect path doesn't necessarily equal what I thought it would do or equal safety or equal security, then it's like the kind of opportunity cost changes.

13:03Grace Beverley: and it feels like the risk is maybe more worth taking or maybe that it's the main option to be able to get to a level of financial security that unfortunately is no longer guaranteed with an average salary. I literally love this. It's like somebody said to me the other day, it's like, why do I have to keep playing the game when the game just plays me? And that's exactly what you're saying, where it's like, wait, this whole promised life, and I don't get it, but you're telling me it just doesn't really make sense for a lot of people anymore. And so what does that genuine kind of strategic career thinking then look like for you?

13:37Grace Beverley: Because say we throw the rulebook out, we still need to be able to follow a direction. We still want to be able to build the type of career that we want. So what should we be looking at when we are trying to plan a certain type of career or a certain type of life for ourselves? yeah I think I think about this all the time as somebody who's kind of done lived in both worlds and I have a couple things to say my first thing is a food metaphor because I found those work the best um and I literally just made a post about this the other day which is this throw the spaghetti at the wall theory which I came up with because I'm half Italian so throw the spaghetti at the wall which is basically it is a strategy to just try shit like that is actually a strategy just being like I have a vague sense of interest in this and I'm going to do this in whatever way possible even if it's at a 0.005 percent like of what I think is available to me like I'm just going to try and I'm just going to throw this at the wall and if it doesn't stick I leave it the spaghetti isn't ready but if it does stick like oh my god thank god thank god I've tried and so I think people need to start seeing like strategy doesn't just have to be spontaneous and it doesn't just have to be risky but it you need to have a strategy that that has forward momentum and I think one of those strategies is making the five-year plan and being like I'm gonna stick it out here and I know that there are certain places like I'm sure in the NHS or like in public service where you kind of move up routinely and you kind of know that is progress but if that progress isn't the kind that you want like you can make your own by being strategic about when you take risks how often you take risks and what spaghetti you're throwing, I guess, to round it out.

15:19Grace Beverley: Yeah, I get it. But I think that that's such a good point because I think really what you've said there is the fact that actually, okay, so we can get overwhelmed by the fact that A, there is so much choice. Well, it feels like there's so much choice. Particularly on social media, you're seeing all of these people with all these different careers and all these different lifestyles and everything looks very exciting. And so it feels like, you know, you're choosing one life when you're in this job and you're foregoing the one life where you were traveling around the world or you were self-employed or you were starting a business or whatever it constantly feels like a choice that you're making which has its positives and negatives I guess what you're saying is as long as there is momentum and as long as you are trying things then that is a strategy rather than necessarily trying to be like okay well in 20 years I want to get to this point so I'm going to do everything step by step to actually get there assuming that absolutely everything falls into place yeah and i think that's the thing is people are kind of realizing i always talk about the myth of the five-year plan and how like whose five-year plan has ever worked very few i thought somebody was about to put up their hand i was like oh see it um i can i say this other thing that i this other strategy i have if you like struggle with this thing of like i want to do everything so i do nothing i like to think about like my 20s or every decade of my life as if it's like a TV series and every TV series or every season lasts for two years, which is a long period of time.

16:46And in that season, I'm going to meet all these other characters, but the big thing I need to do is I need to have a major plot line and a minor plot line. I need to have something big that I'm working towards, something smaller and personal that I'm working towards. And after two years, once that major plot line is done, I can choose to continue it if it's still fulfilling me, but it's had its time. I've done it for two years. I've really given it a go I can move on to something else and it really helps with that

17:10Grace Beverley: paradox of choice yeah I love that and I think particularly that maintenance of agility when so many people feel and I've definitely fallen into this a few times before where you feel that sunk cost fallacy of okay well I've been working on this and so I better continue it because I've been working on it for two years and actually at the point that that stops serving you it's like the what's what's the saying about you know if you're on the wrong train it's always going to be better to get off at the next stop you don't you don't ride the train to the end of the line in order to be able to you know know whether you should have got there it's about being able to identify and saying you know well this still taught me things this still taught me whatever it might be it's not just you know I don't need to always get to x end goal in order to be able to have seen this as a version of success.

