0:01

Today , we dive into the resilience of the human

0:03

spirit with Nigel Thomas , a visionary

0:05

who has turned his personal struggles into

0:07

a source of strength and inspiration for others

0:09

. After facing a particularly difficult

0:12

time in his life , Nigel chose to channel

0:14

his pain into purpose , founding David

0:16

to Goliath , a platform dedicated to empowering

0:18

others with the courage to conquer their giants

0:20

. Join us as Nigel unfolds

0:22

his compelling story and imparts some

0:24

valuable lessons on leadership , building resilience

0:27

and fostering deep , meaningful connections within

0:29

global remote teams . You're

0:31

listening to Peer Effect , the podcast that fuels

0:34

you with new ideas and inspiration through interviews

0:36

with founders and experts who've made it happen . I'm

0:39

your host , James Johnson , and I coach

0:41

Series A plus founders to take back control

0:43

, propel their businesses and

0:48

live a fulfilling life

0:51

, let's get into it .

0:51

Yeah , so three to four months ago I

0:54

was thinking about taking my own life , and

0:57

the reason why was because I lost

0:59

the person that believed in me most , and

1:09

that was this woman who believed in me unconditionally , and this belief

1:11

gave me the conviction and confidence to go and quit my nine to five

1:13

at 26 years old and build

1:16

three marketing agencies , two of which we

1:18

managed to get seven figures . And

1:20

after I lost that person , I

1:22

nearly gave up on everything , including life . But

1:26

the thing is , looking back , what

1:28

I said to myself in those dark moments

1:30

. So I'm not going to continue for me

1:32

, I'm going to continue for everyone else who

1:34

deserves a second chance in life . And

1:36

really , why it's called David to Goliath is

1:38

because David was passed on that

1:41

belief , that

1:46

self-belief that with a slingshot and a few pebbles he could go and defeat the mighty Goliath . So

1:48

my whole thing is I'm documenting my

1:50

company back in public . I

1:52

quit my comfortable job as CEO

1:54

of Alpha Inbound a six-figure salary

1:57

to risk it all and

1:59

build this newsletter . We've got

2:01

an audacious goal of 100,000

2:04

subscribers in 2024 , which

2:06

is obviously going to be seriously challenging . But

2:08

I'm documenting in the pain . I'm by no

2:10

means over this issue that I've had

2:12

in my life , and I want people to

2:15

have a front row seat to the chaos

2:17

that entrepreneurs really go

2:19

through , but also for anyone else who

2:21

wants to challenge themselves and do something

2:23

more in life and really leap into

2:26

the unknown , into that uncertainty , and

2:28

the reason they can get through that is because

2:30

they have the self-belief to do it , and that's

2:33

what I want to be able to pass on . So , even

2:35

though I lost that , I still had

2:37

that experience and I'm grateful for that , and

2:39

now I'm in a position where I'm ready to come

2:41

back , rise again and obviously

2:43

pass it on to other people .

2:46

Well , it's

2:48

very noble calling and good luck with that . I

2:50

suspect this is going to lead on quite

2:52

nicely into your answer to the

2:54

first question , which is what is a

2:56

unique insight that you would share based

2:59

on your experience , and what's the story

3:01

behind it .

3:02

Yes , so I think we talked about community

3:05

and really Harvard

3:07

Business . They did a study on

3:09

human happiness . It was the longest study

3:11

ever conducted I believe it's still going

3:13

on 85 years that they tracked

3:16

some guys in the States . They

3:18

looked at everything you know . They didn't know before

3:20

they went into this study what the metric

3:22

was around happiness and what causes

3:24

it . They looked at everything and

3:26

the results are quite astounding . We're

3:28

talking about impact on physical health

3:31

, relationships , stress , literally

3:33

everything you can think of . What

3:35

they found is the biggest

3:38

cause of happiness is deep

3:40

, meaningful relationships , and

3:42

even though social media has been fantastic

3:45

for connecting us all , the problem

3:47

is it's quite shallow . So now

3:49

we find ourselves in a situation

3:51

, a world , where people are more

3:53

lonely than ever . People are in cities

3:55

and they don't have many friends , and for

3:57

me , I was in that position

4:00

. I had this one person , my entire

4:02

support system bearing in mind . When

4:04

I was at school , I was incessantly

4:06

bullied and I just stuck

4:08

out from most crowds . I'm an entrepreneur

4:10

, I'm a very creative thinker

4:13

and I don't fit into most crowds

4:15

and now it makes sense . But

4:21

if I had more of a support system , I probably wouldn't have been in that place , so obviously

