DON’T GET TRAPPED IN NO MAN’S LAND – CHRISTINE NICHOLSON
Another inspiring conversation on the Zero to 5000 Podcast today.
We were joined by Christine Nicholson, a co-founder of numerous businesses and current Business Mentor
We discussed:
– The importance of staying curious
– “letting go” it counts in your business and your personal life
– Getting trapped in no man’s land with Idea man
– Making the shift from accident to on purpose
– You can manage processes and activity but you can’t manage people or time
Listen here: Scroll below to read the stranscript!
Host(s)
Founders welcome back to the Zero to 5000 podcasts, where we obsess over the convergence of human potential and business results. Today, our hosts, Drew McClure and Jordan Mitchell, have another insightful conversation for you, so let’s jump in.
Welcome back to the podcast. Today I’m sitting down with Christine Nicholson, founder of a fast-growing company specialising in succession advisory for business owners. Christine was the UK business mentor of the year and a global top 50 woman in accounting in 2020. She has received the highest professional accreditation as a business mentor for Good Reasons. From her 25 plus years of experience running companies in multiple sectors like that of finance and consulting to also her rescuing a bankrupt company and exiting multiple successful businesses of her own, not only being a successful businesswoman, Christine is also an author of four books. Christina is a woman of many talents and clearly knows a thing or two about building a biz?
Here to share in all of her experiences and lessons learned is Christine Nicholson. So Christine my new friend. Let’s get started. Thank you for being here.
Christine
Oh, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks very much and it’s great to talk to somebody in America who understands soccer.
Host(s)
Well, we’re still growing. I would say we’re in the teenage years as a country of getting to understand soccer. At least it isn’t a complete joke right now, but we’re making some strides. So normally like I told you before we started recording we would start just with the company you’re currently running here in the origin story of a bit, I would be remiss not to get a little bit more of your back story with the amount of businesses you’ve run and or helped in the last 25 years. So how did you even get into this?
A whole world of business and business mentorship and all of those things. If you don’t mind me asking.
Christine
OK, and so the first thing is that yes, I was a co-founder of succession plus, but I don’t work with them anymore. I got that business started and have subsequently moved on.
I’d love to say there’s been loads of planning and you know, I’m exactly where I thought it would be. Trust me, 10 yrs ago I didn’t know I was going to be here. I didn’t plan to be here, I’m just here. And although I do know that going from here forward, I’ve got to grips with the whole concept of planning and doing now.
But you know my first job was working in the banking sector, which was 3 1/2 soul sucking years. And if I ever think about going back to having a job, I just remember working in a bank and that really cleans away any desires to go back there!
Then I did five years in the military. I was in the Women’s Royal Naval Service and that was fantastic, I would have been there for life if it hadn’t been for them (the Royal Navy) deciding to take what was a shore-based support and send us to sea! I get chronically seasick, so all of a sudden I had to think about a new career. And maybe owning and running businesses just seemed like an exciting thing to do. I didn’t really know an awful lot about it formally, so I went and learned. As with everything, when you’re constantly learning and constantly asking curious questions. Things kind of turn up.
Host(s)
Yeah, so let’s start there. Let’s start at the end of your Navy career. What were you thinking coming out? Was it hey? I don’t want to go back to work in a job, I’d rather try my hand at starting my own and then where did you start that learning curve?
Christine
Actually I have to say leaving the Navy I had not got the first idea about what I was going to do and I didn’t really know what I was capable of. But I did get a really good piece of advice which was get a professional qualification ’cause they can never take that away from you.
So I started studying being an accountant and just actually taking jobs that sounded interesting, I took some risks, you know I went to work in Russia for a Russian company. I also worked for a French company, did all sorts of different things. But the minute I got bored I would move on, because I was still trying to figure out what it was that I that I wanted to do. I was going to night school to study to be an accountant. I was surrounded by accountants that all looked very pale, and grey, and haggard and miserable! I just kept on looking at them, thinking there’s no way I want to spend my life doing that.
I then got very lucky. I surrounded myself with people who’d taken the leap and started their own businesses. And I’m fascinated by inventors, and I think because I’m curious around the invention process, I just ended up working with a number of inventors. Some of them were properly crazy.
But they had invented something really unique and that started to turn the cogs in my brain. The people who invented these things, these products and these exciting business opportunists aren’t usually the people who are best at running the business. One thing that I’m pretty good at is solving problems and creating order out of chaos. So that became my superpower and I never really looked back.
Host(s)
So did you start with them as kind of your first go at it? Taking some people with crazy, talented and brilliant but helping them build a business around it.
Christine
Absolutely. I started to work with a guy who had invented something in his garage and he took that on and sold it to an American company for 10s of millions of dollars and he left the business he bought in a management team. The Americans then brought in some more management and actually bought some real structure to the organisation.
I worked for a family company that had over the years built their business. Kind of really haphazardly. It was a bit like kids building SIM towns with Lego bricks. You know every time they saw a little hole somewhere they either filled it, in a haphazard way or they went and acquired a company to fill that gap.