18:02Grace Beverley: And I love that. And one thing I love that you've talked about before, well, I don't love the thing, but I love when you've talked about it, is the idea or the concept of golden child syndrome, which is the fact that people who achieved highly, particularly in school and in their younger years, find it a lot harder to settle in their careers and to feel like they're in the right place and to feel like they are on the right trajectory. I have a feeling that knowing the kind of podcast demographic and our audience that a lot of people in this room will recognize that feeling. Can you explain what's actually happening there?

18:44Yes. Okay, so you actually explained it really well.

18:46Grace Beverley: Oh, thanks. Everybody, we'll just move on now. Very good. But Golden Child's syndrome theory, it's not a, I want to say this, it's not a mental health diagnosis. So please don't go to your therapist and say, Gemma and Grace said I might have this because they'll probably be like, don't have that in the DSM. But it is this idea that when you were a child, when you were a teenager, you learned that the best way that you could get love and praise and acceptance was by being this amazing, perfect version of you who did everything your parents wanted, everything your teachers wanted, everything that put you in the top 5%, probably top 1 % for a lot of people in this room, right?

19:28So you get good grades, be really good at maybe a sport or an extracurricular, always be very nice, self-sacrificing. The thing is, is that that requires a lot of self-abandonment. So you're making choices that look great for other people, that impress other people, that make other people happy. And then you get to a point of like, so what do I have left? I've only ever done the things that I think will impress or make others like me. and maybe even love me if it's apparent. And so you get to this point, probably I would say around in your early 20s, where something shifts and something goes wrong and the external validation that you're used to receiving through being golden and good is no longer available to you or, you know, you fail or something happens and you get sick and you're like, look around and there is like nothing else that makes up your identity.

20:24Nothing else other than achievement. and I don't really I can see where that goes like it's a bit of a crisis it's like it's more than a quarter-life crisis it's an identity crisis really and I guess what feeds into that is the idea of

20:38Grace Beverley: perfectionism and I think a lot of us feel like maybe we have different degrees of it or it kind of comes up in different things when you think about perfectionism do you think of it as a career a strength or a liability this is oh mr journalist that is a hard question um i think the thing about perfectionism is that it is very easy to think that it is like this amazing thing it's like a it's like the best relationship you've ever had it's great because perfectionism does get you stuff and then you're like but i don't have any friends and i don't have anything else other than this relationship it's like a really it's a it's a great boyfriend who actually just like isolates you from everything else it's what perfectionism is um and it's also rooted in fear people think that perfectionism is rooted in motivation and it's rooted in success no you are so afraid of like what happens if i am not exactly who i've always said i am and not exactly at the top of my game that you don't even give yourself the option to explore what that would look like and so I would say like perfectionism golden child syndrome anxiety a bit of like existential fears around my worth all go hand in hand I think you rarely see perfectionism in someone who also isn't quite insecure and I'm saying that as somebody who is that you know yeah no absolutely and I think that it's one of those things again that you know I've I've had this over and over where something if something's rewarded you for a long time it's very hard to step away from it in a kind of okay well this doesn't serve me because even if it's maybe making you stressed or burnt out or not have a great balance around things it's also always served you well in a specific way usually when it comes to work usually when it comes to I don't know it might be your career trajectory or your job title or whatever it might be and it's really hard to unlearn those things that actually have supported you for so long.

22:34Grace Beverley: So how can we kind of start to, you know, look at those things when actually you're saying, well, I still want to achieve great things. I still want to build this type of life. I still want to get to this level in my career. How can you do that whilst also maybe being aware of the things like perfectionism that might even be holding you back or might be holding you back from creating a wider level of enjoyable life that kind of ties in with you know your success without it all your whole life being about it yeah I always I actually said this to my sister the other day I was like uh well maybe I shouldn't have said I said it to my sister because it reveals parts about who she is but she's an athlete and I said to her you know like perfectionism actually isn't enough which is like such an oxymoron but perfectionism like gives you like you said all these rewards perfectionism also stops you from acting on your instincts.