4:23

part of my thing is sure , it's 100 000 subscribers , but that represents

4:25

each individual , so we

4:27

can build a community so people can have

4:29

that safe place and environment to connect with

4:31

other people that understand them , and

4:34

I think this is one of the

4:36

best things that you can do and especially

4:38

if you find people that accept you

4:40

for who you are and don't try

4:43

to change you , because I think that's one of the big differences

4:45

between the UK and the US . Whilst

4:47

the UK is incredibly rich

4:49

in culture and you honestly can't beat

4:52

it , and it's got such incredible things

4:54

about it , it's not great

4:56

, for when you want to go after your dreams , it's

4:59

almost like you separate yourself from the herd

5:01

and then people want to pull you back , whereas

5:03

in the States it's obviously quite

5:05

a new country that's banded together by immigrants

5:08

all pulling together to go after and build

5:10

the american dream . They're very supportive

5:12

and they get behind your crazy ideas . That's

5:15

why I find it's better for entrepreneurs . But

5:17

even within the uk , I've talked to so

5:19

many people that want

5:21

to dream bigger and go and do whatever

5:24

they want in life . It doesn't necessarily need to be business

5:26

. It can be , you

5:28

know , just doing something they've wanted to

5:30

always do Go and visit that place , go and talk

5:32

to that woman , maybe start that business

5:34

idea , maybe write that book , but

5:37

surrounding yourself with people that empower

5:39

you to do that . And I honestly

5:41

don't think there's anything better and any

5:43

bigger shortcut in life

5:45

than finding a community

5:48

of those people and building deep

5:50

, meaningful relationships . And

5:52

judge your relationships this is what winston

5:55

churchill said by how they show up in bad

5:57

weather . It's all good and well when you're riding

5:59

high , everything's going great and everyone

6:01

wants to jump on the bandwagon . But

6:03

you find the real people when

6:05

you're going through the tough stuff and

6:08

then they show up and then they support you

6:10

and they're the kind of deep , meaningful relationships

6:12

you should be looking for in your life so

6:14

you've , you've clearly had , you've

6:16

referenced , so there's one really deep relationship

6:19

that you've had .

6:20

Have you also found a community previously as

6:22

well ?