They were 4th generation, so they were now sorry, the 4th generation who didn’t want anything to do with this crazy pile of stuff. They were off to university, becoming doctors and lawyers and accountants. So we spent 4 1/2 years bundling 40 businesses up into little packages. So then I mean the sale price on them was half a billion pounds in total over a number of packages. When I walked out, I was literally the last one at the building, I switched the light off and then I had my own capital.
I just thought you know what, I can do this and I’d also built a huge connection of people who, having sold their business, now had a lot of money in their pocket. So I took my money and even more of their money, and then I did something that you don’t hear of these days. I knocked on the door of the bank and said, hey, I’ve got this business idea. Will you lend me some millions and they went of course, how many millions do you want like? It just doesn’t happen these days, so it’s one of those things that I think one of the key factors around success is timing and I’ve been incredibly blessed with a lot of really good timing.
Host(s)
Accidental timing or intentional timing?
Christine
I’d say it’s about 5050. I’d like to say I’m cleverer than that, but I’m not.
Host(s)
Is there any way to increase the chances of accidental timing, right? Like you think about luck and we talk about, well, there’s ways you can increase luck. You know if you if you’re more prepared. Luck seems to find you more often. Do you think? How do you think about timing in that way?
Christine
Oh well, you said the word earlier which was curiosity. You can get luckier, the more curiosity you have, the more opportunities you’ll see, the more opportunities you see, the more opportunities you’ll take. And if you think about it, nine out of ten things that you do in life you will not succeed at. You might get by if you’re lucky, but uhm, you know!
So ’cause there’s you know there’s success, and there’s kind of failure and then there’s this kind of messy, but in the middle messy and most people are in that messy bit in the middle. Where they’re not really super succeeding, but they’re not really failing either. They might be, you know, hanging on by their fingernails, but they’re in this middleware. It’s kind of no man’s land, and you can be very happy there a lot of really successful people have. They’ve succeeded on the back of lots and lots of failure. I think it was something Will Smith who said, fail fast, find out what’s not working and then stop doing it. Find out what is working and keep doing more of that.
Host(s)
Yeah, that no man’s land scares me. No, it’s it scares me more than the failure it used to be. This failure scared me the most, but I found myself at that idea that kind of work, works and it’s getting by, but it’s not really achieving what you want it to achieve and that can almost be a longer trap to fall into because it’s technically working.
You know you’re like, hey there is money coming in but you almost get held in this waiting pattern of like I think it’s really going to turn around. It’s really going to turn around and it doesn’t. Versus if you just failed and found out it wasn’t a good idea and then went on to experimenting with a new one, right?
Christine
Couldn’t agree with you more and The thing is that messy middle can be really comfortable. Because you know people can get comfortable by getting by. Because they kind of pat themselves on the back and say hey but you know I managed to make payroll this month or hey, you know I managed to pay all my bills this month and you’re keeping the wolf from the door so you’re not moving forward. You don’t even recognise that you’re stuck ’cause there’s there’s. There’s only two directions that there’s. You’re either moving forward or you’re moving backwards. It’s just most people don’t recognise that they’re moving backwards.
Host(s)
Yeah, have you, do you know? Have you ever heard of Doctor Michael Beckwith? He’s a beautiful soul out in the out in the world and he just has this phrase that I heard actually was like on a on Oprah, They come where he talked about pain will push you until promise pulls you and he was messing with these two forces that I’ve really come to believe in that early on in a person journey. It’s usually the pain that’s pushing you, personal life falling apart like that’s the initial catalyst. That kind of moves you forward, but there’s eventually a handoff supposed to be happening where it stops being about pain. That’s the thing that’s pushing you. Instead, it’s a greater vision that almost ahead of you that is pulling you, but I’ve noticed that messy middle is where you’re almost free of both influences where pain you’re. You’re just as far enough away from pain. Like you said you’re comfortable. You can pay the bills, but nothing is calling to you. There’s nothing really moving you forward and you exist in that that moment, so you slide far enough back to where pain gets you again. They’re like, alright, I gotta get going. Yeah, but that’s that’s how I think about the messy middles. It’s kind of between those two influences. Do you see it similarly?
Christine
Absolutely, and I think it’s it’s almost.
Christine
As if you know, there’s no imperative like there’s no purpose and you can wake up, and I’ve done this.
Christine
Yeah, several times where you just wake up and you go.
Christine
What’s the point in this? You know, where am I going? And you’re suddenly aware that you’re almost kind of jogging along to stand still! And then that can be quite a depressing moment because all of a sudden you realise that you’re not actually being driven by a particular purpose and you know there, there’s the reason why. Hope is the last thing out of Pandora’s box and it’s ’cause when you start to lose hope or sight of hope. Then you know life becomes pretty miserable and I almost think that that’s the point at which you lose your curiosity. I love that word, but you when you lose your curiosity, it’s obviously that’s the beginning of you losing sight of your purpose.