23:29It stops you from taking chances. It stops you from acting before you're ready. And like anybody who is successful will tell you the number one secret to success is like, just do, just do shit before you're ready. Because if you have a good idea, like somebody else has probably had the same idea. And the only thing that distinguishes you from them is who's going to go first. Like who's going to move the first chess piece. And so you have to realize of like, flip the table. Perfectionism has given you so much. We're very grateful to perfectionism thank you for helping us what does it cost you it's cost you the ability to like move rapidly it's cost you the ability to try and then it's also cost you all these other personal things which is probably time with your friends which is probably like unconditional self-regard love for yourself it's probably cost you probably a little bit of your relationship with your family or with people around you who you think have put all this pressure on you so making a pro cons list of like what am I going to get by choosing not to be perfect and how is that actually maybe worth more these days yeah and i want to really move on to

24:30Grace Beverley: that because i feel like as much as all of this is important it's also not the most kind of like doesn't make us feel best of ourselves about ourselves to be talking about i think it's very important to be you know bearing in mind and being very aware of these types of things that hold us back how if we know that we are maybe a little bit perfectionist and we still want to achieve really highly and we still want to build a certain type of life how can we just start to get that momentum moving forward like removing the perfectionism removing the idea that oh i need to do xyz every day or i always need to appear this way how do we start to build that momentum without necessarily fixating on each tiny little thing we're doing i feel like the 80 20 rule is just like the best i actually learned the other day that the 80 20 rule is like for like it's like a diet rule but i've always thought of it as like it's not what we're talking about yeah well yeah i've always thought about it as like you know 80 great 20 just done and just letting yourself realize like 80 is still actually i don't know the university system here but in australia it's still a hd it's still it's still an a plus like 80 is still really really good and the 20 is like the price that you pay in order to get to the 80 like to have gotten stuff done so i think when you're doing anything in life be like 80 20 80 20 like is it at 80 what is this extra stuff going to help me with probably not much let's move on I also think make your to-do list shorter and that is the way that I've really helped with my perfectionism as being like I cannot do everything that life has given me in a day so why is it all my to-do list like I was looking at mine today and it was like figure out irs and that's like american taxes and i was like i'm not going to do that today and like figure out um how investing works and then make sure you do this three social media posts and then uh this netflix thing you have to do that today and it's like the perfectionism looks at that and goes well i can't do all of that perfectly and today so i'm just going to do the easy things and tick them off and it's like no if you had just concentrated your to-do list to have like I always call it like two little tasks one big task and like sandwich them you get so much more done so it's like some practical things to try yeah no I think there's a great piece of advice hey guys it's Paige from Giggly Squad okay can we all agree that hosting is so much fun and I really do love it every weekend it's come over for snacks let's make dinner together and somehow the second you put out a fruit platter it seems that bugs show up before your friends do.

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30:09Grace Beverley: So I want to talk about now, like, really getting out of our own way. I think a lot of people, particularly who listen to podcasts like this, are very happy to spend a lot of time on self-improvement and happy to spend a lot of time on working out, okay what do I need to do next to be able to get to where I want to get to I think that you can get stuck in that almost planning stage almost like okay what is the theory behind it and as we said like momentum is so important I want to talk a little bit about the confidence to be able to actually move forward and you've spoken before about the fact that kind of self-doubt isn't actually the opposite of confidence what did you mean by that when you've spoken about that um so confidence isn't the opposite of self-doubt the opposite of self-doubt is self-trust which is basically being like you cannot be confident 100 of the time but you can trust that you're going to be okay and i think the thing with self-doubt is it's like every single belief that you have it goes no no no no no no no none of these can be true and it kind of creates this like paradox where it's like well one of them has to be true something has to be true and self-trust is like the belief that like if I have a positive thought about myself like I can trust that I can I can say that might work if I have an idea like that's it might be a good idea and being able to like put faith it's also the thing of like the opposite of anxiety isn't confidence as well like again it's all self-trust it all comes down to this intrinsic sense that like I'm going to be okay even if everything goes poorly I will be fine and self-doubt says you will only be fine in this like tiny little zone that we have defined and of course like nothing gets done there yeah and what I really love about the self-trust conversation as well is that I think confidence is something that we so think of as an attribute that you are born with naturally or maybe kind of develop in your earlier years and I actually think that the reality is that so many of us have it a lot more in our early years and particularly as women it's almost like dragged out of us as we go through our schooling, go through our career trajectory, etc, etc.

