Category Archives: Jobs and Business

Unusually Normal

Posted on by Simpletom
Reply

I sat in Clapham Junction the other day in Café Nero at 6pm, at the exit to the station and managed to resist the urge to write, read, call, fiddle and instead just watch.

In the half-hour I was there, thousands and thousands of people went past – streaming back to their home lives after a day ‘at work’. It was as if the Rolling Stones were doing a free concert outside, or Scarlett Johanssen was doing an impromptu burlesque show.

Sadly, it was neither but instead just a normal day.

It struck me how singularly unusual our behaviour is and yet how quickly we become used to it. I had the urge, fortunately unrequited, to do a little dance for them, or strip naked and do some cartwheels, if only to shake this tide of humanity disgorging from the working world. (Perhaps that would have been a good incentive to head back to work).

So many looked so similar – their haircuts, their outfits, their facial expressions. Given Clapham’s demographic, we’re talking educated, intelligent and creative people.

How is it that it has become normal to work from 9-6, or thereabouts? Who invented the tie and what functional purpose does it serve other than being a flap of material that indicates you are smarter than the next person without one? When did heels become attractive? Most importantly, why would you spend all day in a job you don’t enjoy in order to earn enough money to join a sea of other people back to an expensive neighbourhood?

I’m pretty sure if there was a straw-poll, 80% of those hustling and hurtling past would admit that they weren’t doing what they dreamed they’d be doing.

So why don’t more people feed their ties into their shredders, move somewhere a little cheaper and become musicians, poets, potters, painters, writers, farmers, lovers, dancers and harness and express their individual selves?

I have no idea and these thoughts were not new. And so, I collected my disguise, in the form of a suit jacket and my own sensible haircut, and filed out to become instantly lost amongst them.

Just please remember – follow your internal path and judgement, rather than simply collate that of those around you or you too will lose yourself.

Not-working – The Simple Guide To Meeting People

Posted on by Simpletom
Reply

As an entrepreneur, I’m continually bombarded by the message that we have to network to get ahead. Make friends and influence people, they say. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. The faster you can spin yourself round a networking event, the better. You should sling out business cards with the attitude of a smoke-machine operator at a Megadeath concert.

I’m not so sure.

I used to be a networker. I was called one of the top fifty networked people in the UK, for all the good that it did me.

Yet I didn’t feel as though my network was particularly rich, or that I could actually ask many of my contacts for real help, unless they got something back in return. More of a ‘net of work’, given the need to stay in touch, rather than a valuable group of people.

I’ve always wondered when these highly networked people actually did something. Many claimed to be ‘entrepreneurs’, but as far as I could tell, none ever did anything other than becoming experts at knowing who was doing what and which events were most likely to serve palatable booze.

Here’s my improved guide – as usual based on the latest facts and scientific methodology… otherwise known as ‘Simpletom’s vague intuition’:

  • If in doubt, don’t go to the event.
  • Better to meet one person properly than twenty improperly.
  • If you have to pay to attend, triple the cost of the event (which might roughly be the value of your time used up), then determine whether it is still worth going.
  • Don’t just try to get things from the other person, like a card or a contract. Be human.
  • Speak the truth, rather than what people want to hear.
  • If you feel uncomfortable, don’t ignore the discomfort, and barrel in and meet people anyway, as most networkers would have you do – realize the discomfort is because something isn’t right.
  • Meet people through personal or one-to-one connections, rather than trying to find useful people in the lucky-dip of conferences.

I love meeting those business people, often the most successful, who focus on getting things done, rather than meeting as many people as possible in the hope that it might help them get something done in the future.

My sense is that the more you enjoy what you’re doing, the more you simplify your work and your life to focus on what is more important, and the more you reduce the clutter, both physical and in terms of your ‘activities’ – then the richer the connections you make. Better to have ten people you know well and who can vouch for you, than hundreds who know of you and have seen you on the circuit.

From a business perspective, there definitely is value in networking. I’ve managed to win a few wonderful contracts by pressing the flesh. But what about the time wasted? Is it worth it?

I’ve been to many international development conferences, normally on climate change, in some hugely inaccessible part of the world like New Zealand, only to be met by a group of the same practitioners that I saw in Washington DC a month earlier.

Do we  need to see one another on the other side of the world, and thousands of carbon ‘miscredits’ later, to go drinking together merely to remind one another that we’re working on climate change? If we spent more time, at home, reading, ringing people and actually doing the work we’d set out to do, would we achieve more than zooming around expensive conference halls and eating coelacanth sashimi when at a marine conservation conference?