Host(s)
Yeah, well, I’m so glad you brought that back up. ’cause that’s where my next question was going to go. I think you hit the nail on the head. That curiosity seems to be a key ingredient in so many things in life, like business, but also friendships relationships. You know, like art, creativity, all of it not from curiosity, but it’s often rare or like it’s easy. It’s easy to not be curious anymore, and so my question would be, do you have in your mind as we play with that concept for a minute, what you think the enemy to curiosity would be like? What stands in the way from us being more regularly curious?
Christine
Fear and it’s usually fear of ridicule or fear of rejection. And or actually not believing that people like you can do that kind of thing.
So I am one of those people who in the past has said I’m not creative, I’m just not one of those creative people. I get things done and I’m actually quite ashamed of using that kind of phraseology, ’cause it’s kind of lazy. Because anybody who’s curious can be creative, and creativity doesn’t mean you’re being Picasso or writing a great screenplay, being Shakespeare and all of those kind of things. And you know, being creative can be the same as as getting things done. Being creative is problem solving, it’s actually taking the time to think deeply rather than just cast your thoughts over the surface of things. So I think people get caught up in what creativity isn’t, but if you can sit and think, you can solve problems in innovative ways then, you have the curiosity to ask the questions in the 1st place. Then you’re creative!
Host(s)
It’s beautiful, I want to come. I want to come back to that, but before I lose my train of thought, the question I had when you said. There was a time that maybe that fear that we’re talking about dominated you, those those kind of insecurities and doubts, how did you escape that? Or how did you work with that in a way where you felt like that was no longer, at least a dominating presence holding you back?
Christine
Two things, I got myself a really fantastic coach and he he was amazing. He was strong enough to really call out all the BS that was going on in my head and then the second thing is, you’ve heard of Monty Python haven’t you? OK, so one of the pythons is John Cleese he’s this very tall, angular man, who, I think he’s most famous for doing Ministry of Silly Walks and he’s brilliant at it. He actually is a professor and lectures on creativity I went to see his lecture it’s on YouTube. It’s from the 1990s and he says there’s five things about creativity that you need. Space, so having a space that you can sit in the quality of time. You know completely undisturbed. The quantity of time a defined moment in of time, typically 90 minutes. And space time, actually believing that you can have creative thought during that time and then the final one was humour. He said because when you take yourself too seriously and you’re very solemn. He said salinity is like wasted. It’s a bit like guilt and regret. You know you can chew yourself up at it, but it was the point I saw him do that. Talk for 45 minutes and it just chimed in my head that’s what my business coach had said. All of a sudden it was like a little light bulb went on, I’d been telling myself I’m not creative and I’ve been telling myself people like me don’t do things like that. But all of that was learned behaviour from someone telling me, The minute I stop believing what everybody else says and start to really ask myself questions, being curious about, well, actually how. How is it that people like me don’t do these things? People like me do all sorts of things, there’s nothing that’s not possible. And you know, Einstein is attributed with a lot of things, but I’m pretty sure he actually said, if you can think it, it will be. Sorry if you can think it it can be. If you can imagine it, you can create it.
Host(s)
That’s so beautiful. Well, you touched on what I think is one of the biggest life changing kind of watershed moments in a person’s life, if they’re lucky enough to have it, which is going from who they’ve always been an accident. To who they could be on purpose. And most of us. This was me at 30 years old. I felt like I was waking up for the first time from autopilot and my reactions, my beliefs, my confidence, or lack thereof, was all just a reaction. It was all just I don’t know how where this came from, but I just don’t think I’m creative to be your example or I don’t think I’m a gym person or whatever.
The thing is, I’m not disciplined. I’m not this and it was like, alright, well, I haven’t really thought about any of those things and made my own conclusion. I just adopted them, my parents, my pain, my past, my peers, all of those things just created who I am today and I just had this thought of like life or circumstances. Having a pin and writing my story and that pin. Just being in my hand. And going like what do I want? To write? Like, do I want to get better at something I could write that out as a character in my own story? I could apply myself to this, but emotionally it was very difficult mentally at least it clicked like, oh, I could make this shift from on accident to on purpose. And then who knows what’s possible, right?
Christine
I know that’s awesome I I’m really glad that you had that kind of experience and yeah well.
Host(s)
Well then I woke up realised I was overweight. I was anxious, I was flatlining in my career. I felt like I was starting to get panic attacks, you know, like it was it was, luckily enough emotional turmoil for me to go what the Hell’s going on? And it kind of created a wake up for me!