6:23

Yeah , I found some communities . I

6:25

found some entrepreneurs not

6:27

necessarily just communities , it was more

6:29

. I went searching for it and I found

6:32

a lot of entrepreneurs . You know , I was living out in

6:34

the States and I just connected with

6:36

these people one to one . And

6:38

it's interesting because I

6:40

actually spoke to this woman who ran

6:42

massive teams at Tesla . She's one

6:44

of my mentors and she said

6:47

to me straight away you're definitely on

6:49

the neurodivergent spectrum , you

6:51

should definitely get checked out for ADHD

6:53

, so it's little things like that . But then

6:55

she was empowering me , telling me that

6:58

I can go and build this newsletter , I can

7:00

lean into my strengths , and she said

7:02

this thing to me me which is you're

7:04

looking for the treasure everywhere . You're

7:06

trying to find this one magical thing before

7:08

you leave these agencies and jump ship and go

7:10

and build your own thing . But she said you

7:13

are the treasure and it's

7:15

. It's comments like that from people who

7:17

really care about people , and

7:19

she's going on to build this massive ai

7:22

company and doing all these incredible things

7:24

. But those are moments and

7:26

conversations that change your life . So for

7:28

me , it was more just going after specific

7:31

entrepreneurs . I

7:33

wish I had more of that community . I did most of it online , but

7:35

I found certain individuals that

7:38

really helped me out through my life . But

7:40

the last thing I'll say on that is it

7:42

doesn't necessarily just need to be if

7:44

you're an entrepreneur entrepreneurs

7:46

. When I was in this really bad

7:48

state , I came back to the UK One

7:51

of my best friends from childhood who

7:53

lives next door to me . I opened

7:55

up to him and what we're

7:57

doing on a weekly basis four

7:59

times a week is at 6 am

8:01

, no matter when , rain or shine , we

8:03

go out at 6am in the morning , we

8:05

do runs together in the dark and

8:08

just having that person running with each

8:10

other , you know , pushing for each other , having

8:12

that accountability partner , that's

8:14

really really helped me through my dark

8:16

times . So I would also

8:19

say it doesn't necessarily just need to be

8:21

someone in business . It can be someone in a different

8:23

aspect of life . But it's more about

8:25

are they willing to show up for your baddest

8:27

moments and are you willing

8:30

to show up for them , no matter . You

8:32

know whatever they're going through in life .

8:34

I think that's deeply impactful so

8:36

community doesn't mean just find a pre-existing

8:38

organization although I'd be lucky because I might

8:40

, but it sounds like it's . It's surrounding

8:42

yourself with the five or six deep

8:45

relationships . Aren't necessarily entrepreneurs

8:47

could be friends , just people who are going to

8:49

be positive and show up for

8:51

you in the bad times .

8:53

And build your own community is what I

8:55

would say . If you can't find one that you don't like

8:58

, go and build your own community , because

9:00

there's a woman

9:03

organization called CHIEF to give

9:05

you an understanding of the scale

9:07

of where communities are going in the next few

9:09

years , because of all this stuff with social media

9:11

, chief have

9:14

got 10,000 women , I think . It is started

9:16

by two female founders in New York . They've

9:18

got 60,000 person waiting list

9:20

and within two years they're now

9:22

valued at over a billion dollars . So

9:26

that gives you an idea of the explosion of communities

9:28

. You don't necessarily need to do it for a massive business

9:31

venture , though . You could just do it on

9:33

a small basis , just

9:35

within your neighborhood , within your

9:37

community , within your area , within your

9:39

local city . I genuinely

9:42

think that if you're surrounded

9:44

by people that are also going through

9:46

the struggle and you're all climbing towards the

9:48

same thing , I think this is the

9:50

the only hack or shortcut I've

9:52

found , and obviously a lot of people talk

9:54

about mentorship . Right , but this

9:57

is a form of mentorship . If you

9:59

have that community , and I

10:01

think I really do believe

10:03

within the next five to 10 years , this

10:05

is how we get to the next stage of human

10:07

evolution .

10:09

Well , maybe let's jump on to question two then

10:11

. So what's an external

10:13

influence that's really resonated

10:16

with you recently , and why

10:18

?

10:19

Yeah . So for Christmas my

10:21

mom actually bought me this book called

10:23

the Motive , from Patrick Lencioni

10:26

and he's written quite a few books around leadership

10:28

and I picked it up thinking I'll

10:30

have a quick scan through it . Maybe I'll learn

10:32

a couple of things . I was absolutely

10:35

gripped from the first few sentences

10:38

and the first few paragraphs . I think

10:40

it's because I am actually a leader

10:43

and it struck a chord with me . But

10:45

essentially and he's a great writer , patrick

10:47

Lencioni he uses

10:50

a fable , a story of two different leaders

10:52

one who isn't really

10:54

a leader , one who is a leader and

11:05

then he talks about lessons at the end . But really it came down to two things . It's about

11:07

the motive behind leadership . So you've got two main types of leaders reward-centered

