How do we meet people? Making an event out of connecting. 

How I got into coworking 

My friend Debbie has been in the copywriting business since before we had computers. She sat down one day to work out how she knew everyone in her business world. 

It all led back to a handful people, and it is the same with me.

It is fascinating because no matter how much you plan the events you attend. The courses you take or which way you swipe on a dating app. You never know who is going to impact your life in the long run.

Many of the people who have shaped my career come down to Julius and Carmen. These introductions were never transactional, they were about ‘being on the same page’ or ‘in the same head space.’

In 2008 I joined their ‘LinkedIn London’ Meetup which eventually rebranded to Spicy Networking. It is about this time they started The Event Manager Blog and Event Manager Group on LinkedIn. 

“You never know what might happen” part happens when two people meet who have at least some kind of life for themselves.

Like me, Julius and Carmen were keen to run events where good people connect well and people who like networking and asks for a list of attendees to spam later felt unstuck.

I’ve had many conversations with people at points where the most significant decision that day was what to have for lunch because I had nothing else going for me. 

They have to have goals and be thinking about things.

But it is ok to be working it out. 

One of the reasons I’m writing this now is because of listening to this podcast back in 2011 with Mitch Joel and Marcus.

Which five years later led to me joining Chris Marrs CMA and the 90 Day Challenge. 

At CMA I met the MYMO gang who took over the 90 Day Challenge.

I also met Kenda here, who told me about the StoryBrand book. Which, then led me to fly to Nashville, to do the StoryBrand guide training. 

Now I’m part of the leadership team at a Fintech startup. And this ten-person comms team are following the BIG FIVE and StoryBrand method.  

And that company came out of coworking in 2020. However, for me it started to happen back in 2008 when I signed up for twitter and meetup. 

My Coworking Story Began

My coworking story began in 2008 when I joined meet up and found New Work Cites and a guy named Tony Bacigalupo.

He had a meet up in New York where freelancers, consultants and creatives shared office space. https://youtu.be/btKPMPBoo_Q

I was running a few networking groups and trying to get a grip on building a career as a freelancer in London.

While I love these networking groups – many of us are still friends and work with other today. It was already getting exhausting running a traditional breakfast networking group. 

I enjoy being with others, supporting and caring. What I didn’t like was sleazy selling, self-promotion, and asking people what they should be doing. That was what was going on in the networking world.

All the best networking groups I’ve been part of have not had the word networking anywhere near them.

I know that will upset some of you, but when you organise a group of peers to meet up, you take the time set the scene and curate the event magic happens. 

When you put the word networking on it, an angel dies in a nasty accident with a food blender in a galaxy far away. 

My first coworking events

The best parts of networking groups were when we all sat around the table after breakfast and chatted and whipped out our laptops.

When the formal meeting ended we’d do work together. 

People would share problems, ask questions about software. We talk about books and events or bitch about an email that had just arrived and ask for help.

It was around this time I was starting to do ‘coworking things’. I did not know anything about coworking, but I’d already got into the spirit. 

It was also this time in 2009 where I start to take part in. And I begin running Unconferences and Bar Camps like Tweet Camp. And that expands to how we use twitter and Be2Camp which was about construction, the built environment and collaboration. 

These unconference events were informal, geeky and full of real people doing real things. 

I thrived in these environments, I felt at home, met active and interesting people and learnt new and useful things.

At these Unconferances we’d sit around tables with our Samsung N110 Netbook’s 

Coworking things.

At the beginning of September, Julius invited me to an invite-only event at Sun Systems run by a larger-than-life character called Jeff. 

I rocked up and, to be honest, had a minimal idea what it was all about. 

Nearly 200 people squeezed into a conference room on the city side of London Bridge. 

Twitter was blowing up.

The room was full of exciting people from tech and software from aching cool little startups to Adobe, Salesforce and @Jobsworth from BT.

I was genuinely excited and when Jeff shouted about buying a ticket I got one. 

I wondered if I’d just gone to one of those events where they sell you a £20k life coaching program at the next event, but I trusted Julius and Carmen 1000%, and I was dizzy. 

In between this and the actual event I got a call from an old mentor Geoff, you see everyone was called Geoff in my life at this time. 

Jeff had his ear in grown-up startup tech, telecommunications, satellites and engineering. When he was mentoring me, I felt like I asked for advice about making salads from Oliver Reed.

He’d ask me questions about cash flow forecasts and scalability that made my eyes bleed.

There were long awkward silences at the mentoring sessions. These sessions were over lunch that I brought. 

Jeff was there to help an injured animal (me) out of a bear trap and not the free lunch. 

2009

So Jeff barks down the phone something like ‘Mitchell. You know many people, how to get them to show up places and we need something like that for this new incubator we’re opening, come in and meet the team.’

He hung up. Now I had to go. 

I’m sure he’d be tracking me from a satellite somewhere if I didn’t. 