Christine
Yes, I wouldn’t wish all that other stuff on anybody but I’m pleased you had the wake up experience because many people just don’t or they’re in such toxic environments that they never hear how amazing they are. I mean, if you just think about it, every single one of us human beings is a billion billion billion accidents. Like to be as amazing as we are and I mean let’s get this straight. As human beings, we are hideous. We are hideous to each other, we’re hideous to the planet, were hideous to the flora, the fauna you know, we have great propensity to just be hideous, but actually if you think about it look at all the propensity that we also have for creating joy, and light, and happiness, and and creating real greatness in the world. I think from an entrepreneurs perspective, you take, you know, actually taking the leap to not only take control of your own journey, but then to lead others along that path and that journey, knowing that you are going to be the one doing the backbreaking work of laying the road for other people to walk on. It’s just extraordinary and most entrepreneurs don’t think of themselves as doing that and therefore miss identifying in themselves the great value that they bring in and offer to to themselves to their families, to their ecosystems, to society and communities at large.
Host(s)
It reminds me I’ve got to talk to you about an opportunity after this, so I’m already liking you so much. I’m like man, I gotta get you to collaborate on this thing we’re working on. What you said earlier about the propensity for what’s inside of us. The propensity for great good, or the propensity for great destruction, right? There’s actually a line from this old Kung Fu movie that I only know about because it was a line in a song from a band I love and I was like where’d they get that line from an old Kung Fu movie. But the line is simple, it says the coward and the hero marched together inside of every man.
Yes, and that you could exchange the words the ******* and the benevolent marched together instead of every man the the generous and the stingy marks marches together inside of every woman you know it’s like, yeah, it’s right there. There’s a Native American parable where it talks about this Cherokee grant. Elder talking to his grandson talking about life and he tells him the inside of every person is a light wolf and a dark one. Wolf and the Dark wolf is bitterness, anger, hatred and jealousy. The white wolf is love, kindness, goodness, and the grandson asks Grandpa which Wolf wins and the Cherokee responded. Which one you feed the most.
Christine
Yes, yes, I love that story
Host(s)
Ha ha, it’s so good and amazing. So, that’s what makes me think of when you talk about that and and feeding being on a path to saying, like I realise the humility is realising both exists inside of us. The accountability, I think, rests on us getting to choose which one we feed. Right?
Christine
And that’s really important. I say this to every client without exception and because they’ll always at some point say what? What do you think I should do? I’m going, it’s your life. You get to choose and it’s the same whether you’re running your own business, whether you’re in a job and you know it, everybody wakes up with exactly the same number of minutes to go ahead of them in the next day and every day you can make a new decision and you can choose the direction that you go.
And you know, sometimes those choices are harder, and sometimes they’re easier. Sometimes they’re gonna make you happier, and you know sometimes they’re going to cause pain, not just to yourself but to others too. They may be the decision for the greater good, and it’s up to you to take them. Nobody is guiding your hand.
Host(s)
Well, they might be, but you gotta take that ownership back, right? If we’re letting life and everything around us guide our hand, it’s like man we’ve given away the most precious thing we have, which is our ability to choose. That’s the only thing I got. You know, like everything else in negotiation between me and life and negotiation between me and other people. But my ability to choose is really the only thing that’s my real estate in this life. I want to circle back to the creativity conversation before we. We kind of put it into this part, but those five things you mentioned are so beautiful and I want to get back to. I think it was John Cleese that you talked about, which was to be able to sit and have quality focus. To me, I was actually like scared when I realised how diminished that capacity had gotten at a certain point that I would like, think back on the same kind of project I was doing you know 10 years earlier end of college early 20s. I could sit and think about something for hours and then maybe with social media addiction. Fast paced world, instant gratification. It was getting harder and harder for me to sit down and do deep work like Cal Newport talks about like being able to speak
Christine
Oh yeah, I love that book.
Host(s)
I do too and that’s why I want to ask you about it, ’cause it’s been on my radar for a while, but I’m really getting into it. Realising like so much of the actual value that any business can create comes from the other side of some kind of deep focus. But that is getting harder and harder to actually have, so any tips or any thoughts you have on how we can combat that. Amount of attention span that we have and start to actually increase our capacity for deep focus again.
Christine
Absolutely. So you might not have a cupboard you can go in sitting and I know that’s going to sound extreme, but I have a colleague who has a note on the outside of his office door so he’s leading a sizable multimillion pound business and the and the note on the outside of his door says “do not disturb unless the building is on fire and you want to be fired” You get one chance at disturbing him, and then you’re fired. But the building actually has to be on fire for you to open that door, and it’s having that discipline of the phone is off the hook.
Let’s say we put together a 90 minute, you know we’re going to do 90 minutes work. And and you’re getting used to this, like for the first 10 minutes you’re going to be making sure you’ve got a cup of tea or coffee and you’re going to be fussing about with the stuff on your desk. You’re going to be making sure that you’ve switched everything off and put some such stuff outside. OK, so now you’ve got rid of some of the surface level.