32:16Grace Beverley: And reframing that as self-trust rather than confidence, all that requires is just doing the things you say you're going to do. Like you can really easily build up self-trust over time. It's not about always getting the job you want. It's not about always kind of ticking that next box. It's about saying, I'm going to do this thing, or like, I want to get here within five years. And so within the next year, I'm going to take five big opportunities that might get me there. And it's not about whether you actually get those opportunities. It's about the fact that you ticked off those five things within that year.

32:52Grace Beverley: It's about the fact that in that time you said, okay, great, I'm going to do this one thing and I'm going to apply for this one job and I'm going to go to this one event or whatever it might be. It's not necessarily that kind of, you know, I need to do these things, as you said, in an almost like to do list or a kind of achievement list it is just that momentum and I think that that has really helped me to be able to develop I guess what would be confidence actually just bit by bit by setting goals that aren't necessarily too big they're not these kind of massive things in five years they are what am I going to do in the next three months that aligns with my one-year plan or my five-year plan or whatever it might be and for someone who's here tonight who knows that they maybe want to make a change it might be a kind of new role a big move in some way generally something different but keeps finding reasons to wait what would you say is the way through that oh my gosh well I think that's hard because I've done that before like right now there's something I know I like I really want to do and I'm like I'm just gonna wait I'm just gonna wait I'm gonna wait and so I'm gonna give you the advice that I probably should take which I guess is I kind of already gave this advice so I want to give you something original um I think I'll give you something really practical that I've been doing which is like when you see the big thing on your list and it's like I want to be a business owner I want to make I want to have a hundred thousand in chairs or stocks I want to be a I want to do this big thing you look at that goal and it's like But that's like 7 ,000 things that I have to do to get there.

34:34So just do three of them at a time. And this is something that I'm kind of training myself to do right now, like towards this goal I have where I'm like, let's just do three things. And once those three things are done, then we move forward. And then once those three things are done, then we move forward. And it's just chunking, basically. It's just a mental exercise of being like, when you look at like a massive mountain, it's just like completely unfathomable that you'll ever be at the top of when you look at the next three steps. Like your brain works better by viewing and having progress that is tangible, small and specific versus progress or a task that is just so large that it can't actually compute and put together a plan.

35:17So chunk it, break it down. And also just like, oh, you want to say take risks, but just think about like what is, what's something that you could do tomorrow that would cost you zero dollars? like registering a business name like you don't have to do anything else just register it costs you like zero dollars starting an instagram account with the name of your business so that somebody else doesn't take it like zero dollars just telling your friends about it zero dollars also accountability i have this friend who is um launching something really cool i'll give her a shout out she's launching this like women in sports network so job so if anybody wants to do sport sporting well you clearly don't we want to work in athletics i don't know work some sports i'm not giving her a good pitch but and um yeah she's so cool and she works she does all this really cool stuff and um we went for this run the other day because you know me and uh we afterwards we were like okay we both have this big thing we want to do at the end of the week we're going to go for another run three things we're going to write each other's to-do list three things like in collaboration but we're going to write it and we're going to say i think that you can achieve this this week and whoever comes back and hasn't done it like rounds on them and we both done it and I was like oh I'm really proud of us I really love that and I feel like there's something about the world in which the world in the way it is now and the way that we

36:43Grace Beverley: consume other people's careers and trajectories that makes the end goal always seem both so far off and also like you're kind of one day away from it and what I mean by that is the fact that you feel like you can almost like reach it and you feel like you could be there and you could also be at this point in your career or earning this much or having this title or having this business or whatever it might be and yet it also feels like there is so much that you need to do to get there and I feel like one of the best things that we can do to actually break that down and make it something that is actually achievable and something that has that momentum coming back to that point again and again is just breaking it down every whether that's every week whether that's every month as you're saying kind of being able to just take take action i think that as you say it's so easy particularly with the kind of what we're feeling like of a paradox of choice of careers out there or trajectories out there that it's it feels like you constantly need to be doing the big thing whereas in reality you probably just need to be doing as you say three four three small things every week or three small things every month i'll also say this um that a lot of people don't try for longer than six months at anything so if you just try for six months at the thing that you really want to do when you get to the other side you'll realize there's not many people who make it that far right there's not many people on the other side and there are so many more opportunities and I think that all the time it is sometimes just a waiting game sometimes it's just about putting even the smallest thing and doing it for as long as you possibly can and I think a lot of people would see you know see your businesses and see Tala and see Shreddy and see working hard or see you know the psychology of your 20s on Netflix and be like that's so cool I want that it's like there were there was so much work and and there was so many times when nothing got done and nobody listened like for my podcast nobody listened for two years I could literally When my grandma listened, she would show up in my listener data.

