Positive Psychology for entrepreneurs

Keywords

Resilience – Entrepreneurship – Positive Psychology

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Aaron Marcum, an entrepreneur with a background in the health care and home care space talks about the intersection of positive psychology and how it can help entrepreneurs navigate uncertainties and stress. He also talks about the importance of finding balance between professional and personal life, the challenges and perceptions of being an entrepreneur, the motivations and challenges of entrepreneurs and the influence of unconscious habits and character strengths on performance.

Main topics

• Using the science of positive psychology to help entrepreneurs achieve the 'good life'

• The commonalities and differences in the entrepreneurial journey

• How obsessive passion can lead to personal struggles and relationship issues

• The motivations and challenges of entrepreneurs

• Why many entrepreneurs are driven by fear, rather than a desire to succeed.

• The three levels of faith in a business setting - faith in oneself, faith in others, and faith in a higher power

• The influence of unconscious habits and character strengths on performance.

• The concept of 'entrepreneurial habits' or 'unconscious choices'

• Intentionally making unconscious habits like love, a part of our daily routine.

• Why ultimate performance is a result of unconscious choices

• Having a deep purpose and being clear on it

 Action items

 Find out more about Aaron at LinkedIn or EntreThrive. His book is EntreThrive: The Entrepreneur's Eight Laws to Accelerate Financial Freedom While Creating The Good Life

  You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.   

Passion into purpose

Keywords

Resilience – Passion – Purpose – Female Entrepreneurs – Leadership – Values - Renewal

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Julie Perkins. After a 20-year career with Specsavers which included opening up the business in the Netherlands and Northern Europe, Julie decided to use the experience and learning she’d gained to support female entrepreneurs as grow their businesses in a more seamless way.

Julie has witnessed the ins and outs of a business founded in a spare room and launched onto the world stage, to surviving cancer, to writing books (The Wyse Way) and hosting her own podcast, She is now sought after for her advice and guidance for decluttering the minds of female entrepreneurs, and translating experience and researched theories into a language that helps her clients to see the path to growth, whilst ensuring it remains an exciting adventure.

Main topics

• Why we need to step back and stop ‘doing more and more’

• Why we need to ask ourselves the right questions

• Creating space between yourself and the purpose of the organisation

• The importance of constantly renewing yourself

• Fostering purpose led growth

 Timestamps

1.     Introductions. 00.00 – 04.51
2.    The greatest learning. 04.51 – 08.31
3.    Growth and success. 08.34 – 11.21
4.    Questions that give perspective. 11.21 – 17.33
5.    Learning through failure. 17.33 – 20.49
6.    Passion into purpose. 20.49 – 26.55
7.    Contact details and action points. 28.02 – 30.33

 Action items

Find out more about Julie at http://www.wyseminds.com

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

The five rules of failure

Andrew Thorp King is an executive fintech banker, spy novelist, speaker, punk rocker, podcaster, ex-bodybuilder, cigar lover, and serial entrepreneur. He founded two independent record labels, Thorp Records and Sailor’s Grave Records, and has invested in many spaces, including online lending, fitness, lead generation, and independent music.

He is also a serial failure. Many people see failure as a single cataclysmic event but the definition of failure is a lack of success. It doesn't meet you’re finished forever it just means that whatever you've done hasn't been successful. There is a lot of drama about failure but it's really the best chance we have in our lives to learn.

Andrew thinks that failure sucks but that after that it rules. It’s something we want to void but if its unavoidable and part of the parcel of doing something that is difficult you need to predmeditively think about how you handle, leverage and optimise failure when it occurs. In his book Andrew outlines his five failure rules.

1. When failure happens it can purify and in that empty space its burns off something that needed to die, an old way of thinking, being or doing. The phoenix can emerge. Handled correctly you can become an objective observer of the failure and then take the experiences and gain from it – you’re not just resilient but more than resilient.

2. Nothing is safe. The impediment to living a bold courageous life in line with our true calling is clinging to safety. This doesn't mean taking unnecessary risks but placing safety first means it is probably something that will inhibit you from doing what you should be doing.