Now your brain, which is running in fear of having to do focus ’cause it ain’t used to this, and it’s a muscle you’ve got to exercise. It’s now going to start bombarding you with well, what about that call that you got to make this afternoon? And what about the dishwasher that needs to be emptied? So dishwasher is my favourite thing like if I’m trying to do some deep focus, there is something on my shoulder that says “dishwashing” yeah, but actually if you just give it about 20 minutes your brain just stops it. Honestly, it gives up! It has no, Uhm well, I can’t think of the word. Endurance? Your brain has no endurance for this, so after about 20 minutes it will give up. Then you can get on with with it. And the reason why you set yourself a specific period of time is and you can use a timer, because then you don’t have to look at your phone or look at the watch or anything like that.
Host(s)
That’s why I got this guy right here.
Christine
Yes, Oh yes, absolutely brilliant. Because now you know that you’re not going to miss anything. ’cause the alarm is going to go off. But the first time you do it, it’s horrendous. It’s a bit like, so I go camping and I do solo camping where I’m in the forest, in a tent on my own. No light, no electricity, no watch, no phone, no book, no stimulus at all. Oh, and no hot and cold running water or flushing toilet either. OK, so it’s properly in the forest, me in the trees and whatever while.
Host(s)
Just described my wife’s nightmare right there. That would be her nightmare.
Christine
10 years ago that would have been would have been mine, but now I’d do it three or four times a year and it in honestly for the first hour you’ve pitched your tent and you’ve got yourself all sorted. And now you’re sat there and you’re thinking, wow, and you really haven’t got anything to do ’cause you’d be in the middle of the forest. I mean, you don’t need to get a broom out and start sweeping up so your brain then just takes in all the stimulus that’s offered by nature, and I have to say the first time I did it, that’s a scary old thing to do. But you just tell your brain to calm down. You know what I’m so curious to see if you’ve found a similar observation as I have, but in the last year.
Host(s)
I’ve been doing what we call these peak performance boot camps for fast growing companies. Really, I had to phrase it in a way that they would bite. You know it is about peak performance, but really it’s all their people were burning out and turnover is high. You know feeling stressed out, overwhelmed whatever and so we got in there just to try to raise the IQ. Get some habits and things they love all of it except when I start recommending that they spend 90 minutes to two hours of their eight hour, 10 hour day on uninterrupted focus time. It was just interesting they’ll adopt everything else. They’re all about the morning habits. They’re all about even taking small breaks in the day and different things.
But when I start talk about the brain that it needs focus and that you need to be able to do highest priority, most important works with undivided, no emails not being interrupted by teammates, whatever. They also had this one person pushed back on me. The CEO live in the training until he was only one to instead of 90 minutes. He we got down to 15 minutes. I kept saying when could we start? Could we start an hour? No, no. There’s too much urgent stuff going on. There’s too much collaboration needed. I got down to 15 minutes I was like, man, but it’s just so interesting. Like where the pushback is. Maybe it’s an American culture or whatever is like that sounds nice.
Host(s)
But like we can’t do that, you don’t understand the amount of things happening that need to be responded to right now. We can’t do that.
Christine
Do you know what my response to that is? It’s really interesting ’cause it was a chief exec, If you’re reacting, you’re not leading. So, if you’re reacting, who’s leading? You can only lead if you can focus and that focus time. It’s what I call $10,000 an hour work. And when you start putting that kind of price ticket on it, ’cause the things that will create $10,000 an hour for you come in that deep work time. It’s almost a double whammy of well this is going to create the ideas and innovation that’s going to generate you £10,000 for per per hour and you are wishy washing around in the weeds, which is like last time I looked that was $20.00 an hour work.
Host(s)
Right!
Christine
And so do you want to be down there reacting? Or do you want to be up here leading?
Host(s)
Well, in fairness, probably the mistake I made was I didn’t have that conversation to buy in with him first. I was just surprised like I didn’t know that be where the major pushback was. Otherwise I would reserve that, but it was because it was for his whole team we were talking about. Like, hey, I’d encourage you to start thinking about an hour to two of your day. That is deep focus I think it just scared him, actually was her.
Her and versus like starting with her and like getting her to wrap her mind around creating that time for herself and then thinking through the cascading effect in the organisation. But I just noticed like everything else was easily adoptable and then that one was like wait a minute. Don’t mess with our time. You know what I mean?
Christine
Yeah, absolutely. I bet you found that they had previously done some kind of time management training and the the crazy thing is there are two things that you can’t manage. You can’t manage people and you can’t manage time. You can manage processes, that’s it. You can manage processes, but you can’t manage people and you can’t manage time.
Host(s)
Break that down for me. What do you mean by you can’t manage time.
Christine
So well, time is what time is, you know you can manage your activity during a period of time, but you’re managing your activity. You’re not managing time at all. You can manage your productivity during a period of time, but the only thing that’s changing is you, time isn’t changing and I’m very aware that if you want to get into a kind of philosophical, physical, the laws of physics and all that kind of stuff that. Time can be very elastic, but it’s actually the perception of time that’s elastic. It’s the perception that you can manage time because you’re not managing time at all. You’re managing yourself and you’re managing your behaviour.
