00:00:00: Introduction
00:02:36: How to view success
00:05:56: Learning from failure
00:09:59: Visualisation and action technique
00:14:35: Goal setting
00:18:23: Starting a business the right way
00:21:27: The importance of research and testing
00:24:24: Who we choose to work with
00:28:49: Career advice
00:31:42: A short clip from The Uncertainty Experts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis, and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we discuss a different topic to do with work and share some ideas, actions and advice that we hope will help you to navigate your Squiggly Career with confidence and a bit more control.  This episode is part of our fourth Ask the Expert series, and we're covering a really great range of topics, including Uncertainty, Influence, Storytelling and Leadership. 

In this episode, you'll hear Helen and I in conversation with Bianca Miller-Cole and Byron Cole, a bit of a dream team together, all about success; not just success and learning from when things go well, but also what we learn from where things are harder and the mistakes that we've made.  They're such an interesting duo, because not only do they work together, they're also married and their lives are very intertwined, so they've got some really fascinating examples and things that I think we can all learn from, regardless of whether we're running our own business, or working in a massive multinational.

All of our Ask the Expert series is supported by The Uncertainty Experts, a three-part interactive documentary, which is designed to increase resilience and decrease anxiety.  I took part in the pilot and I'm going to take part again in series one, because it was so good the first time I'm going back for more; and I can tell you, it's like no other learning experience, it's really unique.  So, if you have got the time to get involved, I'd really encourage you to give it a go. 

If you do want to take part, you can sign up to be part of the series in November now.  We'll add a link into the show notes, and if you use the code "Squiggly", you get a bonus discount too.  And if you want to get a bit of a feel for what the interactive documentary might involve, listen at the end of the podcast, because there's a short clip and a bit of a snippet from one of The Uncertainty Experts, sharing their personal story of overcoming uncertainty, so listen out for that.

So, Bianca, Byron, thank you so much for joining us today on this Squiggly Careers podcast Ask the Expert special episode.

Bianca Miller-Cole: Thank you for having us.

Byron Cole: Thank you for having us, yeah.

Sarah Ellis: I'm really looking forward to diving a bit deeper into your book and your perspective and your ideas, and I wanted to start actually with your final chapter in the book.  I was really struck by a quote that you started your chapter on success with, which was from Arthur Ashe, which I'd not come across before and it's, "Success is a journey, not a destination.  The doing is more important than the outcome". 

I just wondered, when we think about success generally in our careers and within the context of Squiggly Careers, how do you both think about success, for yourselves and together, because we've talked before on the podcast about maybe letting go of what we sometimes describe as the shiny objects of success and some of the trappings of success, that are really easy to be swayed by and to chase; but I sensed in the book that you were encouraging people to think about success perhaps in a different way to that, so perhaps you could talk to us a bit more about that?

Byron Cole: So, first of all, I 100% agree, because we wrote it; success if definitely a journey.  And, how do I define success?  Well, everyone looks at success in a different way: some people, it's financial; some people, it's goal oriented.  So for me, when I look at my success, it's about doing the things that I love doing, with the people that I love doing them with, changing people's lives whilst doing it, and getting a financial remuneration at the same time. 

For me, if I can cover that, I've won, I'm happy, which is probably why I love mentoring so much; it's because I can do all of that.  I work with Bianca, I help people start growth scale and develop their business; at the same time, they are changing their lives, their family's lives, they're putting themselves in positions that they never would have been able to put themselves in.  And at the same time, whilst I make an income in other ways, more so than I would for mentoring, I still get a financial remuneration.  And all of those things, priceless.  For me, that is what I call success.

Yes, I've sold properties, I've sold businesses, I've done all these various different things in my journey, I've won awards; but that, for me, when people say, "Are you successful in what you do?"  Absolutely.  I am doing what I love with the people that I love, and it's paying me an income at the same time and I'm changing people's lives.

Sarah Ellis: How about yourself, Bianca?  When you're thinking about success, in a month or in a year, do you have certain timeframes that you think about success, or do you very much focus on the present and in the here and now?

