Identifying the world’s needs - Megan Bingham-Walker

00:00

Obviously, you start with, what do you think the world needs? But then also, the world will tell you what it needs as well. So it's a bidirectional thing as well. Originally, we were looking at starting with goods and transit insurance, and then really focusing on everything and e-commerce business needs. Not all small businesses. But looking at things like employers, product liability insurance. So we had a whole suite of products designed for these e-commerce businesses. And one day we decided, well, not just one day, but it was after a series of different conversations with very experienced people in the insurance industry who really counseled us, just focus on goods and transit insurance with one product. And that will enable you to expand up the value chain and also expand internationally much more easily than to be doing lots of different insurance products.

00:52

And as soon as we made that change, it didn't feel like a huge change at the time because effectively it was what we were doing at the moment, but it just in fact, narrowing down what we were planning to do in the future. But that suddenly helped people to see our vision and how that would all come together and how we'd actually be able to scale our business much more easily.

01:12

How does someone go from being the private secretary to the secretary of state in the department of trade and industry to starting a technology company?

01:24

Good question. Also, how did someone in between those things become a venture capitalist immediately after being a civil servant? So yeah. I've had a quite interesting career, you could say. And actually a lot of people do come to me asking, "How do you make such radical moves during your career?" And I think basically the key thing is there's always a thread. There's always something that links everything that you do from one career to another. Rather than thinking about transferable skills, which obviously everyone has, I think it's important to also think about there is always a link and then that's how you can make those sorts of moves. So as, as you've noticed, I was at one point in my life, a civil service fast streamer, and that gives the opportunity to move around the department of trade, doing all various different things.

02:17

And the last job I had there was this private secretary to the secretary of state. So giving advice on energy policy and it obviously industrial policy. So it was an opportunity. And actually the government's investments in companies at that time. So the government obviously was an investor in Northern nuclear power plants. And there are various other former publicly owned companies. So there was a thread there. And previously I was working on renewable energy policy, which was a real passion of mine earlier. So the move that I made into venture capital after that was that in venture capital, I was working with a clean technology investment funds. So they were investing in renewable energy, clean technologies and technologies, particularly software, and some hardware businesses as well, but they were looking to improve industrial processes with the application of this technology.

03:12

And what we found was that a lot of those businesses have some public policy angle. So they're either in a highly regulated industry or there's some regulation, which is what's helping that business to really grow and to take off. Or there may be a public funding angle. So I guess my role, I was a full part of the investment team, so making investment decisions. But having had that public policy background, it enabled me to look at some of the investments we were making from a different angle to some of my colleagues who came from a more classic financial backgrounds or a more scientific engineering type background. So we had a balance within the team from all of those different areas.

03:54

You said that when you've made radical career choices, they've had a thread.

03:59

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

04:01

What was the thread for you between?

04:04

So the thread was Renewable Energy Policy.

04:07

Right. Okay.

04:08

So although the actual work was obviously very different, but the background before was, I was working on Renewable Energy Policy before I became a sector state's private advisor. And then when I was working in the venture capital firm, we were investing in renewable energy and clean technology companies. So there was a thread of, I guess, the policy environment for clean technologies. That was the thread there.

04:34

There must have been perhaps other threads that you could have followed or pulled on there too.

04:40

Yeah. There were many other threads. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. So everyone always talks when we talk about career changes, talk about transferable skills. So obviously an analysis, report writing, presenting skills and that thing. And that's common for pretty much any job effectively. Again, the thread in terms of the Renewable Energy Policy was the more practical link between those different career choices.

05:14

How did you know when the right time was to follow that thread?

05:18

It's a very personal thing really. I guess the career advice is that every two years you should be thinking, are you moving up or out as you move along your career? I think that, well, certainly when you are in a more junior parts of your career, and then as you maybe you get a bit older and more developed, it's more than a question of achievements. So you may need to be in a role for maybe three or four years so that maybe the first six months or something you're still getting embedded in the team, figuring out what the role is and how you can develop.

05:52

And then there may be a strategy or plan you want to execute and you want to see that through. So I think maybe earlier in your career, maybe in your twenties, it's more of a two year cycle, two to three year cycle typically. And then as you get into maybe your thirties and beyond, you're maybe looking at more, having a meaningful achievement in that part of your career. In some roles that could be three years. Other roles, it could be more five or six years. And then are you having opportunities to progress and develop beyond that?