Host(s)
As you’re moving through time, right? it’s fascinating!
The last thing that I just wanted to hear you touch on, maybe for a second, was number 5 out of the five things that that person recommended was, that playfulness and again, the times that I’ve like almost been militant. Not in my discipline, it’s like you have to have a militant edge to your discipline. You’re going to show up and do the writing or show up and do the work. But once you’re there, if you don’t change from militant to almost like dancing or curiosity. I like to picture the muse, you know, I know it’s old school like the muse is wanting to dance with you is wanting to, play with you some and you’re like, oh, we gotta be serious it it I don’t know I just thought that was so interesting that he mentioned that fifth one. What war did he use as playful humour, humour?
Christine
Humour, yeah now humorous yeah yeah. And you know ’cause he talks about? Well obviously he’s a comedian, but he does talk about the the fact that we’re trying if we try and take ourselves too seriously then we lose that it’s almost like we’re sticking our brain in a corset. Stopping it moving, stopping it breathing, when actually what we need to do is to coin a phrase is dumb is to let our brain oh hang out. You know, I don’t know where this phrase comes from. I know what it brings to mind, but you know, just hang loose and actually just let go.
Host(s)
Yeah, I think this is perfect ’cause it brings up surfing culture right to let your brain surf for a little bit.
Christine
And actually yeah, you just have a laugh. I mean one of the things that this is going to make me sound completely ridiculous now, but you know, one of the things if I find myself taking things a bit too serious. Actually, I just go and watch a 3 minute clip of the minions called bananas like, I mean honestly, YouTube it minions bananas. It’s ridiculous. It’s about 3 minutes, 15 seconds. It has me laughing at about second four. Mainly ’cause I know what’s coming and it just find him really really funny. And then if I watch that, I find that my productivity goes through the ceiling and I can really get on with the work that I need to be doing. It just kind of takes off the constraints. Yeah, so finding something that you can laugh at is usually a good start.
Host(s)
I love it. Well this is the part of the conversation that, I’ve been kind of leading the curiosity questions and topics so far, but we asked you before the podcast to think of your answer to this. If there is one thing that you’re currently passionate about sharing with our audience that you think would accelerate either their professional life, their business growth, or their personal growth, what would that be right now?
Christine
It’s 2 words, “letting go” and it counts in your business and it counts in your personal life. So, if you just think about those words, because they can mean different things for different people, and it can mean it every day. Even if you think about letting go of the the stranglehold that you might have on your business every day. Just thinking, about letting go might actually be different than taking a different approach or even thinking of different things. But if you think about holding a really tiny baby bird in your hand. If you close your fingers round it, the baby bird might actually still be if it’s tiny enough, it might still be in the palm of your hand and you can feel its heart beating and it’s beating thousand 1000 beats a minute I think is pretty much what they say right? You might not think that you’re killing it but when you undo your fingers, the baby bird won’t fly away. It will die and its heart will stop. Because it had gotten used to the comfort of being in your fist and this similar thing happens in your business and can happen in your life if you’re so busy trying to control everything that it’s in the centre of your fist. When you start to let go then nothing is going to fly away immediately ’cause it won’t. Trust you, you know your staff won’t trust the fact that you’re not going to close your fist again. So it’s letting go is like exercising a muscle and it’s not just in you, it’s also in this consistence that allows your staff, your team, your entire ecosystem to recognise that you’re letting go and that those fingers aren’t going to grab back and it can be on your personal life as well. Though there will be things that you try and control, that you’re kind of going to lose the fight, but it’s better to go with than hold on to.
Host(s)
Man, I was just talking to a friend about this yesterday, so I’m smiling just because you’re bringing this up and life seems to be putting it in my face again, but I mentioned earlier panic attacks and things like that like anxiety has had a place in my story for as long as I can remember, and one of the things most recently I’ve been playing with that’s been helping me the most is actually the unconscious attachment I have to anxiety. And as much as I don’t like it that some part of me is actually holding onto it and I was telling this person like man, I think in a lot of freedom of just saying every time it pops up like I’m letting you go like I’m letting that part of my story go like there’s normal anxiety and I want that because that’s just part of the human spectrum of emotions. But the over attachment to. I’m an anxious person. Or Oh no, I feel this pressure again. The past is going to repeat itself and just going. I’m letting you go and I realised that anxiety was actually there because of a lot of things in life I try to control. I need to know the future. I need to see how everything is going to turn out. I need to always be vigilant and and and not opening my hands up so I don’t know what really the question is other than I’m in the middle of learning that right now. So I am your student, help me!
Christine
I think you know, if you think about, have you ever been tubing?
Host(s)
Yes, right down uh river tubing you mean?