People’s networks have become so wide, so international and are spread across so many platforms that almost all their contacts are weak, or useless. It’s often neither what you know, nor who you know, but how well you know.

When You’re Tired Of London You’re On To Something

Posted on by Simpletom
8

I’ve only been back in London for a few days and already the grip of ambition and envy has begun to clamp around me in an uncomfortable squeeze. Gentlemen, all of us know where this pressure is physically manifested.

Every Porsche that drives past, or Primrose Hill house that beams across the park reminds the onlooker that someone’s doing well for themselves. A lunch meeting in the city had me scurrying back home to escape the feeling that everyone else in the city is suited and propelling themselves forward, leaving me in their wake. Advertisements and conspicuous consumption pervade, leaving even the most hardy Simpletom with a see-saw of perceived wants. Even being fully aware of these pulls and pushes, they’re exhausting to fight.

“Oh look, there’s one of those new [insert product with shiny poster here] – wouldn’t it be nice if…?”

Only to be tempered by the Simpletom jumping back into action:

“On reflection it wouldn’t be sensible to buy a new laptop given that I have a perfectly functioning old one in my rucksack, plus I could survive in Africa for 4 months in luxury for the same money”.

It’s pretty tiring being in London. There’s so much to do, so many people to see, so much to buy, so many people, so much to miss.

Which leads me to wonder, is it better to be in London and conquer these? Is the Simpletom greater who can live amongst the noise and find peace, or is this just another bit of ambition disguised as a good idea. To become the best Simpletom ever and dominate the world of Simplefolk [insert evil cackle].

Another thing wot I’ve noticed, being all wide-eyed an all, is how amazingly easy and good everything is (as long as we’re not eyeing up someone else’s loot).

You can drink from the taps, buildings don’t collapse, drinks are always cold, shops are fully (perhaps over) stocked, petrol stations have petrol, cars work, there aren’t cows and goats running across the road, the traffic’s not that bad, you can see a doctor free, and anything you could think of is at the end of our iPad-wielding fingers.

Yet people whine and whinge about the health service, inflation, politics, traffic, others ALL THE TIME. It feels, to someone who’s still just got the perspective of a far-flung place where all of this doesn’t happen so cleanly, that we are, in fact, just a group of unappreciative bastards, looking for things to moan about.

At least our politicians aren’t crooks taking bribes and running illicit businesses atop their already huge salaries.

At least we’re not going to die of an easily curable disease (tuberculosis) leaving five family members because we can’t afford the hospital fees, which sadly happened to someone in my neighbouring village two weeks ago (yes, I did try to help but sadly it was too little too late).

At least we can go into debt if we need to.

At least the sight of a police officer doesn’t induce fear.

Yet we whine and whine. It’s almost as if the better life becomes, the more things we have to find to point out that it’s rubbish. With so many problems at their bare feet, it seems that many Africans decide to enjoy the moment, yet we Londoners are in a permanent state of anxiety that everything is going to shit, even though it’s really rather spanking.

Is it wise to live in London and fight the good fight, or better to opt for a more provincial life, which might be, god forbid, considered somewhat boring?

I’ll keep you posted. For now, I’m off to goggle at some gadgets I never knew I needed.

Psst – If you liked this post, sling it on… Ta muchly.

Not ‘To Do’ List

Posted on by Simpletom
Reply

I like the concept of a not-to-do list. Not just because it adheres to my flippant, rebellious nature, but also because life is as much about what we choose not to do as we choose to do.  Simplification, after all, is as much about removing things as adding them – peeling the layers to find the true self, rather than adding further complications.

“Our lives are frittered away by detail; simplify, simplify.” — Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862).

By not doing things, it’s possible to find the time for those things that we feel we don’t have enough time for, like family, friends, learning and instrument, exercise, laziness and general sloth.

Here is my current not-to-do list:

1)    Not check my e-mail or go online before 10 am, or after 7 pm (including iPads, iPhones and other pocket protrusions).

This prevents dipping your head straight back into the fire-hose of information and getting caught up in the chaos of ‘insta-replies’ in the morning. The latter cutoff prevents e-mails drifting into your dreams. You know the one – you’re trying to run but the e-mails are closing in on you.

Rather easy in my current house with no power, but this is a longer-lasting not-to.