Bianca Miller-Cole: I think there is that feeling sometimes, when you've achieved something, you're then running onto the next thing; you're not taking that moment to absorb that you've been successful, or you've had a moment of success.  But I think it's definitely a journey.  So for me, I write really clear goals and every time I achieve that goal, I'm like, "Okay, great, I've done it.  Move on to the next goal", and that's where I'm defining my success.  In that moment or in that year, what are the things I want to achieve and have I achieved them? 

A lot of that is associated with how much impact I can have on other people.  So, when I sat down one day and looked at my businesses, personal branding very much, how do I help people understand their personal brand and how that can enhance their career trajectory?  When I look at business mentoring, how can I help someone with their business and mentor them so that their business becomes financially viable and successful, so that they can focus on their version of success?

So, I think it's always, "How can I make sure I'm happy?"  And, Byron, you're absolutely right; happy with what I'm doing, happy with the hours I spend doing it.  I've got a great balance and I don't mean equilibrium, I just mean some sort of semblance of balance, and I'm working with people I love and I'm changing people's lives and perspectives, and I think that, for me, is success.

Byron Cole: And, you've got to celebrate these wins.

Helen Tupper: So, the flip side to success is failure, and I feel like we can't talk about success without talking about failure, because it's an inevitable part of the journey.  We talked about some of the shiny moments and the high fives at the end of the day.  What has been a moment where it has felt like you've failed, just to bring that to life for people, but not just with the story; what did you learn from that failure that's helped you to succeed in a different way?

Bianca Miller-Cole: I think the idea of failure's really interesting, and we cover it in the book, because I think we have a strong fear of failing, in the UK specifically.  I feel like in America it's, "Oh, you failed, you're bankrupt, your business didn't work.  When are you starting again?"  Here, it's like, "You failed, okay, go and get a job" or, "You failed, okay, how do you pick yourself back up?"  And I actually think it's not about thinking, "I've failed, that's it", it's about thinking that's a lesson, it's an opportunity to learn something.

So as you said, when you failed, what did you learn?  I've had various failures over time, although I don't like the word, various failures over time, and I think one of them was certainly in my first maybe 18 months of starting my first business.  I had started out with my savings pot, I had a bit of an investment from a family friend, and I'd done various things to try and get this business off the ground, and it hadn't worked and I'd wasted a lot of money, time and energy.  And I remember, maybe 18 months in thinking, "Okay, well now I'm earning far less than I was in my career, I'm now having to use my credit card to live and sustain some sort of lifestyle", so I felt like I'd failed.

But at the same time, I thought, "This can't be it".  As much as I knew, in starting a business, I could always go back and get a job, I was employable, that it wasn't going to be a problem, I didn't start to fail, I didn't start to just say, "Oh, well, 18 months is too hard, I'm going to stop".  And I had to think, "Okay, what am I going to do?  I now have to really bootstrap this business, I now have to get out there, I do have to network three, four, five days a week, I do have to be online and offline and on the phone and the email and really make it work".

So, it taught me a lot about resilience and overcoming those issues of rejection and those obstacles, and the steps that you have to take to keep yourself motivated, even when times are hard and when things don't look like they're working.  And, nine years later, the business is still going, so it's an illustration that sometimes, you just have to work through it.

Helen Tupper: I really like that idea that failure is not a full stop, it's more like a signal rather than a stop.  It's a signal that you might want to do something different, or try something out in a different way so that you can move forward.  And what about you, Byron, has there been a moment where you've had that "failure", but it's helped you to move forward?

Byron Cole: Absolutely.  So, I had a business that failed.  I invested all my money into a business.  I was still at university, I was brokering property deals, had a great income, invested all my money into an estate agency and that business failed.  I left with nothing, other than knowledge; literally left with nothing other than knowledge.  That learning experience, or that failure, allowed me to start my first business by myself, which I actually sold. 

But also, to this day, I have so many contacts from that first business who give me opportunities, who give me so much more than I would never have learned.  It was like a crash course.  I literally learned everything about the property industry.  It was an estate agency.  I was the sales negotiator, the lettings negotiator, the sales manager, the lettings manager, I was the property manager.  I learned everything, and the first business was a property services business, so we helped landlords and estate agents and people who were buying and selling their homes, with services that they needed, like EPCs, floorplans, photography, all the things that you need when you're buying or selling your home.