Christine
Yeah, I went tubing in Texas and I had no idea what tubing was and ’cause I was with a whole bunch of Americans who knew that I didn’t know what tubing was. They kind of started making up stories about what they do. So by the time I got to this blessid tube in place I had no idea and I was quite terrified. Because they’d made it into this bigger thing. But if you think about tubing, OK, you’ve got your tube, that someone else has blown up for you. So first volume you’re relying on when that tube hits the river before you jump into it, that it is going to float. And then you jump in the river is going to take you wherever the river goes, and you kind of got a vague idea of where you know where you’re starting and you got a vague idea of where it’s going to end. Let’s face it, the guy owns the tubes, so he’s going to want to fish them out at the end. So he now also got an indication of a certain level of security.
Host (s)
Right?
Christine
Someone’s gonna come and fish you out. They’re not going to let you float away forever. Then everything else about tubing, the real fun is to sit back, I was gobsmacked because there was like little tubes that had cool boxes in them full of beer and I’m like Oh my God this is genius like I just couldn’t believe it. I honestly thought I thought I’d died and gone to heaven because this for me.
It’s like you’re in a tube. You can’t do anything until someone pushes you out, but there’s beer. I don’t drink now, but beer used to have quite good place in my life. You just think so, tubings actually a really good analogy for a certain amount of letting go. Is great fun, but there is still parameters like there is a river and you know you can only hit the bank. You can go down the middle and someone’s going to fish you out at the end. So there’s a certain amount of of security, and if you can start living life a bit like that, then like oh, and if you haven’t been anybody who’s listening to this and it hasn’t been tubing you’ve gotta go, ’cause it’s so much fun.
Host(s)
I love that analogy, and especially because you can navigate the river to some degree. You know and avoid. Maybe if you see a giant rock coming like how do I go around that and there? But like I said, ultimately there is an aspect of going with the flow that I have been rejecting like I’m wanting to make like, I mean, my therapist is amazing. He said you are striving too hard to secure victory and he’s like, man, you’re an athlete like remember when like if you had this approach to the game you were playing, would it help you or hurt you? I was a good hurt if I was if I was striving this hard, I would not be trusting myself. I wouldn’t be in the flow of the game. All that kind of stuff he’s like. Yeah man, like you’re not just handling the moment as it arises and going you know it’s not. You can’t direct your future with steps and goals and those kinds of things, but he’s like you are just too tightly wound up around this and I was like wow, it is so similar to that like what’s the difference in that tube ride being terrifying and unenjoyable versus exhilarating and enjoyable. The only difference is probably whether you realised you were safe and to kick back and relax and enjoy the time right the perspective.
Christine
Yeah, it’s a bit like literally watching your foot steps spending so much time focusing where your feet are that you don’t actually look up and see what great view or great Vista is! Actually just take a moment to breathe and enjoy it, because you know, take it from my personal experience. Life is fragile and it can be incredibly short. But it’s also way too long to be miserable. I don’t think that I think sometimes, we kind of have as human beings , we’re really good at sucking the joy out of things. Like I left school at 16 and I went to work for a bank for 3 1/2 years trust me, I learned everything about how to suck the soul out of things by working for a bank. Like if I ever think, oh, you know, maybe I don’t want to do this anymore and will I go and get a job? I just go straight back to. I mean it was 40 years ago. Now 40 years ago this year I started working for a bank and I can still remember how horrid that was and I am never gonna work for anybody ever again.
Host(s)
I love that. Oh well, this has been so good. My final question, just to wrap that part of the conversation up, would be if you’re listening to this, especially if you’re a CEO or an early stage founder right now and you’re like I am totally white knuckling my life in this business and I need to start to learn at the very beginning. I need to start to learn to let go. Is there anywhere you would say start here? Like you said, you don’t really go overnight just now I’m open handed with everything and where do we start? How do we start letting go?
Christine
So there’s a book that I recommend to all of my clients, no matter how big or small they are, I mean, we’re talking about single coaches starting off the first time or or chief execs of multimillion dollar turnover companies. It’s the E myth or the E myth revisited by Michael Gerber. It can be read in less than two hours. It’s a conversational piece, but it will tell you everything about that starting to let go. And whilst it is focused on business, it can actually apply to your to your life. Because ultimately when if your business is your life, then actually go you’ve you’ve got problems ’cause at some point you will leave your business and it’s just a matter of when and it’ll be. Whether it’s by choice or whether it’s something that happens to you and I always talk about before when I call them the four horsemen of the business, Apocalypse, death, disease, disability, and divorce. Four things that can happen to you if you do not plan. More than 50% of all business owners one of those things happens to them. And so yeah, the E myth is is my single go to just to get started about thinking about letting go.
Host(s)
It’s so good and I love that you brought that up ’cause so I like to ask if there’s a book that you recommend and so the E myth revisited game changer I remember actually my co-founder now telling me about the first time you read it and all of the changes starting with how he thought about business and thought about life that was it was having on him.
Christine
If you ever hear Michael Gerber speak once you’ve heard him speaking, and I’m very lucky to have heard him speak live, he was over here in the UK and when I read the book, I can I read it with his voice in my head. So yeah, he’s a character.