06:23

You said you were making, or at least the Department of Trade and Industry was making some investments into companies at that point. And naturally that.

06:33

It was more divestments. Because obviously in the nineties and the 2000s, these are more the legacy companies that the government had. So obviously previously the government owned the post office. What were the other things? Yeah, nuclear power. So these were the last remaining, publicly owned companies. I actually haven't really followed it since. I don't know. I think they still have a shareholding in the role mail possibly, but yeah. It's very fewer businesses left like that.

07:00

What was the change like from the public sector to the private sector? Was it as much of a shock as maybe it looks like it might be from the outside?

07:09

I think it definitely was a big change. I think if you were to move from the public sector to a big corporate, like Marks & Spencer's, or one of the big FTSE listed companies, I don't personally think that would be as much of a change as moving from the public sector to a very small venture capital fund, which is the 10 people and get the cutting edge of, I guess, capitalism effectively.

07:41

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

07:42

Yeah, so there was very two very different environments and very different dynamics there. But I think, generally, if you talk more about the public sector to the private sector, it very much depends what part of the private sector you're talking about.

07:56

Is that a conscious decision that you made to go for a smaller company on the edge of capitalism?

08:03

I think generally all venture capital firms, obviously unless there's the really well known ones are typically very small they're partnership led and that's typically the businesses that you would join if that's as the part of the economy that you're interested. And obviously, it's very different if you're working for a venture arm from a large corporate. Typically, if you wanted to move into that industry, that would be the type of environment that you'd be moving into. So yeah, that's what came with that role. I guess what prompted my move is I was always really interested in new things. So new technology, what's happening.

08:45

How also does systems work? I guess what excited me about the civil service in the first place is just really understanding the establishment. So how are ministers making these decisions? So it was just interesting just to be in that environment and to see what happens. I knew pretty early on it, wasn't going to be the career that I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but it's really interesting even now that you can go... For example, I went to those G7 conferences. So you can now, when you watch the news, imagine what has actually been going on behind the scenes to do those sorts of things. But yeah, so it was just an interesting time for me, rather than what I wanted to do forever sort of thing.

09:25

What happened next?

09:28

After the venture capital?

09:30

Yeah.

09:30

Yes. So, yes. So basically, also is you have experiences, my interest certainly changed over time. So I really found the early stages of working in venture capital, it was really exciting working with early stage businesses and seeing all the different technologies coming through. And I guess I became more and more excited about software and what you could do with software and machine learning to optimize industrial processes. And what happens often in venture capital firms is you maybe start out looking at very early-stage cutting edge technologies. And then over time as the funds become bigger and more established, there's a more of an impetus to move to more later stage businesses. So more established companies and maybe companies that aren't quite so much of the cutting edge of technology, but obviously very successful and lucrative businesses over time.

10:23

So I guess my interest in then moving to then working on my own projects and ultimately founding my own business, was that I wanted to really focus more on the software and machine learning angle of things and remain with maybe developing early stage businesses rather than going in the direction that the fund was going in at the time.

10:45

Strikes me as a pattern that manifests itself in so many other parts of life too, that you begin small and niche. And as you grow, you inevitably become more mainstream. And in some ways, it's the challenge of our career to buck against that.

11:03

Yeah, exactly. So I left because I wanted to initially just started looking very generally at applications of machine learning. And I wanted to also, as an investor, you see a lot of businesses, but you get to a certain level of depth with that. But when you're actually working on your own projects, you're taking a much deeper dive. So really understanding what sits behind that, how does technology actually working, and then what are all the various different applications that you could be expressing? So I spent some time working with on some really early stage of data science projects, and along the way, stumbled on the insurance industry and all the things that were starting to happen and needed to happen to bring that industry much more into the 21st century.

11:48

And it was really interesting because Anna, my co-founder, at Anansi, she came from a FinTech background. So she was one of the early developers at Moneyfarm, so she'd seen what cutting edge FinTech businesses were doing and was really surprised when we started looking at this insurance angle that it just seemed behind, that there's still a lot of innovation that needed to happen, that we could follow along with. There's already been very successful in FinTech and bring some of that thinking and technology into the InsureTech space.