Without that experience and that failure, I wouldn't have started that, and to this day, I still get opportunities from people within my network that I met from that experience.  So, absolutely, the failures definitely are a learning experience and knowledge, and at least sometimes you just know, don't do that again!

Sarah Ellis: And I was really interested, when I was reading the book, you share some examples of some very famous people, people like Lady Gaga and Jim Carey, who've used almost a combination of two techniques together to really help them to be successful.  So, I would summarise these two techniques as visualisation, so really thinking about in the future, what would you like to be, what would you like to achieve, which is interesting when we talked about, you've got to balance that between not being too future-focused that you're not in the present, but this idea of visualisation and how powerful it can be; and, and it's a really important "and", you can't just do the visualisation then hope for the best. 

Certainly, my understanding reading it was, you do the visualisation and then, that needs to prompt positive action in the here and now.  You almost create a conscious bias towards actions that are going to then help you, having been clear about that visualisation.  And the example, I think, you gave in the book, or one of them, was Jim Carey writing that cheque.  I think he wrote a cheque almost to himself, you'll tell me if I've got this wrong, for $10 million, and being, "That's how much I want to get paid for a film".  And then actually a couple of years later, that was genuinely how much, that was his fee for the next film that he was making.

So, I just wondered if you could describe, if somebody was listening now, how could they go about starting that process, what would that look like, because I think those are very inspiring examples?  But tell me a bit about how this would work.  So, if I'm sitting, listening now and I'm thinking, "That feels like a really interesting idea, this visualisation, and then using that to prompt action in whatever job I'm doing", whatever career someone's in, how can you break that down a little bit for people in terms of, what could they do?

Bianca Miller-Cole: Absolutely.  So, when we looked at it in the book, we said that visualisation isn't just about the physical, tangible, material items, but if we use a material item as an example, just to make it really easy; if, for example, you're saying, "I want to drive a particular car" or, "I want to buy a particular house", it's important to not just visualise it and think, "What would that car look like?" but actually think, "Does that car exist?"  If it does, what is that car?  Rather than picture in your mind, "I think it would be blue, it might be a saloon or a hatchback", rather than going through that process, find the car; what is the car that you want?  Go onto Auto Trader, whatever, find the car, you say, "Okay, that's the car, that's the one". 

So, now you have a better understanding, in real life terms, of what that car is, you know what you're working towards, you then know how much it costs, you then can work out if you're going to pay for it upfront, if you're going to pay for it monthly, what does that look like for your finances.  Without having that knowledge of what that car is, you're just in this mystical world without any real idea or appreciation for what it's going to take to achieve that goal.

So, we then take it one step further.  You've found the car, you found it online, great.  Well now, actually, why don't you go and see it?  Why don't you go to the showroom and book a test drive, get behind the wheel and take that visualisation into a place where real time, you've got your hands on that steering wheel, you know how it feels to be in that car?  So now you can think, "Okay, now I've got that feeling, what are the actionable steps I need to take to make it a reality?"

That's where we take visualisation from being an idea and being a dream to being a physical item or asset that we can actually purchase, and then we take it to that point where you feel yourself behind it, and that will then help to propel you to making it a reality.  And I think it's so important to take those active steps, because sometimes it can feel quite wishy-washy when you think about the laws of attraction.  "Well, under the laws of attraction, you put it into the universe and it appears".  Well, no, it doesn't, it doesn't just appear.  It does require you to actually do some work and to actually take some steps to make it happen.

In the book, we talk about what we did with buying our house.  We both wrote our goals.  We wrote them separately, then we came together to look at our goals and we said, "Oh, actually, a new house is on our goals together".  We had a beautiful three-bed house with nothing wrong with it, but we both had aspirations to change the house that we were living in.  We hadn't had a conversation, we just looked at our goals and like, "Oh, it's the same goals.  What do we do?"