11:09

leaders and responsibility-centered leaders . So reward-centered leaders

11:11

are people that are doing it for their

11:14

ego , for the fame , because they

11:16

want to climb to the top , and obviously

11:18

they want everyone else holding them up . You

11:21

can imagine you know someone there

11:23

with everyone else holding them up and they're getting

11:25

all the credit . These are the kind

11:27

of fake leaders really that burn out

11:29

. And then you've got responsibility centered

11:32

leaders and again , if you go back to

11:34

the image , they're holding everyone else up

11:36

because they're sacrificing for

11:38

their people . Because leadership isn't about

11:40

ruling with an iron fist . It's

11:43

about the person who's willing to sacrifice

11:45

most of their people . And

11:47

really you , if you're a leader

11:49

and you're listening to this or you're in an organization

11:51

where there is a leader you should

11:53

be asking yourself this question Do

11:56

you have the right motive behind leadership

11:58

? Because leadership is not sexy

12:00

. Leadership is about managing other

12:02

human beings and you have to be there

12:04

for them every single day . It's constant

12:07

, it's absolutely relentless

12:09

and if you're not in it for the right reasons

12:12

, you will burn out . And I think the

12:14

other thing is is if you're not a leader

12:16

and you understand that early and

12:18

then you accept that and it's your own

12:21

company , but then you have a great

12:23

leader within your company who is responsibility

12:26

centered , and then you give them

12:28

and empower them to go and lead your

12:30

team because they're in it for the right reasons . I

12:32

think that's equally as strong and

12:34

I think a lot of people , if they

12:37

were actually honest about this , they

12:39

would run much more successful businesses

12:41

. Because for me , I've been in

12:43

a company where the leader was

12:45

a narcissist and I went

12:47

to him and I asked him for equity in his company

12:50

right Because he was running some other businesses

12:52

at the start . I built this company , led a 20-person

12:55

team and officially I was the COO

12:57

and I said can I have some equity ? I

13:01

know I can build this thing and make it great . And everyone

13:03

looked up to me , not because I was something special or

13:05

whatever it was , because I was there for them

13:07

and I was sacrificing for my people

13:09

. And what he said is he

13:11

laughed me out the door , basically , and he

13:13

said no . And then what happened

13:15

is he came back into the company , took

13:18

the reins because he couldn't take , from

13:20

an ego standpoint , that I was leading the

13:22

team and people looking up to me , and

13:24

he ran the business into the ground and

13:26

destroyed the culture that I built

13:28

. And that was heartbreaking , you know , seeing

13:30

people treated in such a toxic

13:32

manner . And I saw the other side

13:34

of leadership and when I read this book

13:37

it all made sense , like it kind of just

13:39

connected all the dots and it deeply

13:41

resonated with me . So I think the

13:43

Motive by Patrick Lencioni is a fantastic

13:46

book , but , moreover , it's

13:48

a chance and opportunity for everyone

13:51

who's working in the team to ask

13:53

themselves are you a

13:55

reward-centered leader or responsibility-centered

13:58

leader ? What is your motive and also

14:01

to ask the leaders in your team , then

14:03

together , I think this creates

14:05

a much better organization .

14:08

Is the view that you can change

14:10

your style or is it something that's intrinsic

14:12

? You are one or the other .

14:14

It's a good question . I

14:17

think you just have to be honest . It's

14:19

do you want to change ? I think knowing

14:22

what you actually have to do

14:24

to be a leader . I think that's the first

14:26

part , because most people don't understand

14:28

that . There's no one telling

14:30

people at school this stuff , so where

14:32

else are they going to learn it ? You know , most

14:35

people are already running big organizations

14:37

before they find this stuff out and

14:40

then they're burning out , but

14:42

really it's because of the motive behind it

14:44

. So you first

14:46

need to understand what it takes to be a true leader

14:48

and then ask yourself the question

14:50

if you really actually do want

14:52

to change . I think it's possible , but

14:55

you've got to understand every

14:57

single day if you're a leader depending

14:59

on , obviously , how big the company is all

15:01

you're going to be doing is managing people

15:03

. That's your job . You're not doing anything

15:06

else . You're just managing people all

15:08

the time , and people have problems

15:10

and you've got to be at

15:12

the top in terms of it's a lonely

15:15

place and no one's going to be caring

15:17

for you . You've got to take all that burden

15:19

of responsibility . So you've got

15:21

to ask yourself that question do you want to change

15:23

? Do you want to become that person ?

15:25

because it's not easy , and if

15:27

you don't just be honest with yourself it's

15:30

interesting , this concept kind of servant leadership has

15:32

been around for a while . It's kind of leaders eat last , yes , and it's interesting , this concept kind of servant leadership has been around for a while . It's

15:34

kind of leaders eat last , yes

15:37

, and it's interesting . Like a lot of my coaching clients

15:39

, they they tend to fall on

15:41

the side of like very people-centric in

15:43

terms of that , very much what what's

15:45

? It requires responsibility . That

15:47

leadership , yeah , and

15:49

I think there is a danger that you can go too

15:52

far , that you can be

15:54

too people driven , you can be

15:56

too responsive , you can be too

15:58

self-sacrifice , you can

16:00

be too isolated

16:02

because you're there giving all your energy to your team

16:05

. And I wonder how does

16:07

he cover this at all in the book , or is it ? Is

16:09

it a bit black and white in terms of response

16:12

?

