Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Good Morning, This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 2: Today's episode is going to be a slightly longer one
Speaker 2: part of the series where I interview fascinating people about
Speaker 2: how they take their days from great to awesome and
Speaker 2: any advice they have for the rest of us.
Speaker 1: So today I am delighted to welcome Helen Tupper to
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2: Helen is the co author with Sarah Ellis of the
Speaker 2: new book Learn Like a Lobster. So Helen, welcome to
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I'm excited to talk. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit
Speaker 1: about yourself.
Speaker 3: Well, I run a company called amazing If. We have
Speaker 3: a mission to make squiggly careers better for everybody, which
Speaker 3: is really the idea of non linear becoming normal, which
Speaker 3: has been talked about for a while. But what we
Speaker 3: tend to find is that often individuals don't have the
Speaker 3: skills to make that possible. At what are the skills
Speaker 3: I need to manage a squidly career and organizations aren't
Speaker 3: always set up to support them. So in our work,
Speaker 3: we work with large companies all over the world to
Speaker 3: support skills and structures for squidly careers. And along the way,
Speaker 3: we've learned a lot about learning, which led to our
Speaker 3: third book, Learn Like a Lobster.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure everyone listening to this is like, what
Speaker 2: on earth a lobster like?
Speaker 1: So why a lobster?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to say why learning first, because I
Speaker 3: think that is the most important thing. So on this
Speaker 3: sort of journey on squiggly careers, what we have seen
Speaker 3: is that the people that are most adaptable at work,
Speaker 3: the people that are most resilient to change, the people
Speaker 3: that create the most opportunities for their career, are the
Speaker 3: people that are most able to learn at work. And
Speaker 3: it's sort of an easy thing to say, but it
Speaker 3: is not an easy thing to do because people say, well,
Speaker 3: I kind of get I need to learn, but I
Speaker 3: don't have the time to do it. I find it
Speaker 3: too hard to work out when in my week I'm
Speaker 3: supposed to add on learning when I've already got so
Speaker 3: much to do, and there's so much to learn my
Speaker 3: organization outside of my organization that's just so overwhelming. And
Speaker 3: so we've got this sort of tension between well, the
Speaker 3: people who are most set up to succeed are the
Speaker 3: people who are most able to learn, but the majority
Speaker 3: of people are finding it too hard to do, and
Speaker 3: so we want to solve that tension. And what we
Speaker 3: recognize is that sometimes we need role models. Sometimes we
Speaker 3: need these people who just know how to do it brilliantly.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately there aren't loads of people at work who've
Speaker 3: learned brilliantly today, but there are lobsters. And what lobsters
Speaker 3: do brilliantly is they grow. They are inspiring and how
Speaker 3: they grow, so first of all, they never stop growing.
Speaker 3: They have something called indeterminate growth, so they grow and
Speaker 3: grow and grow until the day the lobster is no
Speaker 3: longer here for whatever reason. And the way that never
Speaker 3: ending growth is enabled is they have to shed their shell.
Speaker 3: So their shell becomes a constraint to their growth. They
Speaker 3: recognize that, they feel that tension, and rather than stay
Speaker 3: safe in the in the shell, they shed it. And
Speaker 3: that is a really hard, vulnerable process for the lobster.
Speaker 3: They takes a lot of energy and when they shed
Speaker 3: that shell, they're very exposed. They look like jelly, like
Speaker 3: a jelly like lobster. And it's high risk but high
Speaker 3: reward because the reward is a new shell grows back,
Speaker 3: and that shell is bigger and better and stronger than
Speaker 3: the one that they shed. And they do this on repeat.