We camped out in an office until the primary space available in Smithfield Market that was to become the Innovation Warehouse in May 2011. 

I walked around like I owned the place and Ami gave me funny looks all day because he did own it. 

Then the 140conf came to London. 

I was blown away by the format and people there. Stephen Fry was the first person on stage – yes THE Stephen Fry – as a result of that day I’m one of the 48K people he followed on 

Twitter, he has 12 million people following so clearly I’m in the same league. 

It is not much about coworking at this conference, but there is a lot about working and communicating as communities. 

Something huge was happening in town, and big business was just about understanding the internet and working out social media. Everyone on stage was talking about the Cluetrain Manifesto, and some even had iPhones capable of 3G. 

At this conference, I met the Creative Stores, a tech agency in Brussels that I would end up being a freelancer for in London, and where I found out about this new app called Instagram – I mean who would want a social network that only held photos?

I would – it gave rebirth my love of photography that I’d left in a letter asking the London College of Printing to put my place on hold for a year in 1992. 

How I got into coworking 2008 – 2020 – The Prequel

So there I was thinking what on earth will I do in the next 90 Day Content Challenge?

I’ll write about my last ten, maybe twelve years of coworking, a chapter every week – how hard can that be?

I’ll write the intro in this post here as I’m still dumping ideas in One Note and Mind Meister.

Then I’ll buy some time to get my shit together for week two.

I’m surprisingly confident about my 12 Week, or 90 Day plan.

If you have just joined us

Sorry if you just joined us!

Let me explain three times a year I enter a challenge to post content on my website. 

Known as The 90 Day Content Marketing Challenge, and every time I find more writer in me. 

Honestly, it’s easier to sandpaper my face and drop me in acid every week than take part in this, but I love writing, and I’m determined to outrun my fears to build my confidence. 

My abrupt ending in 2020

This time last year, I was writing to sell my consulting and workshops from my website.

When suddenly my 20-year rollercoaster career as a die-hard freelancer came to an abrupt end.

I became the COO of a startup and the CMO of another one; we have another product called Cowork.tools. 

As you might have guessed they are all the same founders and team.

Our marketing team consists of freelancers, some of whom are in this challenge with me, working on coworking and freelancer events and content together. 

So my website needed to transition to something else, and it felt good to work that out in the next 90 Day Content Challenge.

I made a plan this time.

Any of you who have been reading here before will know I’m always ranting about 12-week plans. 

If you are like me, you are great at helping other people but atrocious at doing that thing for your own business. 

This challenge I had to go somewhere new because one of my big goals is to improve my writing and storytelling significantly. 

For years I’ve liked the idea of writing a series of posts, like a weekly story in a comic or newspaper. 

Deep down, I’ve always known that planning my writing would make it more straightforward, more manageable and even more enjoyable.  

Books on Writing 

In 2020 I read a lot of books on writing or building a writing life like:

Robert A Caro: Working

I’m blown away by how Robert researches and constructs his books. 

He describes his process for the biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson. 

His writing and storytelling abilities are enchanting, both in this book and the biographies. 

Maya Angelou: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

I first read this book at college; it was probably one of the first books by a black author I ever read. 

Her descriptions of lemon juice and the church in the opening chapters have never left me. 

I always think Maya lived the life she did because she had to write these books. That is why it is on this list. 

Michael Margolis: Story 10x: Turn the Impossible into the Inevitable

Michael was one of the first people I met who made sense of ‘exploring our own story’ to find our purpose. 

I’m still working it out, but this book threw me in the direction I’m taking on this next 90 Day Content Challenge.

Anne Lamott: Word by Word

“Let’s start writing now while we still can” is one of the opening lines in this hilarious recording of a two-hour writing class from 1997. 

Anne talks about battling the voices in our head that tell us we are not a reasonable observer of the world. 

Stephen King: On Writing

Amazingly this is the first Stephen King book I’ve ever read, other than watching a few movies; I knew very little about him. 

“Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can’t expect to become a good writer.”

One big take away was how he lets ideas connect in his head. 

He describes working at a school as a cleaner when he got the pictures that pulled Carrie together. 

Rachel Aaron 2k to 10k

Every few years, I go back to this book. 

In short, Rachel describes how her writing time changed after she became a mother.

Rachel had to work out how to keep her word count up now she had less time at the keyboard. 

Haruki Murakami: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

I’m still reading this, and it has made a deep impression on me. 

Maybe only because I’d like to be 70 years old and running and writing Haruki does. 

I’ve read business books for the last fifteen years, I love them, but I need something a little deeper. 

I listened to these writing books as I ran, cooked or hoovered – never once did I think ‘I can’t write.’

I’ve been thinking about this for years.

It is worth pointing out I did not ‘suddenly’ have this idea; it has been kicking around in my head for years. 

Every time I write a post with a bit of history or story, I get lost in the flow. 