38:50It would be like one person over 60. And I was like, Grandma Val, what are you doing here? And I think a lot of people see the end go. It's like, yeah, but sometimes it's just like just the years. And the years are going to pass anyways. And it was like two years of like nothing happened. And then more and more and more. I'm sure it was you. And same with you. And then it's like, I just think that life and the universe or just fortune favors people who just are like, I want this and I'm standing my ground and I'm going to prove every single day that I want to be here and something will move.

39:21Grace Beverley: No, I think that was such good advice. And I think so much of it is really outlasting. Like it is not just momentum. It is about being able to maintain and just being able to put one foot in front of the other. Exactly as you were saying, like when I started my podcast, it was by far the most embarrassing thing I did because every single time I posted about it on Instagram, not to out you guys, but no one did anything. every time I'd kind of post and I'd be like oh I really care about this and I really want to do this and I really love the conversations I'm having and it just the algorithm whoever was not having it and I just knew that this was something I wanted to do and felt quite strongly about and so it's literally been like a war of attrition over this time just to be like actually no this is something I want to do and it doesn't need to tick all of my boxes it doesn't need to be the thing that I'm doing that is, you know, whether it's a side hustle, it might be not the thing that you're doing that's making you the most money.

40:16Grace Beverley: You're making more money from your main job or whatever it might be. But it is adding to your life in some way that I think is the really crucial thing. I don't think enough of us are doing extra things on top of our work that add to our life in some way. And I'm not just talking about monetizable things. I'm talking all different sorts. Like if you want to have a life that looks like X, Y, Z, you have to have things in your everyday that look like that it feels like a no-brainer but obviously we're all so exhausted every day that it is hard to constantly add on I think one of my favorite things in in kind of terms of theories on top of that as well is that when you're thinking and people here might be thinking is sitting and kind of saying okay well I've got this career and I know I want to make partner in x amount of years or I know I want to start a business in in this amount of time again as you as we've kind of spoken about it feels like there are many big things that need to happen to make that happen I think even outside of thinking about the small things that you can do to make that happen every day I think the idea of increasing your surface area for luck is something that I come back to again and again and again if you want to get to a certain place in your life, you need to put yourself in the position to be able to get there.

41:35Grace Beverley: And I don't necessarily mean in terms of manifestation or visualization or any of these things. You can obviously do whatever works for you. But I think actually, it's really easy to sit somewhere and think, okay, I want this job title in five years. And are you going to the events where the people with that job title are there? Are you reaching out to them? Are you finding out about what their job actually entails. Are you asking to spend a day shadowing them or just have a conversation or speaking to the people who are lower down than them, whose roles you would have to have in the meantime?

42:06Grace Beverley: Same with starting a business. It's not just about doing the big things. It's not even necessarily about the conceptualizing. It's like putting yourself in the position where maybe you want to start a business, but you don't know what the business would be on yet. Like going to events where you might find a co-founder, like going to spaces where you might learn more about branding or finances or whatever it might be. I think we often think of those things as secondary and kind of support acts rather than the main thing. And actually, if you're not putting yourself in those environments, then the lucky opportunities are never going to find you.

42:43Grace Beverley: We were doing an episode the other day on exactly that and the fact that we always think of the fact that oh you're the sum total of the five people you're closest to whereas in reality yes of course you know you get a lot of their traits and their mannerisms and all of that but your career trajectory and your life trajectory is much more down to your acquaintances and the people you hold conversations with the people you put yourself in rooms with over and over and over that is what it comes back to again and again because that is where the opportunities that you weren't even expecting to get come from.

43:19Grace Beverley: And I think that if we can all focus a little bit more on essentially building a surface area for luck, like being closer to those things, being closer to those people, spending more time reading around those things, just like immersing yourself in some way, that feels like such a massive unlock that actually really isn't that hard to do. It's like, what are you doing every single week that puts you in the position that the person who has the career you want in five, ten years is in. And I think that's really like when I come back to it again and again, it makes it feel less daunting too. See, you're one of those people for me.