Speaker 3: And then the third fact is that the shell that
Speaker 3: they shared does not go to waste. They are very,
Speaker 3: very resourceful. They eat the shell that they shed to
Speaker 3: fuel the next phase of their growth. So they basically
Speaker 3: evolved this self sustaining system for growth. And so what
Speaker 3: we are saying to people is you can evolve a
Speaker 3: self sustaining system for learning where you never stop learning
Speaker 3: because you learn as you go, rather than waiting for
Speaker 3: a day for learning to happen. You learn in your
Speaker 3: hardest moments when you are vulnerable. You know when you
Speaker 3: fail or when you get that feedback that makes you go,
Speaker 3: oh that's hard, dear. But that's when you learn the most,
Speaker 3: because that's when the lobster growth the most, and you
Speaker 3: lead your own learning like the lobster fuels its own
Speaker 3: growth by being adaptable, by being a brilliant beginner, by connecting,
Speaker 3: by sharing all these things that are in our control.
Speaker 3: And so that's why we've written the book because we
Speaker 3: want people to succeed in scribby careers. Learning is a
Speaker 3: very helpful way to do it, and lobsters are our
Speaker 3: way into looking at learning differently.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it well. I love that
Speaker 1: you talk about the time there.
Speaker 2: I mean I would say this is a time management podcast,
Speaker 2: and sure a lot of people hearing this, so like, yes,
Speaker 2: I need to find time to learn, and you suggest
Speaker 2: that that's not the right way to look at it. Instead,
Speaker 2: we need to be learning from the things we are
Speaker 2: already doing. So I'm wondering if you could talk me
Speaker 2: through like a typical workday, what would that look like
Speaker 2: to learn from things you are already doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I guess framing here is rather than looking
Speaker 3: at learning as something that has to be added on,
Speaker 3: you are looking to add it in. And so the
Speaker 3: obvious ways that you add this in are things like meetings.
Speaker 3: Lots of people are meetings, So how do we add
Speaker 3: more learning into meetings? In conversations we're having conversations as
Speaker 3: a recurring part of our working week. Well, those I
Speaker 3: would also say, spot the situations, the situations you're in
Speaker 3: regular So, first of all, if we're going to add
Speaker 3: it in, I would think about meetings, conversations, situations in
Speaker 3: an average week, and then some simple ways that you
Speaker 3: can add more learning in One is experiments like experiments
Speaker 3: are they're like ready made for learning because they an
Speaker 3: experiment is not about does it work or doesn't it work?
Speaker 3: Like it's not it's not really that, it's what do
Speaker 3: you learn from doing something differently? And so we take
Speaker 3: these conversations, these meetings, these situations and we deliberately do
Speaker 3: something different but with the desire to learn from it.
Speaker 3: Now that could look like agendas. So one of the
Speaker 3: things we write in the book we write about decision
Speaker 3: discussion agendas. These have massively changed my meetings. I've learned
Speaker 3: so much more from doing this. So traditional agenda, if
Speaker 3: you even have an agenda, so many meetings without agendas,
Speaker 3: but and then you kind of get into a different
Speaker 3: question about why we're having this meeting. But let's imagine
Speaker 3: there's an agenda. Traditional agenda tends to look like a
Speaker 3: list of things that you and we should talk about, Laura,
Speaker 3: maybe with aob at the end, just to cover stuff
Speaker 3: that we forgot to say a bit at time at
Speaker 3: the end, and it's not particularly focused, and people just
Speaker 3: kind of work through it, try and fit it in
Speaker 3: a decision discussion agenda. I think is a better use
Speaker 3: of time. Now the point is experiment and learn whether
Speaker 3: it works for you. But the way that this works
Speaker 3: is at the top of the agenda, you have what
Speaker 3: are the decisions that we need to make today, and
Speaker 3: having those at the top is a real focus for
Speaker 3: people's attention. And also if there are any decisions, you
Speaker 3: might question, do we need to have this meeting? Is
Speaker 3: this something we could just do over Microsoft teams for example.
Speaker 3: So you have the decisions at the top, and then
Speaker 3: you have the discussion items. But what makes this different
Speaker 3: is you frame the discussion items as a question that
Speaker 3: our brains are very attracted to question and we almost
Speaker 3: can't help but think about a question. So rather than
Speaker 3: just a list of event X, project, why you know
Speaker 3: budget B, you would say, how do we make next
Speaker 3: month's event the most memorable the team have ever attended?