2)    Answer all correspondence. Sometimes I don’t reply. It’s the only way.

3)    Read newspapers or magazines.

4)    Use Facebook or Twitter or check messages on either. It gives me more time to do the important things, like see friends, read a book, write and so on.

5)    Buy new products, unless necessary.

6)    Listen to marketers. They lie – pure and simple. Even with the might of the advertising standards bodies, they create unnecessary wants and unhappiness. Ignore them. When an advertisement comes on, see it purely as an attempt to get you to do something, rather than because their intentions are straight and true. Read Affluenza by Oliver James for more information on this.

7)    Feel guilty about taking time off or not working. 

8)    Answer the telephone when I’m busy.

9)    Finishing books just because I’ve started them. According to Google, who seem fairly up on information nowadays, there are 129,864,880 books that have been published in the world today. If each takes a day to read (24 hours of non-stop reading), that’s a mere 5.4 m days, or 14,800 years of continuous reading. I’ve also given up maths, just in case my calculations don’t add up. My rule is that if I’m not enjoying a book within the first 10 to 50 pages, I chuck it. No matter whether it’s Shakespeare or Mills & Boon.

10) Biting off more than I can chew. I try to say ‘no’ more often. Yes, I suffer from that irritating individual habit of being eager to please.

11) Worrying about money. If you’ve got it, then, as long as you’re not a ‘shopaholic’, you’re unlikely to go bust imminently. Be frugal and fret not.

12) Thinking about the future or the past too much – something that came to a head for me in my Vipassana course.

13) Being too concerned about what people think about me. We have to realise that we’re not always going to please everyone.

14) Eating on the fly – “please sir, there’s a soup on the fly”

15) Writing lists. Feck.

Here are some successful people not doing things too:

If you liked this post, please share it with your friends, lovers and pets.

Looking To The Future (Then Trying To Ignore It)

Posted on by Simpletom
2

All good things must end. So with a month left on the clock here in Kenya, I am reminded that the ‘next stage’ of life looms.

At the end of 2009 I took a break from the day-in day-out drive of running a business – partly because I was burnt out, and partly because the market had also burnt itself out. Running a recruitment business in the largest recession in living history is just not that simple, or fun.

The year 2010, however, was a revelation. Despite a slow market, I managed to win some first-rate executive searches that kept me financially alive.

However, the true discovery was that when free of the ‘timetable’ of working life, the pressure of managing people, and the expectation that comes with running a business, I could do a much better job for my clients and I started enjoying myself again.

I love running these searches and I am extremely good at it, if I might be so bold. Last year, I helped a large foundation find a key campaigner, who achieved one of the biggest environmental success stories of the last decade. That feels good. That makes all the naysayers fade into the background.

It is not about the fees, or beating the competition to win these searches, but about meeting fascinating people, finding the right person for the right job, and the results of that elusive combination. For me, there is a joy when a candidate I have placed in a role comes back two or three years later and tells me their life changed because of our interaction. In the case of the search above – if only Mother Nature could talk, I think she would’ve sent me a Christmas card.

But recruitment can be a disheartening and cruel business, hence my reticence to leap back in. Other recruiters have dragged the sector into a money-centric realm with a poor reputation. Tell someone on the board of a company that you are a recruiter and they often make their excuses and leave, desperate to avoid the hard sell. People look down their noses at you and lump you into category. ‘Why would you, Tom, want to do that?’. You’re bright, they state – surely you can find better things to do?

Don’t worry. My rebellious nature would have me running off to do something else if it didn’t feel right.

So the question now, about the return, is how to balance my discovered simplicity with my working world? How can I retain the joy of interacting with outstanding people and helping companies find exciting and rewarding people without it dragging me into complexity? Can I retain the lightness that a lack of concern with materialism brings, while working in a cut-throat industry, where the hungriest fight hard and dirty?

I think I can.

But I need to be mindful of all I have learned and how happy I feel.

I must set myself some guidelines – some mnemonics – to prevent materialism, competition and ego dominating my drive. Instead, I want drive that is propelled by flow, simplicity and a desire to do good.

This plays out to a bigger question. How does the desire for simplicity interplay with the competitive capitalist world? How do we find the ideal balance?

1)            One of the key points is remembering that when people are in ‘flow’ and happy, they often work more diligently and efficiently.

Therefore, there must be a trust. Trust that with passion will follow reward, rather than the other way around.

By retaining and focusing on the areas that feel right, things often come right.