3. Money is spiritual. Used properly money is a tool. If you avoid greed and envy it can be a measurement of your usefulness in the world and also how you measure your thankfulness to others.

4. Build thing 1 and thing 2 dependency. This is the scaffolding, stable structure or platform that enables you to get where you want to be. You can’t just go head on with your dreams, you need structure to get there.

5. You are not your failure. You need to remove failure from yourself as failure is often something we cannot control.

Failure and success can be defined in many ways. We are all constantly evolving and failure is part of the journey. People often don't even know what success looks like for them because it is different for everyone. There is more than one indicator of success and Andrew defines success as finding a way to join yourself with your calling, by identifying and using your talents to their highest impact not necessarily monetary.

Many people feel a unique calling means you need to be an entrepreneur but that's not necessarily the case. Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur and we need to understand our success to know our limitations. The challenge is the comparative aspect.

You can find out more about Andrew at https://www.andrewthorpking.com/

   You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

Reinventing your brand.

Rocky Buckley is an entrepreneur and a hybrid coach and consultant who primarily works with solopreneurs – experts, thought leaders, authors, speakers, coaches or consultants as well as people who are successful corporate executives or service providers looking to reinvent themselves into that space. Rocky helps them with their business models, personal brand and how they package themselves as a soloprenerurs and experts.

Rocky had another business for over twenty years where he was primarily working with very large publishing companies and their authors in a consulting role by helping to take ideas and intellectual property and packaging it into different products. He worked with the biggest publishing companies, produced over 3,000 projects and built a successful business but wasn't happy or fulfilled. He has always had a desire to help people, particularly those who were stuck, people who had very high potential, who always thought they could have been someone, had big dreams and ambitions but also had the talent to do it. It was a crossroads moment for him and he decided to reinvent himself and his business. He figured out that strategically the people he could help the most were entrepreneurial, aspirational people who had talent, personality, and leadership ability but were trapped in their business model. He wanted to teach them how to unlock that model and change their life and business.

The context Rocky uses for a solopreneur is as part of the social media age where they must be online and must have a personal brand. There is a celebrity element to it now. He was a solopreneur for many years and nobody knew who he was because he worked behind the scenes and did not have a public presence at all. When you put yourself out there today, the way you promote yourself, the way you get your message out and market your business is through online means. You need to figure out how to communicate what you do to the right audience, to message it properly, be able to engage people and show a different side of your personality. We are all living in a social age where having a public persona is no longer a choice. We are all forced into it and the question is how do we maximise ourselves and put that best version of ourselves out there.

The market is very crowded now especially after Covid when a lot of people realised that what they were doing offline could be taken away from them very quickly. A lot of people pivoted and now there are so many more people coming online and there is still a lot of the world not even online yet. If you look at a phone where you can only have so much information on a feed, the structure makes it highly competitive. We can only look at so many things in a day or have so many messages coming to us. The more people there are on the feed it becomes more difficult to stand out.  Rocky’s aim is to help people figure out how to be the best version of themselves so they do stand out. In a period of rapid change that is only getting faster, the business models and strategies that are successful now might be obsolete in six months. Having to change and reinvent yourself is a skill and knowing how to do that and do it well over and over again is really a core skill of the 21st century.

Many of the people Rocky works with already have their own business but they sometimes get stuck. Typically, the people who start businesses have had a job that they become very good at and then decide to go out on their own as their own boss. They have the idea that they want to be their own boss, to work and build something for themselves that will create more free time and a better life. Often though if they are good are what they do and become successful they are swamped with work, busy all the time and stuck in the day-to-day of their business. They can’t work on their business because they’re working in their business.

People get out of this by making structural shifts in their business, and choosing a different market that is more lucrative. Things such as changing the way you deliver your product or service so instead of working one on one or change to a group setting or a digital product that gives you more leverage or going wider to use promotion and marketing to get your message out further than you did before. Most people starting out are dependent on referrals so you’re looking for the business to come to you. Breaking out of that and using the leverage of marketing allows the business to grow.