Host(s)
I need it. Well, I need to do that ’cause I like. I like having the author’s voice in my head. The character of it, the nuances of it. You know the tone, so I need to cheque him out. We were about to dive into the Lightning round questions, but I want to make sure I did capture this.
What are you currently doing now? Is there a current company that you that you’re running? Or are you simply doing the mentor, advisor, Coach role for a variety of companies at this point?
Christine
No, so I I run something called Nicholson Hall Advisory Limited and it’s a combination of I do mentoring. I do business assessments and valuations and I and I can do that internationally and then also I I do exit in succession planning, consulting work. Usually for clients who are way into their exit plans and an exit journey, about 80% of what I do is is business mentoring and it’s what makes my heart sing.
Host(s)
I love it, so if you if someone listening to this wanted to work with you in one of those capacities, where should we send them?
Christine
OK so my website isbusinessmentoruk.com and even though it is business Mentor UK, I do work globally. Have clients all over the world and I’m getting used to working in different time zones, although I keep getting it the wrong way. my e-mail is christine@christinenicholson.co.uk, but the best thing is to contact me through my website www.businessmentoruk.com
Host(s)
Perfect well if you if you have the need of any of the services you just listed, I would highly recommend you sent her that e-mail and go to her website. Christine. Five more questions and then I will let you get about your day.
So question number one if you could ingrain one message into your entire organisation, what would that be?
Why does that come to mind?
Christine
I think it’s just nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. And kindness I just think it’s one of those things where people go. You know, that’ll never make my business worth more. Now your business worth much more if you’re just have being kind. In in your culture, and it doesn’t mean being a walk over. Just means being kind.
Host(s)
Being a decent human being, you know.
Christine
Yes,
Host(s)
Yeah, I mean just I imagine the hard to quantify, but the real impact that has on customer service on the amount of complaints or grace that someone gives you or who wants a network with you who actually wants to hear your idea a lot comes from how do I feel when I’m around you so?
Christine
Absolutely yeah, and that is that. How do you feel when people around you who say, uh, Angelina, not Angelina Jolie. It’s not her at all. Maya Angelou People won’t remember what you said they won’t remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel.
Host(s)
Dang, that is really good. OK question, 2 is kind of a two parter.What is the single best advice you’ve gotten about growing a business? And also what was the worst advice?
Christine
Oh God, that’s a toughy and so that single piece of best advice that ones easy peasy. Because everyone else has taken quote from Oscar Wilde. Worst piece of advice. Well, actually now this is a goodie, I was asked in an interview once. Where would you want to be in 10 years time? I told him, you know, I need to be running my own consultancy etc anyway and he said I think you should revise your dreams. And I thought, OK, I’m not going to get this job, so I stood up and went, don’t you tell me how to dream. I will dream my dreams regardless and so worst piece of advice is I think you ought to revise your dreams. Yeah yeah, yeah!
Host(s)
And if there’s a movie about your life one day, that’ll be one of the best scenes in it. I love that. That’s so good.
OK 3, what causes you the most stress or worry currently leading your organisation right now?
Christine
I’m having to stop myself from saying yes to clients who are just not good for me because I’m so much of a fixer. So I have to hold myself back and then when I occasionally let myself go, it’s my team that picks up pieces.
Host(s)
Yeah, well said we could. We could have packed that earlier maybe. Well if we get you back on here that would be a great conversation to have.
OK, 4 Speaking of big dreams, what is your big hairy audacious goal or whatever version of a how you think about the exciting future for yourself? What’s the big dream you have for you or your organisation?
Christine
It’s not gonna be too long before I’m in my 60s and my goal in my 60s is to be a part time business mentor, a part time author, a part time speaker, and a full time role model and so that might not sound like a big audacious goal. But yeh it’s the goal I have. There’s no pockets in a shroud I can earn as much money as I want to, but I’d rather have longevity.
Host(s)
Love it, I’m right there with you
All right 5, this is our kind of fun, creative question, so if you could hop into a Delorean, where you get to go back to your past. But you’re only there to pass along a message. Where would you go back in your past, and what message would you pass along to that younger version of yourself?
Christine
I would go back to being 14 and I would say. This is just for today, anything is possible for you and don’t hang on to this moment.
Host(s)
It’s beautiful Christine. Thank you again for being on. The podcast is now abundantly clear. Why you have been a mentor and advisor for so many people and I appreciate you doing that for me today and for our audience. That has been incredibly valuable. So thank you so much.
Christine
It’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for asking me some pretty challenging questions.
Host(s)
Founders, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and hop into our monthly founder e-mail so we can ensure you stay on the edge of peak performance and massive business results.
Are you ready to sell? Click here to contact Christine by email alternatively you can book a call with the Business Mentor of the Year 2020, author and speaker. Who helps business founders get their businesses exit ready so they can enjoy a happier, richer future. She saves them THOUSANDS and increases the value of their businesses by MILLIONS.