2)            In my case, recruitment often involves networking and getting one’s name out there. This means hard work and a degree of pushiness. How to ensure that this remains healthy?

The key, I believe, is to remember the power of people. By helping the right organisation find the right people, I can help make a small difference. Driven by this force – the force of good – I can stomach a few rejections by people who do not have the time to realise that I am a different type of recruiter.

3)            In the pursuit of money, or success, people often abandon their integrity and their authenticity. When a salesperson sells something he would not buy, or an investment banker sells toxic assets, or a lawyer suggests a complicated solution to a simple problem (which in my eyes seems the norm) – each is compromising their values.

Instead, I must remain true to myself. This means choosing the right pieces of business, for the right type of client. It is hard when someone wafts a large cheque in front of you, but in fact, it is often less rewarding in the end when all the other factors are combined.

4)            Take breaks. Work in a way that is right.

One of the reasons that I burned out was that I worked in the way I was expected to. Anyone who has read about starting a business can feel that the only way to succeed is through working like a slave to get things started. Tales of people sleeping beneath their desks and years of struggle are all too common. As such, I found myself working sixty- or seventy-hour weeks believing that it was the only way to succeed.

Yet this just was not effective for me. Perhaps it works for some to have this discipline but I found myself enslaved. That meant I did not enjoy it so my work suffered, as well as my life.

Instead, I will try to work efficiently, rather than ‘putting in the hours’. I also need a change of scene now and again, out of the office. That makes employing people more difficult.

Instead, I will try to work alone, with support from Odesk or Elance to help lighten the burden, rather than rushing to employ people and scale up.

I will also set up alone, rather than with partners, as I mentioned in my previous post. It sounds lonely, but it enables freedom, simplicity and focus – it also prevents someone else compromising your direction.

Although the politicians of the world will lament my poor contribution to their employment figures – I want to build an organisation that is efficient and simple, rather than large and complex.

For me, a company that has a turnover of £250 thousand per year with one employee and the freedom that brings would be preferable to a £25 million business with a hundred people. Especially as the manager at the top might end up with a similar pay packet, if that is his / her motivation.

I may miss the fellowship of ‘company’ (is that why they’re called companies?), but for now I can offset this with the freedom this brings.

5)            Maintaining routines and not getting swept away with work is critical.

My current routine and desire to write could easily be compromised with the cut and thrust of business.

Instead, I promise to continue to wake without an alarm clock, wherever and whenever possible (I am a few years away from having children, at best, so this isn’t just a cunning claim in the knowledge that I have exterior forces that will awaken me). I promise to spend the first thirty minutes reading in bed, before getting up. Not a book on management techniques, but a novel, or a book of personal interest. Then, I will start by writing in the morning, until I have written a few pages, before I start to think about work.

When I do get ‘back to business’ I will make sure that my first action is not checking my emails, but going over my list of things to do and working on the important first, preferably offline.

During the day, I will take several breaks to wander in the garden or even, as I did when I was working last summer, to spend an hour or two going to the swimming ponds on Hampstead Heath in the mid-afternoon.

All this might sound too pleasurable and easy to achieve. Not waking with an alarm clock, I hear you say, ‘I’d bloody well do that if I could’. Well, believe you me – maintaining the kind of calm morning routine I have mentioned is surprisingly difficult when faced with an onslaught of ‘things to do’. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to maintain this kind of routine when you’re barraged by emails.

Within one’s working day, I believe (to paraphrase Antoine de Saint Exupéry) perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but nothing left to take away.

6)            Finally… although there are many more pieces to the puzzle that I am sure will rear themselves, I must remember not to attach too much importance to all that I do.

By reminding ourselves of our insignificance, and impermanence, the desperate desire to achieve, succeed and win fade away. When we remember these things, business fails to retain its lustre and the pleasures of simplicity, wonders of balance and desire to retain one’s life appear, as if they’d been there all along.

Here's me, last night, next to my new house, trying to prevent the days from ending so quickly...

Moguls, Success, Money and the Elephant Man

Posted on by Simpletom
1

For years I wanted to be a business mogul. You know the type – a Thomas Crown mixed with a Richard Branson – overladen with opportunity, events, praise and, of course, generous dollops of money.

I wanted my rich double-cream chocolate gateaux with cherries, and boy, was I going to eat it.

I tried, at a ferocious pace – starting seven businesses in three separate countries over the course of a decade, with some modest success.