The effect of COVID, lockdown and everything that happened in 2020 was a head fuck. 

I’ve always wanted to write, like write – write.  

There has never been a time in my life when I’ve not been thinking about it.  

And even writing that sentence here feels harder than saying to my parents:

“I met a man in Paris, and we’re getting married!” 

And when I’m in Paris, every coffee place looks like somewhere to write, not a place to get a drink. 

Playing at it

Going from ‘die-hard freelancer’ to ‘I have a job’ gave me a different kind of headspace. 

I wrote about the mental effect last week in this post: 
‘Why you need a new mindset for 2021‘ and I felt better for sorting that out on the page. 

So much change happened in one go I got whiplash and even doubted if I was doing the right thing.

It was not like anyone is forcing me to take the job; most of our team worked together anyway. 

All that happened is we all woke up one day, and PayPugs and Velvet Platform was where we now worked. 

A lot of mental clutter evaporated, and it occurred to me that in all the previous ’90 Day Content Challenge’s’ I’d been ‘playing at it.’

Allowing myself to ‘only just make it’ to deliver the self-absorbed thrill of writing a killer (ish) post and submitting it minutes before the weekly deadline. 

How I got into coworking

As we were planning the marketing for PayPugs, Velvet Platform and Cowork Tools, I kept writing down parts of my coworking and freelancing journey. 

All of these products have emerged from conversations and problems that people in our community have. 

At the start of January, I had a massive brain fog about what to stick on the internet every week and when I got the guts to commit to this project and the pain and jubilation that will come with it I felt good to go. 

How is your 2021 so far? 

I read the First rule of 2021 is not to dwell on what went wrong in 2020. I’m always up for reflection, journaling and review – but I’m finding bitching about 2020 is a full-time job for some people.

I wrote a lot over December, but it was confusing and weird, which would be fine if I was Lady Gaga or Andy Warhol writing to you but, well you know.  

Something I found out over the holidays was I needed to stop.

But at the same time I could not wait to get back to work.  

This blog post captures the feeling well: “I Love Time Off, But This Holiday Break Hit Different.  

Being reunited with work has never felt so good!” By ‘The Only Black Guy in The Office’.

Dazed and confused 

Supercoolwife and I walked around ‘dazed and confused’ for the first week of the holidays. 

We did some serious tidying up to ‘cleanse’ our home for the new year, and by the time it was ready to start again, we felt prepared to rejoin humanity. 

But I could not work out what was going on.

Is change confusing to you? I thought it was just me.

In preparation for our next ’12 Weeks’ that started January 4th, I read the whole ‘12 Week Year‘ book, again. 

Every time I go back to it, I hear a new thing or go more in-depth on something I’ve heard before.  

So for most of December, I was walking around holding onto a small, but a never-ending panic attack.  

My idea for December was to finish strong and then rest, but my head would not stop. 

And there in the middle of the ’12 Week Year’, as always has been, is the ‘Emotional Cycle of Change‘ (ECOC) as I read this chapter, I could see why I was feeling like a newspaper caught in a wind tunnel.  

You can read the whole thing here. 

What ECOC spells out are the emotions we go through as we change or the environment around us changes. 

So, 2020 was several layers of change shot from a rocket launcher all at the same time at us all.  

Then we get down to the personal changes that were going from ‘marketing consultant’ to running a company and building a team.  

Of course, my change is a truly fortunate one, but it did unsettle me.  

I am so used to waking up and thinking like a freelancer on my own that I felt like I had had a leg amputated.  

Stop complaining  

Dustin Carter is a wrestler who, when he was eight, had to have his arms and legs amputated to save his life.  

His story is in the ’12 Week Year’, and every time I hear it, knocking me quickly back into place.

And one of the reasons I did not publish over December was because most of what I wrote was, ‘ever so slightly whiny’.  

This week I have had a lot of ‘how was your holiday’ talks, and the feeling is exhaustion and disbelief at how hard 2020 was on humanity.  

Hearing this from other people, makes me feel a little more normal. Because again, I am thinking it is just me.

Back to the words 

So I wrote a lot over the holidays and I boiled the last ten pages down to this, as the holidays unfolded my mental state flipped back and forth.

Like my mate David Sandler says, ‘he’s got one foot in the fire and one foot in the ice box!’

Apart from the global pandemic going on around us all life and work have never been so good. 

And you see that last line is the one I am uncomfortable saying aloud.  

Because I can pick up the phone and call at least ten people whose careers are in a shit storm right now, and they are at the end of the mental rope.  

Or their work-life is so intense and impossible they’re on the brink of exploding, the uncertainty is exhausting.  

Some of these people have several members in their family in different  hospitals in a critical conditions.  

We need a different kind of energy for 2021

Reading about ‘where our heads are now’ in an article by Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg, where she points out that when everything hits in March 2020 our adrenaline will kick in, but now it’s boring. 