12:17

Mm. Could I take us back to that moment where you leave venture capital? Because there's a really decent period of time, about five years or so before you then go on to start your own company. It must have been quite a profound decision to make at the time to say, "Okay, I'm going to cut here and I'm going to be in the niche. I'm going to be in the detail."

12:41

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

12:45

Where did the courage come from in that moment to be able to do it? Because a lot of people don't.

12:49

Yeah. It just depends on how true you want to be to yourself because it's always easy to stay and do what you've done before. And I think that's sometimes why people end up staying in maybe jobs or careers that they are maybe not so happy in, or it's no longer aligned with what they want to do. And I think it's just important to keep challenging yourself to say, "How excited am I to get up in the morning and to do this? Is this challenging me? Am I continuing to develop in this role? Or could I be doing more?" Because you're spending so many hours of your day just at work. So I think it's an important part of your life to be happy and fulfilled in, in addition to all of the other parts of life as well.

13:38

Is that something that comes naturally to you?

13:40

I think it's something that doesn't probably come naturally to anyone because it's a challenge, isn't it? So it's something you actually have to actively think about and really think, because it's very easy just to go through the motions in a gap every day, do this thing. How often do we take stock of our lives and really think, is this what I'm doing? Unless something major happens or there's something that forces you to really just keep readjusting what you're doing?

14:07

Did you use any particular thought experiments or frameworks? If it's not something that comes naturally to us, what can we do to put ourselves in a frame of reference that enables us to make that decision, do you think?

14:21

No, it's really interesting. I think there's definitely lots of tools and techniques that we could use. And I guess they go across a whole spectrum from the more conventional ones to the more spiritual frameworks as well, which I don't know if that's something your audience is interested in. So obviously there's the more conventional types of examples would be things like coaching, therapy or the more structured Western methods, new year's resolutions even, or the people that when they have a birthday, they think that they take stock of their life and they use those sorts of cycles just to really check in with what they're doing. And then you've got the more things like vision boards. And then the people that imagine where they want to be in a certain period of time and then maybe start to set out what would the steps that they would need to do to get to that place that they are.

15:35

And then other sorts of times that you could check in would be more around the new moon, the moon cycle and that thing. And if you have like a meditation practice or something like that, that's also a way of just trying to check in with yourself on the periodic basis about how aligned your feeling, your life is in terms of where you are actually going in the broader sense.

16:00

It's interesting that each one of those conventional, or more unconventional ways of thinking about making this decision are almost like reset buttons that take you back-

16:10

Mm. Exactly.

16:11

And enable you to make the decision from a fresh, in some way.

16:15

I guess it's two things. So the first thing is the ground, just to really feel into yourself to see where you are. So it's even not a reset. It's just like actually-

16:24

It's ground. Yeah.

16:25

Yeah. Just to think, am I happy? Is this fulfilling me? So it's just almost a stop. And then maybe depending on how you're feeling at that point of the stop is then when you restart, then you would look to reset or realign or restart beyond that.

16:42

It's like a pause.

16:46

Exactly.

16:47

Yeah.

16:47

Yeah. And there's beautiful, those moments of pause, or just to give yourself a bit more space, really.

16:52

Mm. There's an article I recently read about artificial beginnings and how we don't have too many beginnings or endings in our natural life. Usually it's just begins and it ends.

17:07

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

17:08

And we as human beings try and create these frameworks around our social environment to create these artificial beginnings. And we can look at things like a new year's resolution and think, "Ooh, that's a waste of time," or, Ah, it's a birthday," or whatever. "It's just a birthday. I've just been alive for another year." But actually, at a deeper level, what we're doing is trying to create frameworks that force us to reflect on certain moments and make us think about where we're going, because otherwise it would just be a linear line from the start to the end.

17:42

But I think the opposite. So as a woman, you have a monthly cycle, so we are always changing. So actually there's a natural time to have a reset every month.

17:53

Mm.

17:54

So actually I would say that life is always going up in a... And we have seasons as well. So there are natural cycles that we as humans and are living through effectively. But maybe we just don't really notice them in modern society. It's also even things like harvest festivals and even the solstice. So culturally, we always used to celebrate the earth as it changed over time. But rather than looking at things in this linear, you get born, you go to school, you go to university, you work, you die.