Speaker 3: How do we operate the plan on a ten percent
Speaker 3: budget cut? And you frame it as a question. And
Speaker 3: that is even better if you can send that out
Speaker 3: in advance, if you can be super organized, because then
Speaker 3: people think ahead of the meeting and you have a
Speaker 3: higher quality conversation rather than people trying to work out
Speaker 3: what the intent of budget B actually is when you
Speaker 3: see it on agenda. And so there are so many
Speaker 3: experiments that you can do in meetings that you are
Speaker 3: already in and the point is to run the experiment.
Speaker 3: You can do it secretly, you can do it openly,
Speaker 3: but run the experiment and then to reflect, because it's
Speaker 3: when you reflect that you really log the learning loads
Speaker 3: of You can literally ask yourself what did I learn?
Speaker 3: But my favorite simple reflection tool is to do what so?
Speaker 3: What now? What so? What was the experiment? So what
Speaker 3: did I learn the affection? And now what am I
Speaker 3: going to do? And if you compare like a very
Speaker 3: simple experiment that's already in the work of your doing,
Speaker 3: with some very fast reflection, you will automatically learn much
Speaker 3: more from your work.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right, We're going to take a quick ad
Speaker 2: break and then I'll be back with more from Helen Tupper.
Speaker 1: Well, I am back talking with Helen and.
Speaker 2: Tupper, who is the co author of the book Learn
Speaker 2: Like a Lobster, accelerate your growth, achieve more at work,
Speaker 2: and advance your career.
Speaker 1: So, Helen, you also talk about.
Speaker 2: Learning and hard moments when we are shedding our shells,
Speaker 2: and I think this is somewhat difficult because a lot
Speaker 2: of people get very sort of defensive in moments of challenge.
Speaker 2: So how can you sort of manage yourself to be
Speaker 2: still open to learning in situations where where it's clear
Speaker 2: that something has gone awry.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, we know that people find this hard. So
Speaker 3: in the book there is the idea of learning as
Speaker 3: you go, learning hard moments lead your own learning. And
Speaker 3: we've got a profiling tool that about nearly eight thousand
Speaker 3: people have taken now and it helps to see what
Speaker 3: lobs the day are most like. And the lobster that
Speaker 3: people are most least to be like is the learning
Speaker 3: hard moments lobster like. People find this really hard, So
Speaker 3: just to make it more tangible, I think some very
Speaker 3: common hard moments at work are feedback feels exposing like
Speaker 3: the lobster. And failure, Oh feels dreadful, no one, no
Speaker 3: one loves it, and people flippantly say, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: you can learn from failure. It feels horrible, It feels
Speaker 3: and met people avoid it. They stay safe because this
Speaker 3: feeling of failure is so awful, and so we need
Speaker 3: to we need to make it easier. There's so many
Speaker 3: different ways. Maybe I'll just talk about to one connected
Speaker 3: feedback one connected to failure. So let's start with failure.
Speaker 3: First of all, failure, I think is too big a
Speaker 3: starting place when we're thinking about learning from failure. I
Speaker 3: think the word failure is too If you are in
Speaker 3: a situation where you feel like you've failed and you
Speaker 3: haven't developed the muscle to learn from failure, it's too
Speaker 3: hard to start there. So the way we tell people
Speaker 3: to develop this is to start smaller. And a small
Speaker 3: failure is also known as a mistake, So it's much
Speaker 3: easier to start learning from your mistakes than it is
Speaker 3: to learn from your failures. Also, you have more mistakes.