Differentiating yourself in a packed marketplace is a systematic and strategic process. People understand they need to get out there and create content but then find it doesn’t get a lot of engagement so they get frustrated. The mathematical aspect is that you have to put out a lot more content than you think but there is also the question of what makes a piece of content or persona engaging. It requires an in-depth, inward looking process to figure out what it is about me that makes me different. What is that sense of purpose I have that makes me more animated and bring s out my charisma? What are other people in the market saying or doing? How do they sound and what assumptions are they making about the people they are talking to and how can I cut against that?

You need to become strategic about the strengths you have and the things that other people tell you you’re really good at. What are the things you’re interested in that would make you more colourful, interesting and fascinating to people? It requires a step-by-step strategic process to develop and create that best version of yourself. It’s a creative process and most people never think or do anything about it and that is the critical step for everyone.

Entrepreneurs need resilience and one key element in building this is to tap into your sense of purpose which is what drives you and creates resilience. When you emotionally tap into the thing that drives you and you stay connected to it, it will drive you forward and also animate the way you appear as the natural passion, enthusiasm and desire to help people is what draws other people to you. Staying tapped into purpose from a resilience and personal charisma standpoint is the essential centre of this world. If you drift from purpose its really hard to succeed.

Once you tap into purpose and start to understand it a deeper level it becomes a life, business and personal vision with identity and belief shifts that stream from purpose. If you remove purpose from life you’re looking at a very grey world with no joy or change.

You can find out more about Rocky at rockybuckley.com

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.

Military physician to telehealth entrepreneur

Laura Purdy MD is based in Nashville, originates from southern Kentucky and grew up in Indiana. She did her medical training and first seven years of medical practice in the US Army and when her contract ended she moved into the telemedicine or digital medicine sector. Laura is licensed in 50 states so has patients all across the country as well as four children under the age of nine so she really ‘gets’ things from a working mother’s perspective. She is also an entrepreneur and currently has two businesses in the Nashville area that she owns and runs as well as having been heavily involved in telehealth start-ups as a co-founder, senior advisor and executive.

Laura started her military career in Washington DC where she did her training at Walter Reed Military Hospital before moving to Fort Benning in southern Georgia. She also served at Fort Bragg in north Carolina and Fort Campbell in Kentucky which led her back to her roots. She also spent time in Hawaii, Seattle, Texas and Virginia.

As a physician in the army you can practice at clinics where you deal with children and veterans so it’s similar to working in general practice. Laura did this but also spent time as a unit physician and in a hospital in-patient role dealing almost exclusivity with soldiers or veterans. Here the most common problems were musculoskeletal but there were also heat, blast and war injuries as well as a tremendous amount of mental health and behavioural health disorders.

As well as PTSD and trauma, adjustment disorder, depression and anxiety were very common. Military personnel are constantly being moved around – they are relocated, separated from their friends and family as well as having to live up to high expectations of performance and physical challenges. Work requirements mean early starts, late nights, weekend working and uncertainty about taking time off. Even if you don't experience deployment, war or combat, the military is a very stressful and demanding lifestyle so its not surprising that adjustment disorder, depression and anxiety are prevalent. The family network can also be an asset or a liability as can the quality of the professional support system which can greatly impact the outcomes and trajectory of the people going through a stressful or challenging situation.

In business, mindset and change are often linked together. Some people feel that the military is far more capable of dealing with adjustment because the level of constant change is more natural and frequent.  This can create its own set of problems with constant frequent movement either creating higher adjustment disorder or helping your ability to deal with change.

Laura’s last job in the Army was as Chief Medical Officer of the Warrior Transition Battalion where she was dealing with soldiers who were no longer physically or mentally fit to serve. Over 50% of that population had some behavioural health condition. This may have been the reason for their discharge or it may be comorbid with something else. Whilst there are a lot of people out there who are exceeding, excelling and doing well with that operational tempo, Laura also spent a lot of time working with people who had trouble adjusting – they weren’t a good fit for the lifestyle.