18:30

I love it. I love it. I wonder how else we can practically tap into nature's own cycles that will allow us to make more intelligent decisions.

18:43

Yeah. Maybe we would be a much more eco-friendly society if we did tap into nature's natural rhythms as well.

18:50

Mm. Once you made that decision to find that niche again and go back to those cutting edge roots, why did it take you five years?

19:03

Because I think I'm not really someone that is particularly time-driven. I think for me, it's always much more important to be doing the right thing rather than the thing that is... I didn't feel under any pressure in that time, I wasn't really in any hurry to jump onto something. It was much more a question of, I had my consultancy business, I was working on various projects and I was just looking. I wasn't just looking to found any old company. I wanted to found the company that I really believed could actually do something meaningful and important for the future. And yeah, I think it was good to take that time because now I think we're really excited about what we're building at Anansi both in terms of how we're running the business, but also the actual impact that we can have on in the insurance industry and specifically starting with this niche of goods and transit.

20:00

It sounds like it was less to you about the rush or the external finding work that exists outside of me. But more that time period between you leaving Venture Capital and then starting Anansi, gave you the chance to find that meeting ground between the two, between your own self-

20:26

Mm. Absolutely.

20:27

And the world. How do you go about practically understanding your own interests? Because they're clearly channeled to a certain degree, but broad too.

20:41

Mm.

20:41

How do you know and how have you gone about figuring out yourself? What projects or ideas are most important to you?

20:53

I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because fundamentally it comes down to, you've got your own internal things that you are passionate about and you get very excited and I guess obsessed by also. But then it's also about the connection to others. So what are you excited about working on with other people? Because that's what makes a project come alive when you start off with yourself and then, Anna and I, obviously then joined together and now we've got team of people that we've inspired to work on this thing that we're working on together. So I don't know if that's particularly answering your question. And then I guess then beyond that, then it's having feedback from customers that they're really excited about and also to the distribution partners. There's a whole network of stakeholders that we're involved with. And yeah, getting good and positive from those people then just gives the whole project a lot more energy. And then that's what motivates you to keep moving forwards to bring that all together.

21:57

So if that process is a melting pot and you are putting into it these different aspects of your life, the thing that you think the world needs, your own internal motivations. What else goes into that melting pot for you?

22:15

So let me just think. Well, I don't know. Obviously you start with, what do you think the world needs? But then also the world will tell you what it needs as well. So it's a bidirectional thing as well. So it's obviously speaking to a lot of people, getting that feedback. And then it's also, what is possible to do? Are you the right person to do this? Or is this what you are good at? If not, who are the people that you could have around you to help bring that idea to life as well? And how then can you build an environment where the people that want to work on this can thrive and enjoy what they're doing and be as best supported to achieving that vision as well? I think that's really important.

23:06

It's an incredibly objective way of thinking about it. It's almost as if you are detaching yourself from that scenario, recognizing your own internal motivations, but yet seeing everything from a bird's eye view somehow.

23:20

Yeah. I think you have to probably see it from both angles. So it's not entirely a theoretical exercise, but also you are in it, but you are also on it at the same time.

23:28

Mm. What were some examples of projects that you decided not to go with during that time period?

23:33

And well, one project that Anna and I were working on together that we'd decided not to go with was, so originally we were looking at working with an insurance company. This is when we first started out, working with an insurance company to really help support them with the sale of small business insurance to make that whole process a lot more optimal. So we were looking at taking external data from various sources and the agents, the insurance agents were better prepared with more knowledge about those businesses and their businesses needs in order to make that insurance much more efficient.

24:09

So we did research. We had some interesting feedback on that. But ultimately what we were really passionate about was looking at the whole process. So rather than just scratching the surface at the sale side of things, looking at really what needs to happen and how can we do that with the product niche that we decided on, which was this e-commerce goods and transit insurance, so that we could actually build this fully automated cycle with a much better onboarding process, minimal work from the customer's point of view to administer the insurance in the middle, and then most importantly, an efficient claim cycle.