43:57Oh, I'm honest. No, genuinely, just to give you a shout out, even though these people all know you and not me, but you should listen to my podcast. No, genuinely, and when you were saying that, I was like, yeah, I just feel like you need to have expanders and you need to have people who are around you and I count you as one of them who you're like I fucking love what she's doing and I love her life and I like her principles and like that is not that that is just like the best thing you can do for yourself is to genuinely have pure admiration and have heroes or people that you think are great who you are around or with or see to just inspire you it's like one of the best things like to have I think.

44:40Grace Beverley: Yeah. And I think on top of that, one of the things I also want to point out is the fact that it's easy to do the easy parts of that. Like it's easy to be like, okay, well, of course, I want to get into a room with that person or of course, I want to be there. And I think particularly at a time where so much of our lives are optimized around convenience, like we can do most things to a pretty convenient level, you can maybe work from home, or you can deliver a meal instead of making it or you can whatever. And loads of these things are great in lots of ways and to democratize lots of lots of areas and kind of activities and accessibility but i do think there is always a risk when there's a more convenient option you're not going to put yourself into the option where maybe it's a little bit more annoying like i hate mingling for example it's just a i will check whether an event is a mingling event or a kind of sit down event and actually that is terrible for my surface area for luck like that is not going to i'm going to be sat next to you know one person versus being able to actually have like conversations with multiple people and doing the and it's not just about like that in terms of the quantity of people I think it's actually breaking down what do you what could you do this week that's probably a little bit inconvenient and a little bit annoying and definitely harder than sitting at home and not going to that networking event or not going to that career thing or what going to that talk or extra education at work or whatever it might be like what could I do that would put myself in that position and just make me uncomfortable for half an hour or an hour because those are the things that will change everything I think you know I think of the retrograde the talent agency company that I started I remember them kind of emailing and saying you know would you like to go for dinner and I remember I was already away at a conference and I was like not really when I get to the end of this conference what I actually want to do is go back to my hotel room and have some time with the tv which is like one of the best parts of being at the conference is because you get to the end of the day you actually get some alone time um and I just remember being like oh god I really should go to that and two years later he kind of popped back up and said I've sold my previous company I want to start this this opportunity's there and of course that's not always it's not always going to kind of fall into your lap like that but a lot of the time it does and every time I've spoken about this the amount of people who have been in my dms or in my comments kind of saying actually no you're completely right the job I've got now that's in another country that I've always wanted to move to is because I had this conversation with someone at a friend's birthday party who I thought wasn't that interesting at the beginning and it's about like giving yourself those opportunities can I wait can I say something on this because I've I'm just so this is just what I think about all the time at the moment and I want to tell people about this thing I've been doing that is literally what sounds like what you've been doing as well which is this thing called Shoot Your Shot Wednesdays, where I, every Wednesday, have two hours on my calendar where I just send the most ridiculous emails.

47:36I love that. Yeah, I sent one to Simone Biles the other day. I was like, do you want to come on the podcast? She said no. But she was home. And now I have her email. So she'll be getting one email every month. No, I won't do that. But, like, as an example, and I just want to, like, prove that, like, everything grace is saying works i really wanted to work with this a company called impact and you guys have seen you would have seen their stuff on instagram obsessed every time i'd see their stuff i was like it'd be so cool if i did something with them it'd be so cool and then i was like okay i'm just gonna email them i'm gonna email them and i'm gonna write them this pitch and they didn't respond and so then i followed up they didn't respond i followed up again and then they were like okay let's do something and i was like that was embarrassing i had to follow up three twice but I was like now I get to do what I wanted to do with them and I get to like have this piece of content come out and that's probably not going to be a huge thing for my career but it's important to me and you just have to be so ridiculous about the things you ask for and like 95 % of the time nobody gets back to you two percent of the time Simone Biles says no and then three percent of the time people are like maybe not right now or like yeah like let's do it and I just think it's again surface area for luck just how do you expect to get what you want if you're just hoping that it's going to find you and you're not actually just like expanding the target