Speaker 3: We all have lots of mistakes, so there's lots of
Speaker 3: sort of ready made learning waiting for us. So mistake
Speaker 3: moments are something that you can do on your own,
Speaker 3: but I think it's even better if you can do
Speaker 3: this in a team environment. So I'll talk about how
Speaker 3: we do it, and we use Microsoft Teams for the
Speaker 3: way that my company runs. We have a channel on
Speaker 3: Microsoft Teams called mistake Moments. I saw someone on my
Speaker 3: team foot one in today actually, and mistake moments is
Speaker 3: part of our language and our company. So whenever you
Speaker 3: make a mistake. The rule is within twenty four hours
Speaker 3: of you making the mistake, you have to share it,
Speaker 3: have to share it, and so you have to stop
Speaker 3: worrying about it, stop turning this sort of you know,
Speaker 3: molehill into a mountain in your mind, and you have
Speaker 3: to share it and that gets the weight off you
Speaker 3: and it puts it into an environment where other people
Speaker 3: can support and everyone can learn. So the process the
Speaker 3: mistake moments, you share what the mistake was. So, for example,
Speaker 3: a mistake some one made in my team today was
Speaker 3: we were in a meeting that we weren't as prepared
Speaker 3: as we should have been for and we both reflected
Speaker 3: afterwards that that was a mistake moment. And so she's typed,
Speaker 3: this is a mistake moment, this is what happened. Then
Speaker 3: you have to type what did I learn? Okay, so
Speaker 3: you know I learned to gather some more information in
Speaker 3: the emails that I've got and make sure that was
Speaker 3: shared various things. And then what you get, like I said,
Speaker 3: is you get the support the individual has processed the
Speaker 3: moment and turned it into learning, and then that learning
Speaker 3: is shared beyond the individuals that everyone gets better and
Speaker 3: so you can do mistake moments on your own, but
Speaker 3: I think the power of the learning is better when
Speaker 3: you're doing it in teams. So that's a really really
Speaker 3: useful way builds up the learning muscle so that when
Speaker 3: a failure happens, you've almost got that trigger of I
Speaker 3: need to share, I need to reflect, rather than the
Speaker 3: fear of the failure. So that's one. And on the feedback.
Speaker 3: Was so much with feedback that I could talk about,
Speaker 3: but I think one of the things that we see
Speaker 3: a lot where our response gets in the way of
Speaker 3: learning from feedback is when someone gives you feedback. So
Speaker 3: if you gave me feedback, now, maybe I wasn't expecting it.
Speaker 3: What a lot of people do is rush to respond
Speaker 3: because they want to show you that they're going to
Speaker 3: do something that they're slightly panicking. They're just rushing to
Speaker 3: respond to feedback. And what we want people to do
Speaker 3: is to pause for thought, to create space between what
Speaker 3: someone has shared with you and how you are intentionally
Speaker 3: going to respond to it, because often the response of
Speaker 3: the default and then the learning doesn't happen. The learning
Speaker 3: happens in the pause. So pause the thoughts. I'm hearing
Speaker 3: what you're saying The first thing is we call it think,
Speaker 3: feel doom. So the first thing is like, where do
Speaker 3: I think this person is coming from? Are they trying
Speaker 3: to help me? Have they got my best interest at heart?
Speaker 3: Are they having a bad day? Like? Are they just
Speaker 3: a super critical person? Like? Where is this person coming from?
Speaker 3: That's the think. The second is the feel that how
Speaker 3: do I feel about this? Feedback probably awares a bit
Speaker 3: of psychology around name it to tame it. So often
Speaker 3: that default response is emotional, whereas if you can just process,
Speaker 3: like how am I feeling, Oh, I'm surprised that Laura
Speaker 3: said that about me, or I'm feeling embarrassed that we
Speaker 3: didn't show up in the way I want to do
Speaker 3: in that meeting. That if you can name the emotion,
Speaker 3: you can take back a bit of control, and that
Speaker 3: means the do becomes intentional, like what do you actually
Speaker 3: want to do? Maybe what I want to do is say,
Speaker 3: appreciate you sharing that with me, Laura, I'd like to
Speaker 3: go away and reflect on this and come back to you.
Speaker 3: Or maybe what we want to do is say, oh,
Speaker 3: I wasn't aware of that. I might want to ask
Speaker 3: you a question, but that becomes an intentional response rather
Speaker 3: than default, and so it's just mistake moments and think
Speaker 3: feel do are both ways that we can just learn
Speaker 3: a little bit more from situations that can feel quite hard.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So let's talk about I mean giving other people feedback.