24:47

So when things go wrong, people can get their claims without having to fill in long forms and wait months and months for the claims to be settled. So by focusing much down on that niche and just having our own effect of our own product, that's what enabled us to be much more true to our original vision.

25:03

Did you feel like you were getting closer during that discovery period and day-by-day, if you could feel that you were getting closer to the company that you wanted to build? Or did it happen quickly in a moment?

25:20

No, it didn't happen quickly in a moment. So definitely, I think again, it came up in down. Sometimes you feel like you're closer. I think when you're at the really early stages of starting a business, it's not really clear what's happening. So there may be days where you feel closer. I'm sure you've experienced this as well. There are days where you feel like you're miles away from your vision. And then I think over time, gradually, you do feel as though you are then getting closer? And then there are days when it feels like things click into place. So an example of where we definitely had a moment where things hugely took up a step change in things cooking into place, was that originally we were looking at starting with goods and transit insurance, and then really focusing on everything and eCommerce business needs. Not all small businesses, but looking at things like employers, product liability insurance.

26:15

So we had a whole suite of products designed for these eCommerce businesses. And one day we decided after... Well, not just one day, but it was after a series of different conversations with very experienced people in the insurance industry who really counseled us, just focus on goods and transit insurance with one product. And that will enable you to expand up the value chain and also expand internationally much more easily than to be doing lots of different insurance products. And as soon as we made that change, it didn't feel like a huge change at the time because effectively it was what we were doing at the moment, but it was in fact narrowing down what we were planning to do in the future, but that suddenly helped people to see our vision and how that would all come together and how we'd actually be able to scale our business much more easily.

27:03

Could I move us onto a question about nature?

27:07

Yes, of course.

27:07

Because it sounds like this played a large part in your journey or at least you have a closer, or perhaps a richer understanding of how it might affect our working life. Are there are any aspects of your work today that are impacted by nature?

27:28

Obviously, we all have an impact on nature on a personal level, so we're a fully distributed team, for example. And that was intentional since the company was founded. So I guess there's different arguments about whether that's more efficient or less efficient as a way of managing the business, if you balance commuting costs with everyone's individual heating costs. And then although we're an insurance company, we are ensuring the movement of items. So there's an environmental impact with that. So we've had a number of people asking about whether we want to consider that in our product roadmap, for example, could it be carbon offsetting or something along those lines?

28:15

Then I think it's also important looking to the future, do we want to aspire to becoming a B corporation for example, or a company that really does honor the pledges around nature. So some of the leaders in an ensure tech space, so for example, lemonades have gone down that path and they really look to do a full carbon audit of what the startup is doing. And I think over time, more startups are going to start doing that thing as well. So that's something thing that we definitely need to consider about doing in the future.

28:50

And then the other thing to remember is that we're a software business, so there is decisions that we can make about how we actually manage our software that could have quite substantial impacts on the amount of data that we're collecting, and then the energy impact of that on... I've heard crazy things. If you change your website from white to black, it has a huge amount of less energy that's required for that.

29:18

Mm.

29:18

So there are all sorts of things that we consider. We're definitely not at the forefront of this in what we're doing, but it's something that we should certainly challenge ourselves to think about in the future, I think.

29:29

Mm. Do you have a working definition of flow and a state of flow for you?

29:35

In a work sense?

29:38

Yeah.

29:39

I definitely know what the feeling of flow is, just both in a personal sense and also from... I actually really love that whole definition of being in flow or trying to be in that state. I wouldn't say I would be in that state at all times, especially with how much changes on the startup basis. So for example, my role has changed quite a lot just in the last few weeks, in fact, because we've gone from being really small teams. So it was just Anna and myself for a long time. And then we had two employees last year and we just recruited five more people who've joined us in the last three months. So our roles have changed quite a lot, and we are still going through that storming forming process where we really figure out how we're realigning as a team and what our roles are within the team. And it takes some time to get back into a more steady state of flow around that. But I think again, it's part of the cyclical cycle that we were talking about a bit earlier on in the conversation.

30:45

What do you mean?

30:46

Well, we were talking about how over time, every organism, every organization goes through cycles. And one of those is this, I think it comes in the army, this storming forming... I can't even remember what the or three stages are. But when a team comes together, you have a storming phase where everyone's just trying to figure out how we all work together and then you form into a more cohesive unit. And then you are then you're back to the normal. And then when someone else comes into a team, then you go back to a storming process, but you are realigning. And then you as a team go through those cycles every time you add people or lose people or things change, or you add a product or something along those lines.