Ok, there is a little more to it than that, I recommend reading the full article here.

After I read Merete’s words  it all made sense. 

Back in March 2020, I’m feeling energetic. 

As scary and uncertain as everything there was, well there’s an energy about it all. 

In the London Coworking Assembly we had two call a week with 20 – 40 people from the coworking industry in London. 

Between those calls we’d be looking for people to answer questions, sort out business rates, get a leader from the Mayor’s office to come and share what the situation was. 

Then the energy died at the end of August and early September. 

We nearly got going again somewhere in October, but now I feel like falling asleep standing up.

Which I won’t do – don’t worry. 

Energy for the next three months.

I’ve been in this cycle before, wanting to fall asleep or watch Netflix until it is all over.  

And what I’ve learnt is something like it is NEVER over. 

When you cook, you must clean the kitchen, and then you cook again and clean the kitchen, yet again.

My head is in the next 12 weeks. And knowing that book so well has saved my life during COVID, knowing the Emotional Cycle of Change’ (ECOC).

Being able to realize that I feel odd because I’m going through 12 cycles of change all at the same time calms me down – a lot.

The article by Merete Wedell-Wedellsborg affirms that planning the next 12 Weeks and keeping to routines and accepting the boringness is an opportunity to build a solid foundation to spring from when things get back to normal.

WTF do you mean ‘back to normal?’

Did I say ‘back to normal?

Sorry I was sleepwalking.

Early on, people are saying things like ‘when this is over, we’ll get back to normal’. My mate Jeannine would come back with, we won’t get back to normal, life will never be the same again. 

She points out what AIDS did to the way we talk, conduct relationships and run hospitals.  

I read a book,  On Writing by Stephen King this week. And he spoke about when he worked in an industrial laundrette. 

Tablecloths from restaurants caked in food would come in. And sheets from the hospital are covered in blood, he mentions he would push them all in the washer with his bare hands as people were not worried about blood in those days like they are now. 

In her article Merete points out we’re in the second wave now and things have changed forever.

Pay attention to your energy

We’re tired, and we need a different kind of energy to keep going, there is waiting. Merete talks about how when you are in the armed forces often waiting for the battle is more stressful than the actual fight.  

The boredom and fatigue kicks in and our spirits flatten. 

But I walked around my home for two hours in my running gear the other day before I went out. 

Crazy – I know! 

I am making myself go, even if I go out and end up walking it is better than sitting on the sofa waiting for a zap of energy so I transform from beached whale to Usain Bolt. 

It does not happen. 

So, it is a struggle. 

I have never got back from a run and wish I didn’t go, even if a car runs me over. 

Power-packed

But I have a power pack – all around me are excellent and self-aware people. 

Every day I wake up, and I start to read, meditate, and write.  

I am adding running to that now too. 

If the primary daily battle is getting dressed and running around the lake, the rest of the day will work fine.  

I decided to stop whining this week.

I mean no one was listening, so I’m already saving time.

Now I have all this spare time on my hands so I wrote down what to do in 2021, the next 12-Week Year is looming at the beginning of January, and I am mad for it!

How and when to make a JFDI decision 

I’ve been part of a UK based group of freelancer content marketers for around five years now.

It is very accurate to say we’ve all grown together by having online calls and 90 Day Writing challenges every week for all that time. 

My branding mate Col Gray of Pixels Ink passed ONE MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND YouTube views last week. 

I remember in 2016 when he was pondering if it was worth the effort or if he’d be any good. 

I can’t remember when, but I remember Col deciding to “just fucking do it” (JFDI) – I think we were in a mastermind group call together. 

Then a few weeks later he’d gone from a ‘shaking wreck’ to knocking out videos like Roger Federer knocking out tennis shots. 

After what seems like ten minutes later Col had over 500 views on videos, then 1000 and now many of his videos have been watched over 50,000 times. 

90 Day Writing Challenge

So it was the last week of the latest 90 Day Writing Challenge, where we all submit content by midnight Sunday night and then Martin and Lyndsay feedback on a call every Wednesday. 

Yes, that is right, we have an accountability group to submit our published work on Sunday, and two highly skilled pro grown-ups feedback every week. 

I know! 

How could you NOT SUCCEED in these conditions?

I’ve been doing this for around five years now, and I still find it hard, the challenge that happened over the summer was the first one I’d done every week without fail EVER. 

I was super pleased, my all-round ability and focus had grown like never before — writing, figuring out my messaging and fine-tuning a sentence is such a part of my life. 

But this last round, I skipped a few weeks, I found it hard to get my rhythm, because so much was going on in life and work. 

I did not know what to do. 

Why did I drop the ball in the challenge?

I’d gone from building a ‘freelance practice’ selling marketing consultancy to being a ‘Chief Operating Officer’ (COO) who is building a company, team, marketing plan and everything else that goes with all those OOO’s.