So, we went online, we looked for the house, we had no idea of how we'd buy it or how we'd get it, and then we started looking at houses, went around and we found one and we made it happen.  But if we hadn't had that conscious thought process that then went into, "Okay, what does this look like?  What do we need to do?  What's the mortgage situation?  How do we pay for this?" we wouldn't have got to that stage.  And I think it's so important to take it from dream to tangible item, visualising it and then asset.

Helen Tupper: So, in the book, one of the chapters is all around goal setting, and we've talked a little bit about those aspirational goals and how you can use visualisation to help you.  One of the things that I think's really important when people are thinking about success is how, whilst that stuff's really appealing and attractive, that long-term stuff, how they can make sure their everyday actions are taking them towards it and they have a way that they can have everyday goals that get them towards their longer-term aspirations.

Are there some things that you were talking about in the book, or that you have done in your own career, that really help you to have that attainable, everyday sense of achievement with your goals, and that also connect you to that more aspirational long-term vision for your future?

Byron Cole: Yeah, absolutely.  We love goal setting, we teach goal setting, it's one of my favourite things to talk about.  And, yeah, goal setting is definitely a process.  But first of all, we need to have clarity.  So sometimes, we say we have goals, but we don't have clarity on what the goals are.  So I always say, make sure we have absolute crystal clarity of what your goals are.  It should be like placing an order and sending it to a factory in another country and it comes back manufactured.  So, we need to be so detailed and specific and clear, because sometimes it's, "I want to be rich" or, "I want to lose weight" or, "I want to be healthy".  These are not measurable goals.

I always say, your six-year-old child, nephew, niece should be able to tell you that you achieved this goal or not.  So, some of the things that we talk about in the book naturally progress you, in terms of creating a clear process for goal setting.  I'll just talk about a couple of different things; things that we don't think about when we're goal setting.

So we say, identify the obstacle and circle the number one thing and number two thing.  So, what is stopping you from moving forward, what are the obstacles?  Then we talk about, who do we need to have involved, so what stakeholders do we need to have involved to help you move forward?  Work on the top two.  What is the number one skillset that you need in order for you to move forward, or that's stopping you from hitting this goal?  Then we think about, why have we not achieved this goal already? 

They're just a handful of parts of a process for one goal, and if you can imagine if you could have 100 goals, just lock yourself in a room for a day and do this for a day, the clarity that you'll have is incredible.  And sometimes you don't have to do these things yourselves; utilise your team, your staff, your partner, or whatever it maybe.  But just that process of having a process naturally progresses you forward, and I find that is so powerful.  Now that I've learned and created a process and studied other people's processes and programmes, I'm like, "Oh, my God!"

Literally anything that I can dream of, I can have, because there's a process behind it.  Okay, what is the number one thing?  You say you're buying a property, so it's the mortgage, or whatever it may be.  There's always a solution for everything.  And when you look at who do you need to have involved in the process and everything else, it becomes so easy and so crystal clear.  And we use that, not just for goal setting, but just for normal tasks within the business, "Okay, why can't we move forward?  These are the obstacles.  Okay, who do we need to have involved?" etc.

So, that is the way that we use goal setting to move ourselves forward and definitely something we teach to our mentees, and we send them back.  They write it down physically, the power of writing it down physically, etc, but we get them to write it down and send it to us.  Before we would hand it over, when there was no COVID, but now they post it to us and we send it back to them six to nine months later, and some of them are, "Oh, my God, I've hit so many things on this list!" but yeah, such a powerful tool.

Sarah Ellis: So, we know loads of people listening will have ideas for businesses.  I think everybody has an idea for a business and probably an idea for a book, in my experience!  But what often stops us, particularly I think from starting businesses, is that worry about, "Will I be a success, will I be successful?" 

I was reflecting before our conversation today and thinking, I think one of the things that held me back from spending most of my time in Amazing If, so making that leap from my corporate career to Amazing If, I held onto this idea of, "Well, my success is quite intertwined with the organisations that I work for".  That fear of failure that you talked about, Bianca, in terms of, "Will I be successful as an entrepreneur?  I don't think I know what that looks like, I've never done that before, I don't know many other people who do it, I don't think I'll ever describe myself as an entrepreneur", and all of these things are chattering around in your brain.