But my dreams were grand and unhealthy. The materialism never materialised.

Why? Because my dreams were fundamentally unrealistic as they contained, neatly packaged within, several core contradictions.

For example –

  • I wanted wealth as well as finding meaning in my life.
  • I wanted to be hugely successful, yet I did not want to work punishing hours or to miss holidays with friends.
  • I wanted to be liked by all my employees and business partners, which if you are trying to run a successful business just does not work. In fact, as I learned to my peril, trying to be liked can often result in a completely opposite reaction.
  • I wanted my companies to grow, but I hated the hard sell.

Dreaming is a wonderful thing. However, in my case my dreams are often conflicting and contain specific flaws.

I am too quick to imagine how I might be in a specific situation, or what I would like to be, rather than recognising who I am.

Watching a film like the Motorcycle Diaries (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318462/) has me mentally travelling across South America, although actually I would prefer settling in one place, I do not speak Spanish and have deliberately avoided any attempt to learn to ride a motorbike (primarily for health and safety reasons as this Simpletom has a not-so-simple-but-hard-to-banish love of speed and vehicles).

Into the Wild (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758758/) has me living in isolation in some faraway place in complete happiness, until I realise that I like people, dislike sleeping in uncomfortable places and would make a hopeless forager.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1132620/) has me hacking into people’s bank accounts, becoming the next Julian Assange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange) and writing incredible exposés (and drinking about fifty cups of coffee a day), until I realise that I have not got an investigative nature, the patience to figure out how to programme a DVD machine, nor a photographic memory (or even much of a memory at all).

Even people provide an incredible palette of potential things that we could be… and the media helps to fuel this furnace.

One minute I meet an author who spent seven years on a single novel and I want to dedicate myself wholeheartedly to writing ‘the’ book of the year. The next minute a concert pianist – then an explorer.

None of which, if I am going to exercise an iota of realism, I am capable of unless I give up almost everything else. The complete picture of all the traits, characters, careers and desires I have would make me look look, if these emotions could be seen, like the elephant man crossed with Maasai warrior. i.e. not pretty!

Sitting in a therapist’s chair, which I did for a few years in my early twenties to precociously try to ‘figure it out’, found me regularly marvelling at the chasm between the desired me and the actual me.

To become all the things I wanted would have resulted in a few lifetimes, a couple of fundamental character transplants, zero sleep and a healthy dose of schizophrenia (I wonder if both of us would have been comfortable with each other!).

Then I noticed something rather simple.

If I tried to become more me, I achieved more than if I tried to be more the way I wanted to be. Those dreams did not have to vanish – instead, I became realistic. I tried to understand how dreams connected and interplayed with one another. Most important, I was reminded that no one – (let me repeat that) not one person in the history of the world – has achieved all that I wanted to achieve. Therefore I should just give myself a pat on the back for how far I had come and what I had achieved, rather than what I had not, or had yet to.

The realisation of the impossible was rather liberating. Instead, I tried to be more supportive of the self. My internal dialogue (between my almost schizophrenic self!) shifted from ‘I wish I was a…’ to ‘I am a…’

Realism is just so rewarding. Realism helps you discard all of the faux-hopes and dreams, and separate them from the actual. Realism helps you become presently (or should that be pleasantly) surprised, rather than over-expecting. To paraphrase the Dalai Lama, ‘do what you can with what you have and forget the rest’.

I want to be a realist.

I want to be more real.

Know thyself, and all that… and then you will not be so surprised when you do find yourself up at 5 am, again, having broken your ‘I’ll only have two beers rule’. Instead, revel in the ‘this is me, being me’ moment. All those with serious harmful addictions, please ignore that last piece of advice.

And the benefits of being realistic is that you suddenly become able to provide yourself with sensible targets and thoughtful plans that incorporate you and your character, rather than that of someone else.

I received this extract of an interview from a friend the other day, which pertinently reminded me of this madness:

It seems to me that most of the stuff in my own life and in my friends’ life that’s interesting and true involves double binds or setups where you’re given two alternatives which are mutually exclusive and the sacrifices involved in either seem unacceptable. I mean … [aspirates in rapid staccato "tch-tch-tch-tch..."] I mean, one of the big ones is, the culture places a huge premium on achievement. I mean, I went to like this real hoity-toity college and, as you know, and everybody’s like now a millionaire on Wall Street. Anyway — how both to work hard enough and invest enough of yourself really to achieve something and yet retain the sort of integrity so that you’ve got a self apart from your achievement. I mean, even something as banal as, you know, The modern woman can have it all: she can have a family and a deep fulfilling relationship with her children while being, you know, a CEO of a successful company. I mean, it’s as if the culture is some Zen teacher, you know, whacking us no matter what we do. It’s very interesting. I’m not really quite sure why we set it up that way.