I’ve met a lot of ‘COO’s’ at conferences, but I was unsure what they do all day to keep their jobs.

So I shot over to audible and typed in ‘COO”, up popped Tim Cook, by Leander Kahney and I read it in two days.

Tim was COO of Apple before Steve Jobs died, and grew the company more than ever since.

What does a COO do all day?

 
Strategy and make sure there is enough money in the company so everyone can get paid. 

Phew! 

I can do that. 

I LOVE strategy – and my Clifton Strengthsfinder tells me I’m good at it so I’m ok!

The feedback on my work

So anyway, there I am listening to the feedback on my last blog in the 90-Day Challenge, and Martin goes into my content and starts highlighting where it lacks clarity in the headers and then goes into the headline and how it should be better. 

I snap for a second, don’t you know what I’m going through?

Come man! 

I only just sorted the writing and figured out messaging – now you want the headline done too?

And then I think, fu<k me Martin is right. 

Well, of course, he is right. 

That is why I turn up every week for this ‘content kick in.’

Why do you do that?

I particularly trust the judgement, style and values of Martin and Lyndsay their book Content Fortress will show you why I love them.

But this content skill building – does it ever end?

No, and that is the point – the quest for clarity and connection in our communication is never ending. 

But for me it is a quest, not a curse – more on this another time.

BTW – Marin and Lyndsay will be heading up the online relaunch of London Bloggers Meet Up in January 2021 – sign up here.

Are we there yet?

We’ve been redesigning the front pages for Velvet and PayPugs these last two weeks, and it has been exhausting.

Partly because I thought I could do it on my own. 

It went much faster when I had the guts to ask for help after the first week. 

And when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘we’ – there is Jacqueline, Tally, Annija, Mohamed, Rinalds, Venice, Zee, Sharmae, Jelena, Kristine, Peri, Tash, Debbie, Alexander and Jeannine.

All these people are making little actions, thinking and checking things to make the whole thing happen.

I love it.

My head hurts and I still love it. 

We’ve listened to interviews in the Otter app, researched and designed slide decks (thanks Mohamed and Annija) mapped out wireframes, jumped into calls at a moment’s notice, debated the exact word or term. 

We’re using the ‘StoryBrand way’ and ‘Big Five – Content Marketing Topics’ as our framework and putting our own spin on it all.

StoryBrand Website Process 

We’ve had tremendous help from my fellow StoryBrand guides, Maris, in Riga and Susan in the UK.

Both Maris and Susan talked through the StoryBrand website and messaging process with our marketing team, so they’d have a real-life example and were able to ask questions. 

What came up is how unbelievably unclear some stuff we intended to use was.

What was even worse is that I was excited about some lines that were the marketing equivalent of putting a photo of a dead baby seal on an origami website for children. 

See, that is why you need good people around you – like the ‘we’. 

So, back to Martin

What Martin pointed out to me I already knew. 

I’d rushed the whole headline thing.

It made sense if you knew me, but anyone else? 

Blah. 

The harsh reality is this:

No one gives a flying F@<k what you have going on, especially when they land on your website and can’t work out in 5 seconds what it is about.

If you’re not super clear about helping people, they won’t stick around to work out what you do.

Everyone wants to be Apple

Everyone wants to be Apple, but they load their websites up with hundreds of things. 

All these things confuse people, and when you confuse people, they don’t do anything.

People forget Steve Jobs cut Apple’s product range from something like 300 things to 10, and between product launches, the company gradually grew in revenue and profits.

>> Fun fact — it took Apple 42 years to become a $1 trillion business, they became a $2 trillion business in the space between March and August 2020 – Source: Post Corona In Crisis There Is Opportunity – Scott Galloway

Said another way they sold A LOT of Apples in the first few months of COVID 2020.

The real price of confusion

In StoryBrand the constant riff is — ‘if you confuse you’ll lose’ – with messaging, ‘cute and clever’ words, flashy graphics and a whole host of other things. 

But I think the most significant price you pay is confusing yourself. 

Around a decade ago, I worked out how to make a website, well, I had to get other people to ‘make it’ — but I could not stop making websites and buying URLs. 

Only a few of them ever happened. 

I had no idea how much time I should spend on each site. 

When I got down to a couple of websites, life took off.

All change please – JFDI

A few weeks ago, I started to get clarity on my new role in life and business, and again I can’t remember where I was. 

Still, I started to unsubscribe from all the email newsletters about building an online course, company, product and everything else — I know where to find them if I ever need them. 

I remember in 2004 as I was starting to ‘end my drug taking career’ the girl I was dating stopped dating me because I’d been out ‘one last time’. 

The crap thing is I’d promised her I had quit everything, she was not a fan of ‘4 am party Bernie.’

I was sick and tired of ‘4 am party Bernie’ too, so I could see her point.

She told me I had to have the guts to close the door on ‘partying’ and throw away the key.

