Episode 72
Do you feel like a tiny boat on a choppy sea?
When you’re working for yourself or running a small business, navigating challenging times can feel like being a little boat on choppy seas. Your job is to keep the boat float until calmer waters come.
You're feeling nauseous from the continues ups and downs of the waves and at the same time you’re trying to scrabble around grabbing ropes trying to steady the sail and keep on course.
That's a lot to deal with on your own. So what can you do?
For Ben, these three quotes helped:
- "A whole and rich life can be lived in a small village."
- "The most important thing is to know is to know the most important thing."
- "Some of the worst things in my life never even happened."
On today’s episode, Ben and Carlos talk about how these quotes helped Ben in his meditation business and how they could help you.
Links
Transcript
welcome to, uh, episode five, season eight of Happy Pricing.
Ben:I think you just make those numbers up every time.
Ben:I don't think there is any consistency to that.
Carlos:I will show you the whole list of, hours of happy process, hours of this that we created.
Carlos:Do you feel like a tiny boat on a choppy sea?
Carlos:And this is, this is an idea inspired by Ben.
Carlos:and we're gonna talk a bit more, I think, to that idea and, and what that means.
Carlos:and connected to that were these, um, the story of running a business during challenging.
Carlos:Economic, economic, political, distracting times.
Carlos:Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:Uh, what that means in terms of how we respond to this turbulence.
Carlos:This, the uncertainty, the difficulties, and.
Carlos:I think for me, when I was sort of reviewing the stuff that Ben was talking about is it's, it's that what's he talking about?
Carlos:What talking, what's he talking about?
Carlos:What's he talking about?
Carlos:So I'm gonna pick up a story about what he's talking about, whether it's true or not, who cares?
Carlos:but it is that whole, was it the space between stimulus and response?
Carlos:It's like, how do we respond given all the difficult stimuli, uh, we are experiencing.
Ben:I guess a little sort of context.
Ben:We can get into some of the sorts.
Ben:I mean, clearly lots of different people feeling the, uh, turbulent waves of our time.
Ben:Um, and, you know, those turbulent waves might be felt in the day-to-Day or running their business.
Ben:Like the kind of prompt for this was partly the day-to-Day in one of the businesses that, uh, I own a meditation platform, which sort of, you know, a decline in income every month for ACT all of this year and actually going back into last year.
Ben:And there's, you know, very sort of real and um, sort of reasonable reasons for why this has happened, which is kind of outside of all of our control.
Ben:But, so like that was an example.
Ben:One example, but.
Ben:The kind number of conversations I have with people where, you know, clearly it's harder and harder.
Ben:People are, there's, there is anxiety, there is nervousness, there is uncertainty in the kind of world at large, which is caused by, you know, real things to people like, cost of living, all these things, but also just a kind of general kind of uncertainty in the.
Ben:Uh, in the world anyway, like you talking about, there are social changes, political changes, economic changes, and so all of that sort of, sort of stitches together.
Ben:And I guess, uh, another sort of contextual thing, which, uh, is part of the thread to this, I think in a way for people who have run, uh, have been running their businesses, their, their little ships, as I was in a little boat as I was calling it.
Ben:Period of time since about 2010, kind of unbeknown to them.
Ben:And it may not have kind of felt like this at the time.
Ben:These, in a way, has been like the kind of golden era for running a company.
Ben:And the reason for that is the sort of, without getting too sort of boringly kind of economic, which I don't really understand anyway.
Ben:Uh, but the reason for that is.
Ben:The response to the global financial crisis was to create a shit load of money, um, to kind of speak bluntly, uh, and with bad language.
Ben:And that shit load money was mainly distributed.
Ben:Through businesses.
Ben:So in a sense, if you run a business that in directly or indirectly kind of relies on other companies, whether they're big or they're small, buying the things that you do, the context over the last sort of 12, 13 years or 12 years really was, was, was that actually there was a huge amount of money in the economy,
Ben:and again, without getting sort of too boringly about the economics of it, actually something like 60% of all of the money which has ever been created.
Ben:Has been created since the 2008 global financial crisis.
Ben:So that is a kind of context in which lots of people have been working.
Ben:It may not have felt like that all the time, just not to say that it would've felt easy running companies, but that is a context.
Ben:So when things like that are happening, actually decisions that people making decisions about whether they will work with you or not, whether they have ability to work with you or not, of course, are changed.
Ben:One of the things which changed over the last year is that all basically that tap was completely turned off from a sort of government point of view.
Ben:This is true for all the countries in kind of in Western Europe, for America.
Ben:And so this kind of, that alone creates a big change in how in the, in the kind of context in which people are operating.
Ben:Then when you kind of factor in other, you know, geopolitical things, there's wars, there's cost of living, all of this sort of stuff.
Ben:There's this uncertainty.
Ben:That is sort of pervasive in our culture and uncertainty, which is pervasive within the, within the companies that, that we kind of operate.
Ben:And so like I said, there was some kind of very real examples for businesses, my own, but also very real examples that I was getting with other clients of mine, sort of sharing with me about their own anxiety, their own uncertainty, their own fears about.
Ben:You know, where kind of new clients are coming from or the amount of time it's taking to kind of encourage customers to start working with them.
Ben:It kind of, sort of, this sort of uncertainty was just sort of off.
Ben:I was seeing it in lots and.