(http://web.archive.org/web/20040606041906/www.andbutso.com/~mark/bookworm96/)

So my simpletom guide for realism is:

  • Use a realistic dose of the past to determine whether a dream is possible, fanciful or even destructive.
  • Go gentle on oneself.
  • Remind yourself there is only so much you can do in one day – do not get swamped by tomorrow’s tasks or dreams.
  • If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans… or yourself if you’re neatly squared off in your atheism.
  • Be proud of yourself, regardless.
  • Do not listen to the self-helpers who persist in telling you that you can be thinner, brighter, better, more efficient, tidier, a better lover, kinder, more zen-like, richer, more successful, happier. If anything, the first step toward achieving all of these things is to banish the desire for them, then they might, if you’re lucky, start to happen of their own accord.

Barbarians – How To Prevent The Undoing Of Greed

Posted on by Simpletom
Reply

Atlas Shrugged

I’ve just finished reading a rip-roaring business book ‘Barbarians at the Gate’. After two business degrees, I tend to avoid these books preferring instead to learn on the job, rather than ‘on the job’ – to scatological upset.

Yet I enjoyed the ride – despite being true, it reads like a good thriller.

What is most amazing is the ridiculous, maniacal, unbelievable greed and ego.

The players, famous 1980 Wall Streeters, just push and push and push, regardless of how they look, the stress they endure and the punishment that their pursuit of riches has on the 140,000 RJR Nabisco employees, or others.

Inevitably, I just can’t see what drives them.

Most of them are already rich. Most of them seem to live the high life. Most of them seem extremely unhappy.

Few of them seem to have honourable intentions. Few of them are willing to move on when things get unfair. None of them chooses simplicity over greed.

You can feel the palpable excitement within the pages. When corporate jets and beach/mountain houses are collected, I’m not immune to the pull.

Until I look more deeply at my values, at what money means and where the sacrifices have to be made versus the benefits.

Then I remember, I’m happy and I’ve managed to live a charmed life.

Why do we get so seduced?

Next time you find yourself being pulled by the invisible strings of envy or greed. Take a moment to remember what you have and what you need. Then you can truly look at these ‘captains of industry’ or ‘big swinging dicks’ (as Tom Wolfe called them) and realize they are really diminutive unhappy slaves and feel sorry for them rather than jealous.

FaceTweet it!

Fulfilling Resolutions – A Year In Review

Posted on by Simpletom
1

One of the highlights of the year - Dolphins next to our boat, Costa Rica

At the beginning of last year, I made a promise to live simply, within my means and to focus on working towards some of my personal goals, rather than my professional. I summed it up in the New Years resolution, ‘to enjoy myself as much as possible and end the year with the same amount of money in the bank as I started it with’. Perhaps a little selfish, but by enjoyment I don’t mean parties and frills – but enjoyment of a deeper, soulful kind.

Things went well. I’ve not necessarily kept my movements simple with travel across the globe. Highlights include:

  • Sailing along the coast of Costa Rica with my best friend and family.
  • Taking a trip driving in my van along the length of Highway 1 in California on my own, bumping into a friend from the UK en route.
  • A two week skiing trip with another friend in the Sierra Nevada with almost perfect snow
  • Working with a huge NGO to help hire some of their most senior conservationists
  • Working as an interim Executive Director of the Maybach Foundation
  • Living in San Francisco for the first half of the year – I still love the city as much as ever
  • Heading to Latitude and Hop Farm festivals and two weddings in the UK
  • Spending the latter part of this year living in Watamu, Kenya and receiving a host of visitors
  • Learning to kitesurf
  • Finishing the first two chapters of my book

In addition to these adventures, I have taken a hard look at my life, my work and made significant changes. Here are 3 of the key changes that have resulted in one of the best years of my life:

1) The first, I’ve not worked a 9-5, nor maintained a steady work schedule. In fact, I’ve hardly set an alarm all year, nor kept specific hours in a specific place. (Which perhaps explains why I’ve no qualms that I’m writing this post propped up in bed on a Sunday at 10pm).