16:12

responsibility is good well

16:15

, yeah , so this . He

16:18

has a lot of books and I haven't read the other

16:20

ones , but basically what he said in it is

16:22

this is a foundational book for

16:24

leadership , so it'll be good to go and study

16:26

those other books . Obviously , leadership's

16:29

very complicated , right ? It's not

16:31

a black or white thing , and I think it's

16:34

different for everyone . In

16:36

that situation , I think

16:38

you know , when it comes to overdoing

16:41

leadership and over sacrificing

16:43

, for me it'll come down to purpose . Then

16:45

, like , what are you leading ? Because

16:48

, yeah , sure , you've got to get everyone thrown

16:50

in the right direction . You're on a boat , you're the captain

16:52

of the ship , but what's the destination

16:54

? A boat , you're the captain of the ship , but what's the destination

16:57

of that ship ? Because if the destination of that ship isn't where you actually

16:59

want to go in the first place , yeah , I think

17:01

, even if you're a great people person

17:03

, it's probably not going to last too long

17:06

and it's going to end badly . So that's

17:08

then even a deeper question of why

17:10

are we doing this , even

17:13

a deeper question of why are we doing this ? Where are we going ? What's our purpose ? What's

17:15

our mission ? I think if that's all aligned , then you're

17:18

doing purposeful work and

17:20

then you're inspiring other people to do purposeful

17:22

work , but that's kind of a different question

17:24

altogether because what

17:27

I've seen is that people can't .

17:28

if you come to team centers , we instinctively

17:31

think as leaders that anything relates to people is

17:33

a relatively high urgency

17:35

task . So it always sits in our quadrant

17:37

one box . And

17:39

actually I've come to believe that quite a lot of the people

17:42

stuff is actually distraction

17:44

or low importance but can fill

17:46

high urgency Because anything we

17:48

tag with people , suddenly we increase

17:51

the importance and what we can do is spend

17:53

a lot of our time just being

17:56

driven by other people's agendas , not by own . We're

17:58

not doing that stuff sort of . What

18:00

is our greater mission ? What are our key objectives

18:02

? How do we make sure we hit those and

18:06

really own our agenda , as

18:08

opposed to be driven by our

18:10

team sometimes or our people ? And the better you grow

18:12

, the bigger the company . You've got more

18:14

and more people's agendas and more and more people happy and

18:16

you get more and more pulled

18:18

off your path and more isolated

18:20

. I think that can set up a quite

18:23

negative spiral for

18:25

leaders .

18:26

Yeah , I mean , if you're a leader of an organization

18:28

, then the reason why you have

18:30

culture and principles is because

18:32

you can't actually talk to everyone

18:34

, right ? So sure , you're going to be managing

18:36

people , but really you're going to be managing your executive

18:39

team and you need the culture

18:41

and the principles as really a decision

18:43

making matrix so you empower

18:46

people that are creative and can problem

18:48

solve in their own right , and then everyone's

18:50

making decisions off the same culture

18:53

and principles . Right , because

18:55

micromanaging people is

18:57

not the way to do leadership . That's

19:00

not going to end well . And

19:02

again , some of the best lessons

19:04

through leadership are letting

19:06

people figure things out themselves , because

19:09

then they'll learn the most and then they'll become

19:11

dynamic problem solvers and then

19:13

they can contribute more , and then , obviously

19:15

, that culture gets passed down to the rest of the

19:17

team .

19:19

It's empowering people . Challenge

19:21

aside , I do like this sort of reward

19:23

versus responsibility style

19:26

leadership . It's just

19:28

the danger of taking it too far .

19:29

Yeah , it's definitely not for everyone .

19:33

Well , let's move on to question three , then , which is

19:35

what is a sort of a practical hack

19:37

or tip you'd share with other founders to make

19:39

things happen .