One ‘last night out’ did not work, after all this was my life not the Rolling Stones never ending ‘Last World Tour.’

And I felt like a sad sack of shit as she explained her position to me, she was not angry she was kind and honest. 

She pointed out I’d made a decision to break the promise – as you can see she was way more mature than I was. 

So when another girl, now my wife, had the same conversation with me a few years later I made the decision to stop right away. 

In fact, I think I made the decision to commit to everything else and a whole new world opened up and that is how I stopped.

Like Col and many others, I decided JDFI – I mean what else are you going to do? 

Watch Netflix and tweet?

Crossing the Chasm

For years, I’ve resisted a job, regular paycheque and walked the path of the freelancer warrior.

Now I feel like Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade when he does the walk of faith over the chasm.

It is scary, but I have faith.

I love the people I work with at Velvet and PayPugs.

The speed at which we all solve problems is amazing, I am still very unsure how it happens so fast.

From building the tech we need, finding someone in the team who ‘knows that thing’ (Annija & Rinalds) to settling beautifully with Salesforce (Jeannine) and hundreds of other little wins. 

Talking of my friend Jeannine, she is also my fellow COO for PayPugs in the Netherlands and long-time Coworking Assembly collaborator.

Jeannine is watching my step as I move from ‘Mr Freelancer ‘ to being part of the ‘well-oiled machine’ we’re all building together. 

It is way less painful than I thought, and I can’t help thinking the most painful part is making the decision to step out, not the work ahead. 

I heard somewhere that ‘worrying is praying for things you don’t want to happen.’

It is worth noting my anxiety level has dropped in the last few weeks since I decided to JFDI.

Look I don’t mean to write ‘I don’t know how you can’ because I know how you can.

But

I don’t know how you can hope to gain anything by acting like this with people.

Before I got to our company, someone who has now left signed us up for six seats on Salesforce, the popular CRM started by Marc Benioff in 1999.

I inherited Salesforce and I now feel like Dr Dre when he wanted to leave Death Row records and could not. 

Half our company ended up using HubSpot which everyone quickly got to grips with. And we’re left with this commitment to Salesforce.

I’ve known Salesforce a long time, I nearly worked for them back in 2010. 

Back then I was very excited to be part of that gang. The amazing JP Rangaswami had become Chief Scientist there, my neighbour had got a job there after her A-Levels and loved it.

My interview at Cloud Force London

I had a breakfast interview at the Royal Festival Hall while Cloud Force was on. The interview went well, but in the end, I had to admit I did not have the ‘enterprise’ level marketing experience needed for the role. 

Later in 2012 I connected with fellow podcaster Mike Gerholdt and his ‘Button Click Admin’ show with Jared, I was a guest.
The show was community building, geeky and fun, I LOVED the segment of ‘A dramatic reading of a Steve Mo answer’.

Steve is a selfless question answerer in the Salesforce Admin forum, here. 

The last time I checked he’d answered thousands and thousands of questions.

Salesforce made the ultimate cool move in 2014 and brought Mike’s podcast show, hiring him as Admin Evangelist. 

Both the podcast and Mike are doing better than ever in 2020 with over a million downloads. 

So when I inherited six Salesforce Licences I was stoked at the thought of this product – even with its steep learning curve. 

You can listen to Mike here on Spotify.

I can’t wait for Salesforce.

But, it was all downhill from here. 

Me — We don’t need six seats. We only need two in my department, can we still commit to the money we said but change things up?

SF — No.

Me — Why not?

SF — We can’t change licencing agreements. You are committed to pay this much a month and have to keep to it. 

Me — I’m fine with committing to the agreed amount, but we can’t afford that now AND don’t need that many seats.

Plus I’ve inherited this set up and I have no idea what I’m doing, I need to hire a developer.

SF — No. You can’t change things up.

Me — Why is that?

SF — We are a public company and have a responsibility to our shareholders to keep revenue where we said it would be.

So up until now, that all sounds fair.

I’m in business and I get it, you have to bring home the bacon and keep the lights on. 

2020 Tough times for everyone?

What a naive dickhead I am for thinking that in a time of a global pandemic, a struggling economy and uncertainty all around I have the right to ask for help.

Who the fuck am I to ask for £400 (ish) break a month and look at how we can spend our budget better?

I mean, usually I’d love to pay you for stuff we are not using.

And I’m sorry to take the piss and ask to give you money for things we will use rather than things we won’t use.

• Side note — I actually have been paying other companies for stuff I have not used in COVID-19 because I want to support them and have got so much value over time. 

The $5.24 billion revenue rises

Then I read this article from the NYC Times:

“Salesforce stock has climbed nearly 40 percent in 2020, valuing the company at $220 billion.

On Tuesday, it said its revenue rose 20 percent to $5.24 billion in the three months ending with October 2020.”