How – I’ve worked remotely, set up calls to forward to my computer and refined communication methods. I’ve automated many areas that were taking up time and removed bits of business that were a time-suck but didn’t guarantee income. I’ve stopped trying to respond to all emails. I’ve deliberately taken on less. Work has become something that is done when needed, rather than because I’m in an office.

The result – I feel like my work-life balance has been really healthy this year. Perhaps more life-oriented, but that’s great. Plus, I’ve earned more this year than I have any other year in my life. Part of this has been due to the overflow from previous years. Part has been due to trusting that things would work and having the confidence to make bold decisions. I’ve felt less encumbered by the day-to-day and focused instead on key areas of revenue resulting in a healthy me and a healthy bank balance.

2) Secondly, I’ve reduced my possessions dramatically.

How – I packed everything I posses in the UK into one filing cabinet, aside from a few pictures and clothes and threw the rest away or have given things to charity. In the US, I have two or three boxes which contain everything as I’ve hardly acquired stuff in my two years there. I’ve bought little new. More importantly, I’ve lived for long enough without possessions that previously would have upset me to loose to know that they are nice to have, but that I’m as happy without them. I know when I return to the UK and the US, I can probably cut my possessions in half again.

The result – I can move between places more freely and have begun to enjoy what I have, rather than what I haven’t. I’ve been able to travel lightly and even after 4 months of living in a small town, needed nothing when I arrived in a large supermarket for the first time. I want for nothing.

3) Thirdly, I’ve simplified my finances.

How – I’ve gone paperless with all of my statements. All of my important mail is now forwarded on to my accountant without my looking at it. I’ve transferred money into one account in the US and two accounts in the UK, a savings and a checking account. I’ve got credit cards that direct-debit from my checking account, one with Amex that gives me points, the other that offers cheap money when abroad from the post office. Rather than spend time and effort managing my portfolio, I’ve transferred the lot into an account that is managed in its entirety by someone else.

The result – I don’t have to check my mail, managing everything from the internet. I’m accumulating points. I haven’t once had to check my accounts, trusting in alerts that will let me know if something goes wrong – perhaps I’ll check over at the end of the year. In a difficult year in terms of the markets, I’ve still managed a modest return on my assets, with zero effort.

In conclusion, the somewhat mild experiment I set out on this year is working. Simplifying has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve taken on – so much so that I want to keep at it.

Thanks for all your support, I’ve been touched by comments both on and off this blog. The comments and my own successes have convinced me that this path is worth continuing with renewed effort. Whether or not people read, writing helps refine ideas and thoughts. It’s enough, even if I’m just talking to myself. If I can help, amuse or give someone else pause for thought, that’s a wonderful bonus.

Onwards. Oh, and a Happy New Year to you. May next year be simpler than the last.

Another highlight - Early morning along Highway 1

___

Here are a couple of this year’s posts:

Till Debt Do Us Partners

Posted on by Simpletom
1

In my time I’ve started a number of businesses of different forms and structures. I’ve had my successes, I’ve had my failures. I was born with a restless soul. I love new projects and moving an idea from the drawing board to reality.

I love people and the skills and insights they bring and have enjoyed working in great, stimulating partnerships. My natural inclination is to go into business with other people and to be generous and optimistic. It feels right to start with a positive spirit.

Yet I’m not sure setting up business with other people is always wise. Hard though this is for an entrepreneur to say – Be Cautious.

Most businesses are started by more than one person. Best friends, colleagues, classmates often launch into ventures together – excited by the combination of talent they bring.

My own experience has taught me to think hard before signing up with other people.

Some of my partnerships have inevitably resulted in one or other of us moving on. Mostly the moves have been happy ones, but some have been less so. When you’ve put so much into a project, it can be hard to split.

The Beatles once said that they would hate to be Elvis, because he was on his own, whereas they had each other. Sadly, despite all the love they brought the Beatles ended up warring.

Partnerships are interesting beasts. Like a marriage, you are full of excitement and joy at the beginning. You never expect to disagree or be apart. Yet things can turn out badly, despite both parties being trying to be honourable. It’s just the way things can go. People are different. Circumstances don’t always go according to plan. You’re not always going to be liked if you’re trying to run an efficient business, even if you have great intentions and impeccable morals. The business itself might not work. The economy might conspire against you.

Sometimes you can make mistakes, the chemistry can be wrong, or you can just be a bit of an idiot for a while.