After her seven-year residency Laura knew would not be staying in the military until the end of her contract. She was stationed apart from her husband for the first three years of their marriage and during that period she had a baby and was effectively a single parent for nine months. There had been an option for them to be together so at that point she decided the best thing for her was to leave as soon as her contract would allow. It took eight years for her contract to end and it took a few years to arrive at the point where she wasn't bitter, angry or passive aggressive. She had to get to the point where could make some mature decisions, that she was going to make the best of it and going to choose to get as much out of it as she could.

A lot of people who leave an occupation like the military or after achieving something like an Olympic medal often find it difficult to decide where to go next or what to do with their life. Laura started by deciding what she didn’t want to and then doing a backwards plan. This was how she arrived at telehealth, entrepreneurship and digital health – all were things she felt would be components of a lifestyle and career she could create that would keep her out of the things she didn’t want to do.

Laura feels she is really a businesswoman disguised as a doctor and as a soldier. Her father was a businessman and did his MBA when Laura was in high school. She was really interested in what he was doing as well as in his business so she spent a lot of time discussing it with him. When she graduated in 2008 she was uncertain of what she was going to do but her father told her she should go into healthcare. She had seen the sacrifices he had made to keep his business going so she followed his advice. She then spent considerable amounts of her time getting out of providing healthcare and into the administration and business of healthcare because that was what she really enjoyed.

In the army you have complex problems to solve with fixed or few resources and a short timeframe in which to do it and that's what Laura feels entrepreneurship is.  Innovation, creativity, rolling up your sleeves, self sacrifice and dedication are all values of entrepreneurship so Laura feels her army and entrepreneur careers are directly related.

Laura feels telehealth and digital health are the progression and future of healthcare. She sees healthcare as following the way the banking industry has evolved – we do almost everything remotely, rarely go to the bank and when we do its’ an inconvenience. If healthcare follows that trend, as technology is developed and adoption increases it will get to the point where the first thing we think about in getting care is how do we do it digitally and the last thing we think about, unless its an emergency and needs in-person care is actually going to see someone. Laura feels this will disempower institutions and health insurers and give access to care in new ways and bring cost reductions, increased efficiency and, in some ways, better care. With the progress, changes and innovation there will be a complete transformation in the entire way we do health care.

Every day Laura comes across circumstances where she finds herself reflecting back to people she knew, positions she had, decisions she needed to make, life lessons and values of the military and she feels her military experience has had a tremendous positive impact on everything she does.

You can find out more at https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-purdy-md/

 You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.

Making it happen

Sam Syed is co-founder, CFO and COO at Capsll, an app that enables users to gather their once-scattered memories into digital time capsules. Sam was born in London and is one of six brothers from a working class family. He has a Portuguese and Pakistani heritage and became aware of racism at a young age. but feels this helped him build his resilience. He looked on himself as different but in a good way. He was the only coloured person in his group so any racial slurs toughened him up and made him a better person. His working class background also meant he grew up wanting things but didn't always get them. His friends all got weekly pocket money but he didn't and he quickly realised that he would have to break the mould so he could obtain things for himself.

Sam says he had a fantastic childhood and upbringing but is also thankful that it wasn't ‘silver spooned’ so that what he accomplished was from his own personal success. He thinks his biggest success is that he never settles and that he’s always looked for the ‘what if’. He started his career as an equity broker in London advising clients on Commodities, Equities and FX, eventually rising to the role of Derivatives Trader.

In 2012 he was offered a wealth management position in Dubai helping clients achieve their financial goals through all areas of wealth management. Originally he wanted to think about it but he now thinks it was the best decision he ever made. After building a successful career in Dubai he was then asked if he had ever thought about moving his career to Manhattan. He hadn’t but he was very curious and that was what took him to New York. The first year was very difficult. The salary he had been promised didn’t materialise and he was unable to move any of his clients from Dubai so he had to start from scratch but he managed to build a new ‘empire’ in New York and won some national awards. It was at this point that his long time friend Clint called him with an idea he wanted to run past him.