31:35

Could you be in a state of flow across the different sections?

31:40

Obviously, that would be the ultimate goal, but I think probably that's a lot. Possibly. Or you could have times when you are in flow. Obviously you'd ideally like to be in flow at all those times, recognizing the chaos around you, particularly in the storming phase. But yeah, I don't know. I think it is possible, but maybe you're more likely more opportunities to be in flow when and things are more back down to that steady state. But I guess in the startup phase, maybe you are always in that early stage.

32:12

Yes.

32:12

Do you think so?

32:12

Yeah.

32:12

Yeah?

32:13

Because we want to create this sense of flow and this optimal state of work.

32:20

Yeah.

32:21

But if that is isn't conducive to a highly volatile environment, then we are mis-aligning what we're ultimately looking for with the practical reality of the type of work that we want. It strikes me that when you were spending more time working through problems, that you were able to perhaps accomplish a heightened more deeper state of flow in that moment, because you had a longer period of time in order to work through those challenges in some way, perhaps rather than the tumultuous, constant disruptive change that happens when things are going through high growth.

33:02

I think there's two different things. I definitely think sometimes time helps, but sometimes more people help because just having a really high performing team of people with different perspectives, you can just have a deeper discussion on something and that will just help you unlock what you're trying to unlock. So I don't think the two are necessarily totally unaligned. And I think also, it's really exciting to be working in the team of people to actually make those decisions sometimes a little bit more rapidly so that you are going through that high growth phase as well. So I think sometimes maybe you have a point in life where you want to have a more relaxed stage and then maybe other times this is what drives you.

33:51

But again, that's why for some people, a startup environment is a really good career move for them, but for other people, maybe it is better to work in a huge insurance company or a large corporate and then just where things inevitably are just going to be a little bit more slow and considered just because there's so many people that need to be involved. And that would just be maybe more in line with what they're looking for in their career at that point in time. We've just had a colleague who's just joined us. She was with Sky previously. She's never worked in a startup. So this is the first time that she's working in a startup. She's finding that transition really exciting, and she's just hit the ground running. Although her role is very similar to what her role was before, the environment is very different. But she seems to be thriving with that change of pace.

34:42

All of our capabilities are different and that pace that we would be working at, or that level of challenge, that size of challenge is different for everyone.

34:56

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

34:58

How do you go about sizing up a challenge if everyone's capacity for challenge is different?

35:05

Yeah. Because also, even if you do size up the challenge, how do you know that you've sized up accurately?

35:11

Mm. Mm. So difficult.

35:15

So yeah. Exactly. To give another specific example with Anansi, you look at what we are doing so it doesn't sound that complicated, so we were just offering digitized insurance. But you wouldn't believe, we obviously had an idea of... Well, maybe we made some assumptions or how big this challenge would be when we started the company. And actually the challenge has been significantly more than we could ever have imagined. Because just the complexity of what we're doing, the number of different people involved has been significantly more than we were expecting. So you can make some assumptions along the journey, but I think that's part of the excitement of seeing, having to adapt when maybe some of the assumptions you might have made early on, haven't been as accurate as possible.

36:08

Let's say that you go through one of those experiences and you decide on a project to work on and you start going into it and in the Patrick Collison definition, do you think it's a pond and it turns out to be a lake and the whole thing's massive and really scary.

36:25

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

36:27

How do you know when you've bitten off more than you can chew? Because a big challenge is great, but a challenge that is so enormous that it is beyond comprehension and is really difficult.

36:39

Mm-hmm (affirmative). No, exactly. I think it's definitely important to see where you can at least define an achievable element of the challenge because otherwise it's not possible to achieve something you can't even define or see the edges of. And with any challenge, it's like that, now to quote, Every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

37:08

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

37:08

So what is the step that you can make next in the direction of that challenge? And then ultimately, is the ultimate challenge actually achievable? So it could be a huge lake, but is it possible to cross the lake? It takes more steps to get to where you are. Or is this an unsolvable problem effectively?