So, if somebody has got that thought, they've got an idea, so they've either got a niggle, they've got a fully-formed idea, a half-formed idea, and they're trying to figure out, "Should I just launch it and go for it?  Should I start to test it out?" what would you advise and suggest for people, given you've both started actually numerous businesses, so you really are the experts in this?  You've got that thought; what's that process that you both go through when you go from, "I've got an idea" to action; what does that look like, and then we're all going to copy you?!

Bianca Miller-Cole: So, I think one of the things you have to do is really sense-check that the solution you're trying to offer is a solution that works for a real problem.  I say this, because sometimes people go about starting a business because they think there's a burning problem that they have faced, but actually they haven't sense-checked if other people also have that problem and would be willing to part with their hard-earned money to pay for that solution.  So, I think that sense-checking process is really important.

What that does is that makes you have to go outside of your circle, because your initial circle will always tell you it's a great idea, you hope!  But they're your circle, they're your support, your fans, but it requires you to go outside of your circle and look a bit further and say, "Well, who is my target client and demographic?  Okay, let me go and ask them, let me have a conversation with them, let me network a bit more, let me go to a few events and mention this idea and see how many people actually think, 'That's interesting.  I'm interested in that.  I could do that'". 

I think that then takes you to that next step of now thinking, "Okay, how do I make this happen?"  That might mean engaging a mentor, like myself or Byron, so we can give you the active steps to take; it might mean buying some books; it might mean starting out and going on loads of YouTubes, whatever you want to do, but now you have to think, "What are the active steps I need to take to make this happen, and am I going to do this as a side hustle while I maintain my career, or am I willing to take that leap of faith?  Do I have enough money, support, and so on, to make it happen if I do take that leap of faith; and how is that going to work for me if I make that choice?"  I think that's a really important part of that analysis.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  I think I was reading that 80% of the businesses that do fail -- because the stats are always terrifying, aren't they?  You'd never start a business, I think, if you looked at the stats, because loads of them fail, loads of them fail within the first year, but if I've understood the research correctly, it is often because they've not done that testing that you've just described, Bianca.  They don't know if the supply and demand match.

So, you've maybe got an idea and it might be brilliant; it just might be that people are not prepared to pay for it.  Or, it might be brilliant for a really small group of people, but it's not going to grow enough to be able to sustain the income that you need.  Although, I think when I reflect back on Amazing If, I don't think we had any master plan, and certainly not in the way that you two would have in terms of your experience.

But I think the one thing we got right is that we tested, in really small ways, without worrying whether it was perfect, just to see whether the style and approach to career development that we were selling, was that something anyone was interested in buying?  We tested quite a few things, and loads of the time, we'd not really thought it through, we didn't wait for it to be perfect to test it.  But I'm so glad that we did it in a really incremental, pragmatic, non-glamourous way, and I think that's probably the key to our success today, is the fact that we did it so slowly.

That whole thing of, I'm not sure very many businesses are overnight successes.  Sometimes, if you only discover them after they've grown and developed, that's how they can look on the surface.  But certainly, our experience has been, it's all about years of hard work, testing, trying, letting some stuff go, holding your ideas lightly, but really figuring out, does that supply and demand meet.

Bianca Miller-Cole: I just want to add to that point, what you said about perfection and waiting for perfection.  We mentor so many people that do that, and they end up with paralysis by analysis.  They're analysing so much that they don't get started, and that is a major sticking point, and I think you have to get out there, you have to trial what you're doing, you have to go through that testing phase and not wait for it to be perfect; because actually, over time, it gets better.

I'm sure even sometimes, and I don't know if you would agree with this, something I did last year, I'm actually a year later, "I could improve that.  That could have been a bit better.  Why didn't I do this, this and this?" because we're always learning and you're always progressing.  So, if we waited to be perfect, we would never start anything.

Byron Cole: Just a one-liner really, I won't add too much, and it's a simple thing that tomorrow's not promised.  Life is very short, so let's take action on our dreams and let's take action today.

Bianca Miller-Cole: I have this, and I've said it in the book about my kind of death-bed analogy, and this sounds really morbid.  But from a positive perspective, my thoughts are, I don't want to get to the end, whenever that is, and think, "What if?  What if I tried that?  Could that have worked?  Would that have worked?"