Speaker 2: I loved one of the framings you had in is
Speaker 2: using the language of brilliant because that if you're giving
Speaker 2: like positive feedback somebody instead of just a good job,
Speaker 2: which is hard to do anything with, talk about what
Speaker 2: this brilliant because.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like So I think lots of people
Speaker 3: confuse praise as feedback. And I'm not saying praise is bad.
Speaker 3: Like we all we all need a stroke every now
Speaker 3: and again when particularly when it's hard. It's nice for
Speaker 3: someone to say, oh, great job, love that podcast. You
Speaker 3: know that was great, that we need that. But in
Speaker 3: terms of learning, like feedback that fuels learning, praise doesn't
Speaker 3: really do it. It creates an emotion, but it doesn't
Speaker 3: necessarily lead to learning. So if you can start with praise,
Speaker 3: so I can say, oh, I love that podcast episode, Laura,
Speaker 3: I can start with that, but for learning to happen,
Speaker 3: I need to give you a bit more detail. And
Speaker 3: so brilliant because it's like this connecting statement that I
Speaker 3: think if you use it, it can almost become habitual.
Speaker 3: So I might say, oh, I love that podcast day, Laura.
Speaker 3: It was brilliant because I thought you really asked the
Speaker 3: questions that I was thinking about and that I didn't
Speaker 3: think anyone else would ask. And so you're like, oh,
Speaker 3: so it's the quality of my questioning. That's that's the
Speaker 3: thing that's really connected. And it's just a forcing function
Speaker 3: for adding a little bit more detail and data, and
Speaker 3: that is the thing that people can learn the most from.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about leading your own learning. You had
Speaker 2: a lot of sort of cute names of practices on
Speaker 2: these things, and that makes it a little more memorable.
Speaker 2: I will give you the feedback of that. It's brilliant
Speaker 2: because it makes it more memorable. So for instance, like
Speaker 2: beginner bingo, Yeah, what is beginner bingo?
Speaker 3: Okay? So so yeah, in leader o Learning, we have
Speaker 3: these seven different ways that you can lead your own learning.
Speaker 3: And the essence really is like take control, do not
Speaker 3: wait for learning to happen, create it for yourself. That's
Speaker 3: what this part of book's all about. And so beginning
Speaker 3: is one of the ways that we can create more
Speaker 3: learning for us, but it can often feel hard for
Speaker 3: people to do because it can again it's like that
Speaker 3: hard moments, so they can quite vulnerable to be a beginner.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're an expert in one area suddenly
Speaker 3: to do something you've not done before and other people
Speaker 3: see that you don't know what you're doing, it's quite
Speaker 3: it's quite exposing. It can also be quite overwhelming because
Speaker 3: going from knowing nothing to becoming knowledgeable that can be
Speaker 3: a wide gap. Like, for example, I've started gardening this year.
Speaker 3: It is a very wide gap that I'm currently on
Speaker 3: from knowing nothing about gardening to maybe growing something this year.
Speaker 3: And so beginner bingo is about breaking it down. So
Speaker 3: you want to take the goal, which is let's say
Speaker 3: gardening because it's easy to get our heads around, or
Speaker 3: you could take a AI because it's probably more relatable. But
Speaker 3: I want to be proficient at using AI in my
Speaker 3: work by the end of the year. That is a
Speaker 3: big goal for learning. So we want to break it down.