49:04Grace Beverley: I love that and I think that that is really the overarching message of this evening is kind of what are you doing every single week that puts yourself in the position to get the life you want yeah whatever that might be it is not about the kind of progress in a very linear direction it is about momentum and it is about taking action time and time again and i love the fact that you blocked that into your calendar i'm a big fan of that anyone who loves me knows i love a calendar block um and i think that it really is that like what are those tiny little things and some of them crazier than others some of them simpler than others some of them are more uncomfortable than others but it's really just about narrowing in and just taking just making that momentum like getting the ball rolling and like what is an email well it's two minutes yeah five at the ten minutes and now there's five emails out there just doing their work for you we only have a few minutes left before we move on to questions so I'm just gonna do a few quick fires to end okay what is one thing that you would tell your 20 year old self oh um this is it's about love i would say like heartbreak is the best thing that is going to happen to you oh i love that like 100 i genuinely think i owe my ex-boyfriends a check oh don't do that no my my current boyfriend well my boyfriend not my girlfriend my ex uh is a big fancy lawyer now so don't worry he'll protect me from that from those claims i just made on your podcast.

50:36Genuinely, my first boyfriend breaking up with me was the best thing that has ever happened to me. I would not have the podcast. I would not have anything. And then I almost quit. And then I found another guy who wasn't going to be very nice to me. And I got that second wave. And I was like, this is amazing. I need to do this more often. But luckily, I didn't have to.

50:53Grace Beverley: I really love that. I really love that. Not because you had to go through that. But I do think that it is such a good lesson. It's one of those things where it's kind of like, okay, in our 20s in particular if we can learn as much as people as much as possible from as many people as possible we are always moving in the right direction like whether that is about love whether that is about friendship whether that is about career all of these different things like if you can just learn and like be a sponge in all of these different life areas I feel like some of the biggest like the as you say the worst things that have happened in my 20s have definitely taught me the most and also been the most surprising and also ended up with kind of the trajectory that I'm on now and i think that it's always you can only look back and realize that but the only way of making that happen is by using these things as momentum 100 great summary yeah and what is your favorite quote that keeps you going oh i don't know if i said this earlier so i'll just say it again um an idiot in motion is better than a genius standing still i like it i like it a lot yeah Yeah.

51:55And I'm just going to leave it there.

51:57Grace Beverley: Yeah. I'm not going to explain it. I feel like it's pretty self-explanatory. And what's one non-negotiable that gets you through difficult weeks? Oh, I do this. I really like to suffer when I exercise. Like if I really want to be like on death's door and I do this class every week. And if I can't do it, I genuinely am like, what am I doing? It's the sauna class. If anybody wants to come, I get five free guest passes a month. so it's great and I actually it's it's in a heated sauna and they make you lift these crazy weights and I actually brought my friend and she had to leave because she was having a panic attack and then the guy oh I'm sorry I'm not laughing it was funny because what happened afterwards and the guys followed us out and I could just see him being like they can't take the heat and like and they're like the tagline is sweat doesn't discriminate and it's like it sounds awful it's so good i love it i felt so bad because i was i'm i was laughing because i was like everybody come but the last time i brought somebody didn't go very well yeah i wouldn't recommend yeah for legal reasons this is not a recommendation from me um and finally as we always close with on this podcast what is the best piece of advice that you've ever been given

53:14oh okay i'm from australia can you tell um i totally don't have an annoying accent but the best cure for anything is the ocean oh yeah best cure for any like we've got the thames yeah if anyone's interested this is why i'm suffering in london right now somebody was like we have a lido what is a lido a pool like what does that mean oh we can go to hamster heat No, it's dirty there. Like, I don't want to go. And I'm, like, really struggling with it right now. But, yeah, the best cure for anything is to be near the ocean. And if that's not a good ad for Ryanair, then I don't know what it is.

53:54Grace Beverley: But thank you so, so much. I have had such a lovely time. Thank you so much to Gemma, who has been absolutely incredible. And, yeah, I'll see you on the podcast.

54:11Thank you.

54:38I'm Lindsay Soprano, and this is Giving Pain Purpose. Every week, I sit down with people who've walked through chronic pain and trauma and come out on the other side and talk about how they do it. You don't have to do this alone. Find Giving Pain Purpose wherever you get your podcasts.

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