I take negative splits very personally. Perhaps too personally. I’m trying to learn to be less sensitive – business is business. Life moves on.

Think of the feud between the Facebook founders highlighted in the recent film (The Social Network, tagline; ‘You Don’t Make 500 Million Friends without making a few enemies’. Think of the disputes  at Twitter. Even longer-lasting ‘successful’ partnerships can have their ups and downs – think Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (here’s a great article from the Economist). Sadly, successful partnerships are rather rarer than unsuccessful ones.

Although I would happily entertain partnerships in future if the scenario was right, there are a few things I’ve learnt from my experiences.

1) Simplify, simplify, simplify:

Businesspeople and lawyers often dream up complex share structures, loan agreements, profit shares and options. My advice, keep it as simple as you possibly can:

Before you go to your lawyers, condense your agreement down into the simplest form. Then try to simplify some more. Tell them what you want. Try to reduce the variables down to the very minimum. If these negotiations are tough, they’ll only get tougher later. Be realistic about what you bring and what your partner brings. The simpler you can make it and the more realistic you are, the less likely you are to run into difficulties later on. Often the business will be completely different 5 years on from how you intended it. Make sure you’re prepared for that.

2) Entrepreneurship can be a lonely game, but that’s not always bad:

If you want camaraderie in the early stages, or are afraid to go alone, remember if things go according to plan you can bring in advisors to give you advice and staff to help. Could you hire the skills your partner has? Could they replace you? Don’t give away too much of your business to someone else just because you like them, because you want to be generous or because you’re can’t see anything going wrong. Too many people split companies 50/50 because it feels right only for it to cause bigger problems later. There’s a lot to be said for a company with a clear leader and single direction in the early days.

3) Hope for the best, plan for the worst:

It goes against the human spirit to expect the worst. Yet it’s vital to have a legal safety net for you and your partners. If you make them simpler, it’s going to be simpler to sort. Too often I’ve seen people have to wade through legal and accounting documents to try to resolve issues. My own rule is that if you can’t remember the details of your deal a couple of years later, it was too complicated.

What next?

Even if things go badly, you can work them out. One of my earlier partners and I had a messy break. We are now great friends again.

If I had my time again I would have been tougher, whilst staying fair.

The rules above don’t necessarily work for every partnership. Far from it. Some need complex agreements and can afford them. Whether you introduce the need for finance, or stock options, it may just be a bullet you have to bite. Sometimes an opportunity is too good to ignore, even if the mechanics of getting it right are difficult.

Partners can also help add the special magic that is needed to get a company started. There might be a business genius and an inventor, who need one another.

Finally, start a business or project for the right reasons. If you’re thinking money, prestige or an easy road, stick with the day job. If you believe the world will be better off for your project (this excludes all the companies building bullshit facebook or iphone apps), go for it.

As for me, despite my inclination is to want to start things with others, I’ll probably try to go alone for as long as I can.

“Above all, as I have implied, the man who goes alone can start to-day; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.”

– Thoreau

The Work Life Balancing Act

Posted on by Simpletom
4

"I just want to work to live"

People should not consider so much what they are to do, as what they are

- Meister Eckhart

My natural inclination, for whatever rebellious reasons, is to try to avoid ‘work’.

As a child, lessons bored me. I always did the minimum needed to survive, get good grades and tow the line. Yet I adore projects, ideas, creativity and entrepreneurship. I will happily commit to evenings and weekends towards something I consider ‘fun’, even if many might call the same ‘work’.

This phenomena seems to be increasingly ubiquitous. When does ‘work’ shift from being fun to being arduous, from being useful to superfluous? How can we maintain the fun and manage the arduous whilst (and this is a whilst that many forget) ensuring that we are deeply fulfilled and create meaning.

A latest fad in the blogosphere seems to be to avoid hard work and focus on the fun and travel – from the highly successful Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour Work Week (and now the 4-Hour Body), to Vagabonding, taking time off from your normal life, or personal quests to visit every country.

Ferriss states, in his wildly successful book:

I will take it as given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time (Page 9).

I disagree. Ferriss ‘takes it as given’ and this results in a good book, yet one that encourages people to be highly self-centered and peripatetic and avoid responsibility wherever possible. Ferriss uses the word job loosely – meaning things he doesn’t want to do. In fact, he is a workaholic, but he claims that the things he enjoys don’t count.

Yet my dislike of this is hypocritical. I see that I am guilty of the same, and I don’t like it.

Continue reading →