19:41

So this is something that I actually did by

19:44

mistake and it led

19:46

to some really big breakthroughs . So

19:49

I was based out in the States before I came back to the

19:51

UK and some of our team at the agency

19:53

before I left it were based in Portugal

19:56

and I went to visit

19:58

them and it was really just

20:00

to kind of get the team

20:02

together , have a bit of a retreat kind

20:04

of thing and just see them in person , because we were

20:06

a remote team . And what

20:09

I noticed , because I just

20:11

literally went to these guys'

20:13

hometown in Porto and

20:15

we went to all their local coffee

20:17

shops , the places where they eat , we

20:19

went to their local football stadium , all

20:22

the things that they love to do day to day and

20:24

I also met their family , I met

20:26

their partners and

20:28

it was interesting because after

20:31

that I connected with them on

20:33

such a deep level and I think

20:35

obviously maybe this is not practical

20:37

for all leaders because you're not going to have

20:39

the time to visit everyone in your organization

20:42

. But if you can visit someone

20:44

where they live and understand

20:46

their culture , especially if you've got a team

20:49

remote , it goes a long way

20:51

. Got

20:54

a team remote , it goes a long way Because then when you talk to them . Not only

20:56

do you gain a lot of respect for them instead of flying them all out to a different

20:59

city , you see them in their environment , so you

21:01

can speak to them and communicate with

21:03

them in a way that's very specific

21:05

to them , and obviously you understand

21:08

what they're dealing with day

21:10

to day . You know when they're speaking

21:12

to their loved ones , who are their loved

21:14

ones , how do they interact with them

21:16

, and then you can be there

21:18

for them and you can make sure

21:21

that their personal goals in life

21:23

and all the people they love are

21:25

aligned with the companies and

21:28

just the conversations we had after

21:30

that two or three days we spent together

21:33

was so much more meaningful and

21:35

, interestingly enough , I noticed that

21:38

they were a lot more engaged in their work after

21:40

doing it and they started working a lot

21:42

harder and were a lot more productive , as

21:45

well as , like I said , building that deep-rooted

21:47

trust with them . It would also go

21:49

a long way into understanding their culture

21:51

, and that will make you a better person all

21:53

around .

21:55

And I wonder whether they're more willing to share their

21:57

true goals . Yes

22:01

, they were .

22:02

You know , if I , when I went to

22:04

Portugal , met some of these guys I

22:06

met their father , for example , and

22:09

one of their fathers wasn't so well and I

22:11

shook his hand and we went

22:13

for food together and I could

22:15

just see in the eyes of the guy that

22:17

the team member I was meeting how

22:19

much that meant to him .

22:21

So let's say you run a 50-person company

22:23

and you've got people in

22:25

five different countries . What's

22:28

the frequency we should be aiming for here ?

22:31

Yeah well , I've never run a 50-person company

22:33

so maybe I'm not the best person to ask

22:36

, but I think

22:38

just even doing it once would

22:40

go a long way . I would be

22:42

astounded if

22:44

you didn't notice a massive difference before

22:47

and after . Everyone meets in person . And

22:49

I think the remote work's great . The internet

22:51

has decentralized power and opportunity

22:54

a lot . But what remote work

22:56

isn't great for is those deep , meaningful

22:58

relationships . And I think when

23:00

you build those and people see each other and

23:02

not just the work side of things they're talking about the

23:04

personal things and they you see another human

23:07

being . You want to connect with them more

23:09

. You want to do more meaningful

23:11

work together . And another thing is

23:13

to incentivize people because obviously

23:16

once they have this experience they'll really

23:18

enjoy it . You can have your

23:20

goals and say maybe

23:22

you've got a stretch target in your business , for example

23:24

, if it's sales , you can say

23:26

we've got this stretch target

23:28

. We're obviously going to have to push really hard

23:31

If we reach a stretch target . We

23:33

will then organize a retreat for the entire

23:36

organization and , by the way

23:38

, let's do a vote on where everyone

23:40

wants to go and now the team picks where we

23:42

go together , so they feel like they've created

23:44

this , and then you can all get

23:46

together . Obviously , in the process , you hit

23:48

a bigger goal , then you all celebrate it

23:50

together as a team . I think this is a really

23:53

good thing to install , especially for remote companies

23:55

.