So I double-checked with our Salesforce account manager, to see if I’d missed something.

They replied.

“Unfortunately there are no alternate billing options Salesforce can provide at this time.
As mentioned before I can offer you 30 days access to premier success.
This will give your developer additional support while completing the setup.”

FFS – We don’t have ‘a developer’ to set up yet, their salary is kinda tied up in the four seats we’re paying for but are not using.

I’m tempted to go on with a long-drawn-out story, but I’ll stop there.

The main takeaway

But the thing I really want you to take away is how amazingly blunt and unhelpful Salesforce is. 

And they don’t need to be.

They do amazing things like take social justice stands in ‘less forward thinking states’ in the USA, donate to plant trees, education and so much more.

2020 is a unique year for business.

In 2020 every company I deal with personally and professionally has cut me some slack or worked something out.

It is a unique year because of COVID-19, and those that can’t have said “we’d love to help but here is how it is for us.”

And I’ve been able to see how they can’t help me, I’m in business and know either financially or emotionally what the price is for changing how it works.

But Salesforce has had the best three months of their life.

No wait! They have just brought Slack for $27 Billion, so I can see how they need to batten down the hatches.

Computer says no

I feel like I am putting my account manager out every time I call, even though they are specifically for ‘start up’s.

I get that yucky, wanky feeling that if I turned up spending £100k a month I’d be flown to the Eiffel Tower for breakfast to have our meetings and Norah Jones would be hired to sing in the corner.  

But because we’re only spending £600 at the moment I have to wait in line and get fobbed off with a minefield of training videos. 

Why would you want to screw a start up?

I have no idea why you’d want to deliberately screw a start up in their early days when you can change the deal AND still get paid?

Are you really that greedy? 

Or maybe you are too lazy to try harder?

HubSpot and the light side of the force.

HubSpot has its shortcomings too, as outlined in Dan Lyon’s hilarious book Disrupted. 

But HubSpot co-founder Brian also wrote Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead — so there is still life in there.

I’ve known many people, particularly Marcus Sheridan who have championed HubSpot, so I feel like I’m on the light side of the force.

Of course, I hit up my mates inside Salesforce, and they were all super clear about not getting out the contract, it just does not happen.

I’m OK with not getting out the contract, but it is the incredible lack of imagination around renegotiation I’m frustrated with.

But right now HubSpot is coming out way better on product, service and all round attitude to life. 

All markets are conversations

All markets are conversations — is one of the best lines from the 1999 book The Cluetrian Manifesto — “it’s the original handbook for the modern web.”

And JP Rangaswami ended up writing in the 10 anniversary edition here, when he worked for Salesforce. 

And part of me does feel I’m being too cuddly but at the same time I’m always believing in these words.

The same way I believe in the Agile manifesto written around the same time, stuff like Customer Collaboration over contract negotiations etc. 

Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber want people to connect and be open when working and dig down to thrive together.

There is a part in the Scrum book where Jeff tells the story of making a company print out everything they’ve written for a project.

There were stacks and stacks of paper of reports and other bollocks.
The 40 or so people working on the project admitted they’d read very little of it.

They then cut everything up and posted the bits they needed for the project on the wall and binned everything else.

See the project and real humans

Then they could see the project, it was given the space to breath and became something.

In the Cluetrain book ‘markets are conversations’ means people go and talk to each other and build relationships and this is how business is done.

One of the biggest things about our PayPugs account is that you talk to a real human on a call, and they help you work things out.

We don’t give you a stack of paper to fill in, tell you to piss off and come back when it is done.

Be the guide.

One of the core things about StoryBrand that made me commit to the methodology is the concept of ‘being the guide’ not the transaction.

And what gets left on the table when you see everything as a short term transaction is so much possibility and energy.

I was talking with my mate Navarro about marketing and business and community this week, he pointed out a Spanish phrase that translates as ‘you might get the sale now, but in the long run you won’t get the business’ — or said another way people won’t come back.

I love to look people dead in the eye

So I hate to sound surprised, and I am under no illusions about Salesforce even noticing us.

Something I’ve been saying to people for years when I love a person or product is ‘I love it if you buy it and think it is shit I’ll give you your money back, even if they won’t’, 

No one has come back — yet.

But that is not the point, it is the gift of being able to look someone dead in the eye and say ’I believe in this, it’s a good thing’ is super important to me.

And I can’t do that with Salesforce.

Maybe I’ll send my Salesforce account manager a copy of the late Tony Hsieh book Delivering Happiness, he sold a lot of shoes and did not crap on people over at their most critical time.

Look, I hate to sound sorry for myself amid all this good fortune, but it is a lot to take in. 

And I wonder

Part of me does wonder what I need.

When will I be satisfied?

When I was depressed, and nothing seemed to be working, I have panic attacks, hate myself and walk around in a daze.

When everything is working amazingly, I have panic attacks and walk around in a daze. 