Speaker 3: And so I actually use AI quite often to do
Speaker 3: beginner bingo for me. So I'll say, come up with
Speaker 3: twelve small firsts for how I can use AI more
Speaker 3: at work. I might give it a bit more context,
Speaker 3: Like I run a company, we do career development, I
Speaker 3: might give it a little bit more insighting to me,
Speaker 3: and so then I will end up with these twelve
Speaker 3: small firsts and beginn a bingo is basically saying every
Speaker 3: week or once a day, if you're if you're that committed,
Speaker 3: you're just going to tick one off. You're just going
Speaker 3: to try and create bingo. And the idea of like
Speaker 3: ticking it off, breaking it down, creating some momentum. I
Speaker 3: always think like doing creates dopamine, and beginner bingo is
Speaker 3: like every time you tick one off, you're kind of
Speaker 3: creating that that buzz in your brain that makes you
Speaker 3: want to do more. And if you do twelve small
Speaker 3: firsts on your beginner Bingo chart, you've actually logged quite
Speaker 3: a lot of learning and it's a lot less so
Speaker 3: overwhelming than just saying I want to get good at
Speaker 3: you know, whatever, whatever the thing is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, making it a game can always make anything feel
Speaker 2: more like you're making progress. Well, we're going to take
Speaker 2: one more quick ad break and then I'll be back
Speaker 2: with more from Helen Tupper. Well, I am back talking
Speaker 2: with Helen Tupper, who is the co author of the
Speaker 2: book Learn like a lobster, accelerate your growth, achieve more
Speaker 2: at work in advance your career. So Helen, I always
Speaker 2: like to ask my guests a bit about their own
Speaker 2: personal productivity practices. Do you have any sort of morning
Speaker 2: routine that you think helps make your days better?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm an early riser, much to my business partner's
Speaker 3: mockery so late she's a late night version, and I'm
Speaker 3: an early riser. But it basically just makes me have
Speaker 3: very long days with lots of messages along them. But
Speaker 3: I typically get up about half past five and I
Speaker 3: do that. I think it's when I'm at my best. Also,
Speaker 3: it's when no one else in my family is around.
Speaker 3: I feel like I get this one hour window where
Speaker 3: I can think and sometimes I'll journal, and it's quite sweet.
Speaker 3: My nine year old daughter has started journaling, so it's
Speaker 3: quite sweet. We'll kind of do that together. I feel
Speaker 3: like she's motivated by that now, so sometimes I journal.
Speaker 3: I will try to read in the morning. I find
Speaker 3: that it's very hard for me to fit reading in
Speaker 3: later in the day because it always seems to be
Speaker 3: competing with my work, Whereas in the morning, before work
Speaker 3: gets started, I, yeah, I can do that. And it's so.
Speaker 3: I'm in the UK and the mornings are getting lighter
Speaker 3: at the moment. So I sat on my sofa this
Speaker 3: morning and I was reading a lovely book on my sofa,
Speaker 3: like watching the light come up, and it just sets
Speaker 3: me up. I feel like there is something in how
Speaker 3: I feel. It's a bit of an achievement because I
Speaker 3: know that was a choice. It was a choice to
Speaker 3: start my day like that. So I feel a sense
Speaker 3: of achievement. And I also feel like work hasn't dominated everything,
Speaker 3: like work is quite dominating. I love what I do,
Speaker 3: but I feel like at that moment, I made a
Speaker 3: choice to do something different and I'm sort of better
Speaker 3: because of it. So the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this sounds like a lovely little morning routine.
Speaker 2: I'm curious with your business partner and co author, given
Speaker 2: that you guys do have such different schedules. What is
Speaker 2: the process of co authoring something or working together like
Speaker 2: when you keep different.
Speaker 3: How Oh my gosh, Well, we are three books in
Speaker 3: and this process worked the best. So I think the
Speaker 3: first time our business wasn't as big. The first time
Speaker 3: we've writ in a book is in twenty eighty and
Speaker 3: so Honestly, we had more time, and so I don't
Speaker 3: think we we really experienced that much of an issue
Speaker 3: with it. We sort of luxuriated in the writing process.
Speaker 3: And then our second book came out during the pandemic,
Speaker 3: and that that was hard because it was all virtual,
Speaker 3: so it had its kind of you know, it had
Speaker 3: to be very scheduled as all virtual. This this book
Speaker 3: was hard because our business has got a lot busier,
Speaker 3: and so it was competing writing the book was competing
Speaker 3: with a time and there was definitely a point attention
Speaker 3: where I'm a I'm quite a speedy worker. I suppose
Speaker 3: like I have a task, I want to get it done.