23:58

So it sounds like there's links back to AnswerOne in terms of if you're saying that

24:00

founders should sort of find a community

24:02

for them . It feels like answer three is almost like build

24:05

a community within your own company

24:07

in terms of with the same thing , like build

24:10

deep meaning , like it is not a community

24:12

until they're deep based on deep meaningful relationships

24:14

. Yeah , and it's harder to have deep meaningful

24:16

relationships without that sort of in-person

24:18

interaction .

24:20

A hundred percent , yeah . I couldn't agree more of in-person interaction . A hundred percent

24:22

, yeah .

24:23

I couldn't agree more , which

24:25

also links to the idea of responsibility

24:28

leadership yes

24:30

, not reward it .

24:36

Yeah , and the other thing is you'll probably see when you meet people

24:38

in person , you see who good leaders

24:40

are and you see who aren't

24:42

good leaders , and you also see

24:44

the real traits behind

24:46

humans . And it's

24:49

weird because once you've seen this and

24:51

then you go back into the business and workspace

24:54

especially if you're working online you

24:56

start to see everything else through a different perspective

24:59

and you start to understand people

25:01

a lot better . And that is

25:03

a great way for then organizing your team

25:06

, making sure people are in the right roles , doing

25:08

the right things . So I think not

25:10

just for everyone else's benefit , but

25:12

for your own benefit that the person who's organizing

25:15

it it's fantastic for management

25:17

and setting up your team in the correct

25:20

way , not for when

25:22

you're doing the big presentation in front of everyone

25:24

, when you get together , more for when

25:26

you're sitting down having a coffee with someone

25:29

or you're seeing when they're ringing

25:31

their loved one .

25:32

These little things , these little interactions , if

25:34

you really listen and you can

25:36

learn a lot , I think it also makes teams a

25:38

lot more forgiving , because if you

25:41

haven't met and you're mainly communicating by

25:43

written word word , you're very prone to

25:45

misunderstanding . It's kind of oh , it's

25:47

tony from finance , again that

25:51

and it actually . You actually

25:53

met tony from finance in person and

25:55

you realize that he loves porto and he's actually a really nice guy . And when he writes

25:57

this he's not . He's not being a dick , he's just actually , yeah , he just has a different communication

25:59

style . He's actually a really nice guy and when he writes

26:01

this he's not being a dick , he's just

26:03

actually . He just has a different communication

26:05

style , he's just trying to get sent across quickly . Suddenly

26:08

you're a lot more forgiving .

26:11

Yeah , 100% . And then maybe you

26:13

find out that Tony's just gone through a divorce

26:15

and he's really stressed and

26:17

he's finding the pressure of his job

26:19

really hard . So he's pushing because he's

26:21

trying to show the CEO of that company

26:24

that he is really

26:26

good for the organization and

26:28

that pressure has obviously come through in

26:30

his communication . But when you understand that , you

26:33

can relate to him , you can say how things

26:35

are going . Obviously , I know you've gone through his divorce , I

26:37

know it's hard . What can I do to help you ? And

26:40

yeah , all magical kind of things come

26:42

from that .

26:43

I suppose the thing that I'm curious about and like practically

26:46

, if this is kind of different

26:48

like build , build your community either internally

26:51

or externally , it feels like identifying

26:53

your community internally is kind of easier

26:55

because they're already internal . It's just , yeah

26:57

, get in front of them , build deeper relationships

26:59

, make it a bit , make something

27:02

, a bit more of it . But

27:09

how would you advise , from how you've done it , building your external community

27:11

what practically would you do in terms of identifying the people to go and reach out ? How did

27:13

you reach out to them ? How did you

27:15

just go about it ?