Byron Cole: But it would be Amazing if…!

Bianca Miller-Cole: … I did something about it today! 

Helen Tupper: So, I think that is a very good point to talk about how much of our success is based on the people that we work with, particularly because all of us have chosen to work with people that we are very close to.  I mean, you're married to each other!  Sarah haven't married to each other, but I feel like we may as well have; we spend so much time virtually and in person and just our minds are together all the time!

How much do you think that success is based on who you choose to work with; and second question for you, when they're as close as you two are, have you got any tips, so that that can continue to be a successful relationship?

Bianca Miller-Cole: Great questions!  Definitely partnerships are so important, and it's so important that you choose who you are going to work with very carefully; and when you're going through that process, that you have clarity over who is responsible for what.  And I think that sometimes is the problem.  You join and you think, "I've got a great idea.  I'll just work with so-and-so", but you actually haven't really done a deep-dive conversation in terms of, how much time and commitment they're going to put in, how much are you going to put in; what are their roles and responsibilities and duties; what do they bring to the table, what do you bring to the table?

By having that conversation, you then come together as a true partnership, as opposed to both going off in different directions, or one person is super fast and has lots of time to spend on it and is not working right now, and then they're really annoyed with the other person, because the other person's got a full-time job, is doing it on the side and has five kids.  Then, that becomes a problem in the partnership.

So, I think it's so important to choose the right person, that has the same vision or similar vision, ambition, passion and works in a similar way that you can work together well; that you have clarity over the roles and responsibilities, and I think sometimes that should be written down, that clarity, so you're not overlapping, you're not stepping on each other's toes, there are no annoyances and grievances as a result; and, you have those regular checkpoints so that you are making sure you are on the same page and you're working together in the right way.

Byron Cole: Thanks.  So, the next one is the tips?!  No, do you know what, we have an excellent working relationship and also an excellent relationship.  But bring it to the question in terms of finding business partners and partners, I think it's so hard to find someone that you enjoy working with, and also that delivers what you're expecting.  I've tried many, many, many partnerships, and they don't always work.  Then sometimes, you're like…

I'm just very careful now with who I want to work with, to kind of list it out.  They have to bring something to the table other than their time, because I think sometimes people think, "Do you know, I'm going to work hard", and it's just not enough.  So, we need to really understand what that person, or what both parties, are bringing to the table.

Me and Bianca have a rule in terms of how we make it work, that it's a one-man or one-woman job.  So, for example, your email correspondence, I see everything, I've read everything, but Bianca's the one who may respond.  Whoever gets to that email first, it's your responsibility.  Because what ends up happening is, it's a one-person task, but both people end up doing the same task, and it's not required, "This is yours, you get on with that; this is mine, I'll get on with that", and we come together and we'll share any information that's required.  Or, when I'm in bed with my laptop, Sheila, I can read through anything that I need to get on with.

Bianca Miller-Cole: That is the laptop's name!

Byron Cole: That is the laptop's name.

Bianca Miller-Cole: But definitely, not making a one-man task a two-people task is one of them.  And then, the other thing we do is, if there's a new project, because we're entrepreneurs and we wake up every day with a new idea, we'll sometimes say to each other, "It's a crap idea", number one.  But two, also, if it's an idea you want to pursue, "Okay, on your head be it", giving them the authority to try something new, or to do something new, without having to always come back to you.  So, you still have that feeling of independence, whilst having that opportunity to collaborate and partner, I think is really important.  So, you have to trust the person you're working with to be creative.

Byron Cole: To be creative, and let them do what they want to do, if they really like it.  And sometimes, we come to the table like, "Okay, I've thought of this really great idea".  I'm creating something new every five minutes, and she'll be like, "Not sure about that".  But if I really like it, I'm doing it anyway, "We'll soon see about that"!  But we allow each other to be creative and make mistakes and we win together, we lose together.