37:29

This is so closely related to personal growth and how large the challenges we take on for our personal growth should be. When you've gone through your journey, how have you tiptoed the line between the introspection that's required to really understand yourself and what motivates you and the objectivity that's required in order to really channel around yourself in those moments, versus going too far, and it bordering on self-sabotage and being too distant from yourself?

38:14

So just on the point of self-sabotage, as in being too hard on yourself? So too introspective?

38:24

Mm.

38:25

Oh, that's interesting. I think that's a very personal thing, though. It really depends on your tendency. I think it's very popular now in the Western culture for people to have very strong anxiety and to be very self critical as it were without being kind to themselves. How do you address that? I think it's a question of knowing maybe your personal limits, but trying not to make everything that goes wrong, a personal failing. And I think that's an issue with anyone doing a startup or any project, which has a high degree of failure, is internalizing and external failure effectively, and seeing how you can separate something that doesn't work out from something that's intrinsically wrong with yourself, because there's nothing intrinsically wrong with yourself.

39:21

There's just the things that just don't work out effectively.

39:25

That requires a really deep level of understanding of things that are within your control and the things that are outside of your control.

39:31

Yeah. But then it maybe not understanding, but just even coming back to the grounding because actually that's the issue with startups, is actually most things are actually out of your control. You can try and bring as much as you can. You can do whatever you can to make a success of it. But the fact is that a lot of it is really out of your control effectively. You are just trying to harness as much as you can to achieve the goals that you want to achieve.

40:00

How do you make sure that you don't internalize things that go wrong?

40:04

I think it comes back to what we were talking about earlier about the importance of grounding and just resetting and seeing where are you now, what has been in your control and what is out of your control and just really sitting down either individually, but also with your co-founders and just always checking in to see where you are, are you being delusional? Or what's real, and what's not real because you're still creating the future. So it can be difficult to unpick what is actually happening at this point in time. And I know both myself and Anna have found that having a regular meditation practice has been really helpful in just being able to individually reset and ground and see where we are.

40:54

And also have that ability to look objectively at ourselves, what's happening around us and how is the business going? And meditation can take a lot of different forms. It's not just the sitting cross-legged for 20 minutes doing nothing, which I think a lot of people struggle with. For some people, it's running, it can be going for a walk, it can be going for a gym. It can be really any practice which gets you in your body and out of your monkey mind, can be a meditative practice. So it could even be cooking for some people. So any time that you are spending in your own energy, I think is really helpful.

41:37

I heard something really scary the other day. A founder was doing an interview and he said that literally they were like, "How many hours do you work a week?" And he said, "If I was awake, I was working." Literally. And even when I was eating, I was actually also working at this same time. And that could be seen as admirable in some cases, but I think it is also important to have a bit of time of not working and just being outside of that environment, and I think that can help you be just as successful as working 23 hours of the day or whatever.

42:11

What is meditation for you?

42:12

Well, I have quite a structured meditation practice. So I do spend 20 minutes a day sitting, cross-legged doing some breathing exercises and yoga. But I do other things. I do go to the gym. I do like cooking and doing other things. But I've been doing this practice for many years. So yeah, I know what works for me. And I do something in the morning when I wake up and often lasting at night as well.

42:40

You said that it was part of the reason why it's so important to have some kind of meditation practice. Is that it allows you to spend time with your own energy?

42:54

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

42:56

Is it your own energy, or is it the world's energy that you are spending time with there?

43:03

Oh, that's quite profound. I think it's probably both. I think you are connected to everything at all times. We talked about grounding, that's effectively connecting to the world's energy as well. And that's also where we're getting some of our power and motivation from, from the earth and from the source around us. So I think it is achieving having that of internal grounding and setting, and being there is actually helping you to connect with all of those things.

43:43

Mm. And put in that context, it makes a lot of sense that as you go through your working life, it would make logical sense to spend time in your own personal energy or the energy of the world, because ultimately your working life is a meeting of those two existences.

44:01

Yeah. Effectively. Yeah. And what impact you can have on that, where you should you be directing your part of the world. What is the guidance you're receiving to do that?

44:14

I love talking. Thank you so much for sharing your words on nature and its impact on work. Though it's played a profound part in your own working journey, I think it can make such difference to other people's too.