27:17

Well , I started documenting my journey online

27:19

and I know this is hard for

27:21

some people to do , but that's where

27:23

content comes in . Great , obviously , everyone

27:25

talks about content from the marketing perspective

27:28

and sales , because you can get an ROI off

27:30

it so you can track that very easily

27:32

. But really content

27:35

, especially if you lean into who you are as

27:37

a person . You take your personality online

27:39

. You share not only the good , but also

27:41

the bad and the damn right ugly . It

27:44

acts as a filter to draw

27:46

the people who share your values

27:48

towards you . So I

27:51

have a lot of people reaching out to me that

27:54

are very aligned with me and

27:56

, interestingly enough , when I was at Alpha Inbound

27:58

, our best hires came

28:00

through the content that I was putting out that

28:02

they'd been reading for six months . And

28:05

what happened is when they came into the organization

28:07

and some of these people they could have gone

28:09

to work at Fortune 500 companies

28:12

, but they chose to work with Little at All

28:14

for Inbound because they wanted

28:16

to be in a company with

28:18

a leader like me who had my values

28:20

and the mission that we are on together . They

28:23

bought into that . So when they were onboarded

28:25

, they hit the ground running . There

28:27

wasn't a massive onboarding time . So we didn't go through

28:29

a recruiting agency and

28:31

there was just a really good team fit . But

28:34

obviously outside of this I've had a lot of other

28:36

people that I've done business with or

28:38

I've just become friends with that are

28:40

drawn to my messages and

28:42

they share the same values as me

28:44

. So obviously this takes some time

28:46

to build . If you're not willing to

28:48

put the work in to do that , then

28:50

another great way to do it is to follow

28:52

other people's content and people

28:55

share their values in their content and then

28:57

usually they probably

28:59

will have built a community . Or again

29:01

, if you think about it , if someone's putting

29:04

out content , like I said , they've attracted

29:06

a lot of people through that filter

29:08

to them . So that means that they've already

29:10

got a community . It might just be not

29:13

in the sense of we're meeting up

29:15

every month , but they've got a community of people

29:17

online and then you can connect

29:19

into their community . And if

29:21

that person is talking about

29:23

certain topics that you resonate with , the

29:25

likelihood is they've got a lot of people

29:28

following them who also resonate with

29:30

those topics and principles . So

29:32

then you can go and follow those people

29:34

, you can connect with those people on whatever

29:36

platform you use and then within

29:38

that , suddenly those

29:41

people all have friends who all align with those

29:43

values , and then you have this big network effect

29:46

.

29:47

I think that's really , really useful . You

29:50

see , with so many founders , you're always giving

29:52

energy out to your team . Very

29:54

few people get it back and

29:56

that's why people have coaches to sort of have at least someone

29:58

who's there to support them . Having

30:03

someone who's there to support them , but having a community of peers or people with shared

30:05

values is also another very valuable way of rebuilding your energy

30:07

pool , rebuilding your resilience , getting

30:09

new ideas yeah , I've

30:11

always thought about building your tribe and

30:13

you know the content community you can build

30:15

online and as humans

30:17

, we're tribal by nature .

30:18

Our ancestors , we're all tribal . That's

30:20

how we're having this conversation in the first place

30:23

, because they banded together as a tribe , so naturally

30:25

, that's how we are wired . And

30:28

with this whole online movement

30:30

, there's this whole thing called solopreneurship

30:32

I'm sure you've heard of it before where

30:34

basically people are quitting their jobs and

30:37

they're becoming solopreneurs . I

30:40

don't believe in that and and here's the reason why

30:42

If you're doing everything

30:44

for yourself , then

30:47

for me , that's not freedom

30:49

, because then you have to

30:51

do everything you're also not good at . For

30:53

me , what freedom is is

30:55

focusing on my strengths every single

30:57

day and only doing that , working

30:59

alongside other people who

31:01

compliment me in the areas I'm not good

31:04

at but that's what their strengths are and

31:06

then together as the tribe , going

31:08

back to how we got here today our

31:11

strength as humans we can all

31:13

win together . So I think if you create

31:15

that tribe within your organization and

31:18

you , really everyone leans into their strengths

31:20

, so you get really honest about that , you meet up in

31:22

person , you really find out what people's strengths

31:24

are . I think this is a

31:26

great way to see business , and

31:28

that's something that I take away from this conversation

31:31

.

31:32

Reflecting on our conversation with Nigel , it's

31:34

clear that the journeys we embark on as founders are

31:37

deeply intertwined with the connections we cultivate

31:39

along the way . Nigel's story

31:41

is a reminder of the strength found in vulnerability

31:43

and the incredible potential of leadership

31:46

and human resilience when fueled by meaningful

31:48

relationships . Thank you

31:50

for tuning into Peer Effect . Join us next

31:52

week for another inspiring episode that brings

31:55

light to the experience and lessons shaping

31:57

change makers across the globe . Until

31:59

next time , cheers .