Sarah Ellis: We finish all of our podcast interviews, all of our Ask the Expert interviews, with the same question, and I'd love to hear from both of you, because I'm sure you'll have different advice.  But for our listeners, if you were going to share one piece of career advice with them, it can be your own advice, it can be words of wisdom that have been shared with you that you've just found really useful, what would it be?  Byron, perhaps we'll come to you first and then let Bianca have the final word.

Byron Cole: Advice for somebody in their career?  I would say this.  I read a stat once, I don't know how up-to-date this stat is, but the stat said that 85% of people are unhappy in their job, in their role.  So, let's just say that's give or take 5%, because it was an old stat.  And I think, in life, in the life that we have here, we spend a third of the time sleeping, a third of the time at work, and I think it's almost a crime for you to be unhappy whilst at work.

So for me, career advice would be, find the job you enjoy doing, and it's as simple as that, because life is short and you're going to spend so much time there, you have to be happy; and that would be my advice.  Be happy with what you do.  If not, make a change, or adapt.

Bianca Miller-Cole: Mine is probably pretty obvious.  I'm going to say personal branding and networking; what a surprise!  I think because I think it's so important that people recognise the power of their own personal profile.  I think so often in a career, you can get caught up with the organisation you work for and the big brand, and have not taken the steps to appreciate how pivotal you are in your role and in your position within that organisation.

So, step forward, build your personal brand, build those relationships and your credibility.  You don't know how long you're going to be in that organisation.  I think the pandemic has certainly proven that people were made redundant unexpectedly, so you can't just focus on your organisation as a whole; you need to focus on what you bring to the organisation, and how you can build your credibility, your network, to ensure that regardless of what happens, you have a really strong personal brand and profile.

People buy from people at the end of the day, so make sure you're using your light, your story, your experience to build who you are.

Sarah Ellis: So, thank you for listening to today's episode.  I hope you found it useful hearing from Bianca and Byron.  And if you're interested to learn more, please do check out their book: The Business Survival Kit, and that's full of stories, examples and even more practical tools and ideas. 

We're going to finish today's episode with the opportunity for you to hear from one of The Uncertainty Experts, so you can really get a feel for what The Uncertainty Expert learning experience is all about.  And it's a great opportunity to borrow some brilliance from people that you might not normally get the opportunity to learn from.  So, I'd really recommend investing two extra minutes of your time to hear what they've got to say.

Katherine Templar Lewis: Hello, I'm Katherine Templar Lewis, and I'm the lead scientist on The Uncertainty Experts.  Dr Vivienne Ming experienced near suicidal depression and homelessness, but like all The Uncertainty Experts, she used the strategies she learned in the shadows to become a leading light.  Dr Ming went through gender transition, began a family and is now a world-leading computational neuroscientist, CEO and founder and author.

Dr Vivienne Ming: How do you reconcile the fact that in the 1980s and 1990s, I was flunking out of school and ended up homeless; and in the 2000s, I've published papers on nature and founded half a dozen companies and invented a bunch of first things that never existed before?

One of the clearest things that my life says, I hope, to many students, but anyone, is failure is an option.  Whatever we're talking about, the SATs or your A levels or whatever it might be, there's no failure so bad you can't come back from it.  So that's, I hope, one thing that my life is testament to, which is I failed at a truly spectacular level, and yet have come back and had the opportunity to contribute something meaningful to the world.

 Katherine Templar Lewis: Here, Dr Ming reminds us of the importance of failure being an option.  It's a psychological social conditioning to fear failure.  In our pilot series, 80% of participants named failure as one of their major fears, and yet 90% admitted that the thing that scares them the most is the regret of missed opportunity.  Without risking failure, we never give ourselves a chance to really succeed.  We need to cognitively reframe failure; and what's more is that our fears are highly biased.  Our brain is programmed with a negative debias that means we put far more focus on negative outcomes, and lose sight of possible good ones, which creates a limited mindset.

In fact, a recent Science Foundation survey showed that of our 60,000 thoughts a day, 85% were negative.  But of those worries, only 1% to 3% ever came true.  And of those that did, 79% were handled far better than expected.  Once you learn how to recognise your negativity bias and weigh failure up against the costs of never trying, embracing uncertainty suddenly becomes a far more appealing option.