Speaker 3: I'll write ten thousand words and I'm like, onto the next.
Speaker 3: Whereas my business partner is highly thoughtful, highly reflective. She
Speaker 3: would take my ten thousand words and say only one
Speaker 3: thousand is good enough. And so there were definitely these
Speaker 3: moments of I'm.
Speaker 2: Very she wasn't telling you it was brilliant, because she
Speaker 2: was like, those thousands are great, these nine thousand need
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: But as I'm a very efficient person, and so then
Speaker 3: you get into this, oh, this is time waiting, and
Speaker 3: she sees it as additive to the book, so it
Speaker 3: was definitely put attention. So we actually got to a
Speaker 3: point when we were writing where we decided to sort
Speaker 3: of like just draw back a moment and think, where
Speaker 3: do we both add the most value to this and
Speaker 3: where is our energy? And basically we decided to reshape
Speaker 3: how we were doing the book. So Sarah would do
Speaker 3: the first draft, so we'd work out the key messages together,
Speaker 3: the structure. Then she would do the first draft and
Speaker 3: she would for a week. For a week, she would
Speaker 3: write that draft because she enjoyed that process. She's very
Speaker 3: good at going deep. I ran the business, and then
Speaker 3: we both critiqued each other's work. So at the end
Speaker 3: of the week, I would take all of her work.
Speaker 3: I'm a fast reviewer, I'm a quick thinker, I'm a
Speaker 3: quick builder, so I could add value there. I had
Speaker 3: much more energy. She could quickly kind of look at
Speaker 3: what I've been doing in the business, give a bit
Speaker 3: of steers, share some ideas for things. And for about
Speaker 3: six weeks we completely changed our roles in order to
Speaker 3: do our best work. Because our bigger picture was like
Speaker 3: what's best for the business, and that is that we
Speaker 3: can write a good book and we can run a
Speaker 3: good business. And so we've got good at We got
Speaker 3: good at doing that with each other.
Speaker 1: Now figure out what your best at and run with that.
Speaker 2: So Helen, I always ask my guests, what is something
Speaker 2: you have done recently to take a date from great
Speaker 2: to awsome?
Speaker 3: It's very random, but it is taking many of my
Speaker 3: days from great to awesome. I've got chickens of court.
Speaker 2: Chickens, chickens, honest labsters, chickens.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I'm probably not gonna put the tree together.
Speaker 3: I've got chickens. I live in a forest and I
Speaker 3: decided to get chickens and I just went I just
Speaker 3: went outside just before this to get some fresh eggs.
Speaker 3: I've been in my office all day and the chickens
Speaker 3: flew to me, and you know, you know when you
Speaker 3: have you have a meeting and like, oh, I'm not
Speaker 3: sure about that meeting, and then you go outside and
Speaker 3: some chickens fly to you, Like this is great, I
Speaker 3: can go back. I take that energy into whatever else
Speaker 3: I'm doing that day. So yeah, seeing them in the
Speaker 3: morning part of the morning routine, Like I go and
Speaker 3: feed them. They're very happy to see me, and you know,
Speaker 3: of course they are just feed them.
Speaker 2: So they think you're brilliant because you're bringing them to feed.
Speaker 3: I mean it's a very it's a very fickle source
Speaker 3: of affection, but it is quite nice in a day
Speaker 3: to just start and end your day with some flying chickens.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love it. Well, well, hopefully the work that
Speaker 2: it takes is worth it for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Helen, where can people find you?
Speaker 3: Then you can find me on LinkedIn. Just helen'suppa on LinkedIn,
Speaker 3: regular share career tips and support there, and also the
Speaker 3: podcast is Quickly Careers Podcast excellent.
Speaker 2: Well, Helen, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
Speaker 2: you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback about
Speaker 2: this or any other episode, you can tell me it's
Speaker 2: brilliant because but you can also just give me feedback
Speaker 2: in any other form you would like. You can always
Speaker 2: reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In
Speaker 2: the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
Speaker 2: to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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