Sam’s passion for history and philosophy added to the lessons he had learnt as a boy and from the time he spent in Dubai and New York meant he was up for the challenge and he moved from managing other peoples wealth to having to create a new business. He feels that building from scratch is much harder. The challenges he faced during the start- up of Capsll App were completely different to those in the corporate world.  Having raised all their funding, he realised the things that he had left behind – the support from a mentor or boss, a calendar filled with what you should be doing and when which provides a routine and structure for each day.  

Sam feels you need external help and advice as well as internal support and help. There is a fear in the corporate world now that you can’t disagree with each other. But if you cant have disagreements then innovation and creativity disappear.  If you have different views or highly passionate and enthusiastic people conflict is inevitable. Companies need heated debate but also a way of not making things personal so you can see the point of the conversation in the first place.

Sam is now excited to be making a difference to people’s lives by utilising the Capsll App and helping them preserve memories of their legacy in a different way.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

For more information, please visit https://www.capsll.app/

What we want, not what we need. Technology and self-awareness.

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled – What we want, not what we need. Technology and self-awareness.

In this episode, Dr. Russell Thackeray talks to Daniel Jenkins whom he met when he guested on his podcast The Freelance Entrepreneur. Daniel is also a consultant solicitor, working for two London law firms and specialising in civil and construction litigation, something that can be both contentious and stressful!

Daniel set up his podcast to help younger people with the practical and mental health elements found in starting up a business. He feels many younger people suffer from stress and anxiety when they start their own business and his podcast aims to provide them with tools he would have found useful when he was starting up his own business.

Every generation faces it’s own set of challenges. What Daniel feels is facing the younger generation now, is the advancement of technology and the pressures that come with it. Using the legal profession as an example, clients used to contact solicitors by telephone and letter so work could be done reasonably slowly because there were days to respond. Now, most people can access their work emails on their phone so expect a response in minutes and hours rather than days. This brings the expectation that responses have to be provided quickly and at any time because potential clients will go somewhere else if their requests are not answered straight away.

It is possible that generational attitudes to technology may not be as straightforward as people tend to think. Because they grew up without it, many older people now see the introduction of technology as an enabling toolkit whilst to some younger people it is enslaving with increased expectations. Daniel grew up in a world where work contact has always been by email and mobile so its difficult for him to image a world where you can’t be contacted immediately.  Because he didn't know the world beforehand, technology doesn’t seem liberational or transformational as it might to someone older.

Some professions have embraced technology whilst others have been slower. Daniel feels the legal profession usually lags a little behind and is not moving as quickly as it could. Technology is available but isn’t utilised fully.  If systems that improve time efficiency and keep costs down for clients aren’t updated, firms will quickly get left behind.

Introducing new technology can also mean that roles become soulless and lacking in meaning and purpose. Pigeon holing people so they deal with the same thing over and over again can be the most efficient way to run a business but its not good for the people doing the work. They become a cog in a machine and miss the challenge of doing something different, something that's not just a tick box exercise. When a job becomes a simple transaction process, it loses any sense of purpose, which in turn affects mental wellbeing.

Millenials in particular have had a pretty tough time. Their parents brought them up to expect that they will have a job with meaning and purpose but the gig economy, highly computerised, low value, low brainpower jobs means their expectations for a better life have not been met. They also have to deal with the ideal portrayed by social media and the idea that ‘if they can have it I can and if I don't get it I’m doing something wrong’. As a society we’re not keeping up with technological advances. We don't understand the impact on people of being exposed to social media 24/7 – the pressure to fit in, to be instantly contactable and constantly ‘on’ - so its no wonder people exhibit anxiety.

Younger people need to be given the tools to deal with social media at an early age so that they have a choice and know that access should be limited to ‘as much as you want but not what you need’.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Daniel here. Our previous podcast episodes and upcoming guest list are also available. Our full blog archive is also available.

You can get in touch with Daniel at The Freelance Entrepreneur.co.uk or through LinkedIn