I love myself, in a healthy self-worth kind of way these days.  

The third week in

Next week is my third week as Cheif Operating Officer (COO) of our bank.

Yes, you read that right, our bank. 

We have two products, a collaborative payment platform built for freelancers, YouTubers, creators and anyone else who does that type of thing. 

And PayPugs what we’re calling “The Online Bank Account For Everyone” – I’ll stop there because this is not an advertorial. 

The last time you and I talked – around 18 people were walking around our company, albeit on the internet. 

Now there is 40, and by the time I finish this sentence, they could be more, every time I open a cupboard a new employee falls out. 

Already in my head, I’m building our own ‘Infinite Loop’ like Apple’s HQ.

Rising strong – the team assembles.

In the last week, I got me a marketing team! 

And I got the marketing team I wanted – I’m already madly in love with them all.

We’ve all been working on the Coworking Assembly, and European Freelancers Week for a year now. 

But we had a couple of gaps in the team.

So I ring up Gina Romeo and cry down the phone about Salesforce and Hubspot. 

Gina hooks me up with Sharmae, who found me Venice and Zara this time last year. 

I feel like I’ve collected all the infinity stones and can now click my fingers for the good of the universe. 

It is worth noting all this team got connected via Meetup.com and coworking over the last ten years. 

I’m not a project manager. 

I am learning a lot about myself, I LOVE project tools, but I can only really project plan for myself. 

I am not sure what is missing from my project abilities, and I don’t care, there are super strong people with us now.

What I do know is that I see unique ideas and connections in all the work and the people around us. 

It is like looking into the code in the matrix, and I am close to accepting this is enough skill on its own. 

I don’t need to be able to plan and do everything. 

But a bit of me is still clinging onto doing everything. 

Myself.   

Making ideas happen

For the last fifteen years, I’ve been reading the 8th Habit by Stephen Covey, and the spin-off books like The Four Disciplines of execution, 4-DX and during the previous four years the 12 Week Year.

I’ve tried and tested these practices in my work, and I’ve got a good gut feel for how it works.

In the last year, the team I mentioned earlier got thrown together for the Coworking Assembly projects.

We’ve had hundreds of people show up to our online events, posted podcasts, blogs and sent newsletters. 

We’ve done the COVID pandemic, and the members who are in the Philippines have been through a few severe typhoon storms. 

We’ve worked it out as we’ve gone along, Jeannine and I have very rarely said out lout ‘here is the plan’, but we always know what is going on. 

We call it ‘flock of birds management style’ – maybe this is a real thing?

We’ve managed to make many ideas happen and have an above-average group of good people around us.

How to open a bank

One of those good people is Alex, the founder of our bank, and he was kind enough to let Jeannine and I in on the action. 

While I’ve spent the last four years wandering around shouting about 12 Week Years and StoryBrand to anyone in the coworking world who would listen; Alex and Jeannine have been sitting at the bar in the Hard Rock Cafe in Amsterdam. 

They mapped out the customer journey and bottlenecks for onboarding new members in a coworking space on the back of Hard Rock Cafe napkins.

When they got bored with that, they scribbled the design for a platform for freelancers, online collaborators, and digital nomad people to get paid and send money worldwide. 

Which led us here, to PayPugs, Velvet and Cowork.tools. 

Alex and Jeannine got the tech built, set up all the banking licences for different countries, so now we can trade worldwide – holy hell balls! 

In our Riga HQ, we have a tech and salespeople team who build and sell at the speed of master-builders in the Lego movie. 

The Speed of Trust

Not only is Speed of Trust the title of another Covey book, but it is how our company moves. 

It did occur to me that I did not have panic attacks; it was the sheer G-force (top gun) of how fast the whole fucking thing moves. 

Another thing that makes the air clearer is a deep commitment and understanding of inclusion, equality and accessibility. 

Even before we were doing things at this scale, we worked on projects that had this as the DNA, one of our earliest outings on this the Cobot coworking code of conduct. 

As a white male living in London, I don’t have many struggles, but I am dyslexic, get confused and don’t ask for help until the last minute. 

And it is ok to say this out loud, I mean we have to get the work done and all. 

But taking care of people is already an explicit part of our culture, even before we’ve written it all down. 

I am keen to say seventy per cent of our company is female and from all over the globe.

And this is reflected in the leadership team too. 

What puts me off tech companies

Something that has always put me off tech companies is the macho male pissing contest that occurs no matter what it says on the website. 

So I am delighted to be working in a mainly female team. 

The Mother of all 12 Weeks 

Those of you who have been here for a while know what a raving fan I am of the 12 Week year concept. 

Every Monday morning for four years, my accountability partner Karen and I have had a weekly call where we check in share:

What we did

What we are going to do 

What is in our way

When we come back in January, I’ll be shaping up for the most significant planning and 12 Week goals yet. 

Bring it on.