Ben:And then there were a, a kind, a couple of sort of references.
Ben:I was actually having a conversation with someone who's a person of the sea.
Ben:Uh, he's not a mermaid, but he is a person of the sea.
Ben:He spent a lot of time, he was talking about being in a little boat, uh, with his wife in a shipping channel, uh, Alf off.
Ben:And he being a person of the sea, he was saying.
Ben:So there's big ferries that go past the shipping channel in Corfu and they create huge wash essentially.
Ben:And he was in this with his, in his tiny little boat, uh, which is like a little, uh, sort of, I don't know, very small little motorboat thingy.
Ben:And, uh, his wife was really panicking, uh, that they were in these, in this kind of wash of this kind of massive ferries.
Ben:And he was saying being a man of the sea, that actually it was perfectly safe for kind of reasons, which were sort of, kind of clear to him.
Ben:But obviously the kind of feeling was as soon as it all got sort of choppy is that it was massively unsafe.
Ben:Massively.
Ben:That actually there was a sort of some sort of existential risk of life and um, I was kind of, sort of struck by that actually, and how.
Ben:That even when the sea can be actually very choppy, there is safety to be found in a small boat, in a little boat.
Ben:Uh, and um, I was kind of, I sort of was kind of liking that sort of, uh, that metaphor somewhat, that actually 'cause in a way that, you know, many of us are navigating our own.
Ben:Little boats, you know, that is kind of what the nature of having a, a kind of small company is.
Ben:We are all navigating our own little boats and that the economy was feeling increasingly, uh, uncertain, uncertain, kind of was feeling to me like that is the choppy season which we were operating.
Ben:So I was kind of then sort of exploring the idea, what does it kind of mean to kind of navigate your own little boat, uh, your own tiny boat in these seas, which are increasingly choppy.
Ben:And so that is sort of some of the context to what we were kind of looking at.
Ben:And I guess maybe kind of one sort of thing before we get into some of those quotes and whatnot.
Ben:I was, uh, kind of mentioning this idea to, uh, one of my clients and they said sort of half jokingly, I was sort of saying to them, you know, when you are in your, you know, navigating your little boat and the seas are increasingly choppy, you know, what, what do you do?
Ben:And they said half jokingly, oh, row, quickly to land.
Ben:I, and actually that is the antithesis of what I'm suggesting because I think, you know, if you are in a.
Ben:You are not gonna outro the storm, you're not gonna race ahead of the storm.
Ben:In a way, what you have to find a way of getting comfortable with, you have to find a way to get comfortable in the storm.
Ben:You have to find a way to start not panicking in the storm.
Ben:You have to find a way of just kind of orientating and sort of navigating your little boat so that it is able, which it will do, kind of bob on top of the storms, which kind of rage underneath.
Ben:So I was gonna, these were sort of some of the prompts that was getting me to, which was kind of pointing me to this general metaphor.
Ben:Uh, and we can sort of talk some about what that means in practice, but that's sort of where the metaphor idea was coming from.
Carlos:Uh, thank you.
Carlos:'cause now I'm gonna stretch that metaphor even further.
Carlos:Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:I'm gonna say this is a fishing boat, And you, there's maybe some other fishing boats around you.
Carlos:And these boats are.
Carlos:Going back to Harbor because there's rowing as hard as it can back to shore.
Carlos:' cause the storm is really, really choppy.
Carlos:And then the storm passes and you realize actually you're still around, but you're the only person there to fish.
Carlos:So all the fish is yours.
Carlos:And so I think there's.
Carlos:An aspect here, let's talking about how we navigate the storm, what comes up in the storm, and I think these three quotes that you shared would be interesting to see how they land with people and we can talk around them.
Carlos:And then the, potential outcome from weathering the storm, and I've heard about, heard this said about any kind of economic crisis is like those who remain, who are able to stick around.
Carlos:They essentially have, uh, more reward because less people around.
Carlos:So Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:In that, you know, again, stretching that analogy a bit.
Carlos:So what I think what, um, we wanted to offer was some of these, these, these quite beautiful little quotes, um, to potentially help anyone who feels like they're Navi, you know, navigating this storm, trying to work out what to do.
Carlos:And then maybe from hearing these things, getting a sense of, um, what's important to think about Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:Rather than just road straight back to shore.
Carlos:Yeah.
Carlos:I, I'll share the quotes that you shared with me first, and I, I, um, Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:So the first one is A whole and rich life can be lived in a small village.
Carlos:The second one was, the most important thing is to know what the most important is.
Carlos:To know the most important thing.
Carlos:Well, the most important thing to know is to know the most important thing.
Carlos:And the third one was, um, some of the worst things in my life never even happened to me.
Carlos:And let's take the first one.
Carlos:A whole rich life can be lived in a small village.
Ben:So obviously it's, it's another metaphor which isn't about boats, it's about a village, but parking that aside.
Ben:So, yeah, so that, that quote or version thereof it, um, is, uh, from the kind of ancient Chinese.
Ben:Teacher and this idea that a whole rich life can be lived in a small village.
Ben:I think for me it's really, really easy when we are running, navigating our own little boats, our own small boats.
Ben:It's really, really easy to be, um, kind of in a way.
Ben:Uh, kind of overwhelmed by chasing too much, overwhelmed by trying to reach too many people, overwhelmed by just sort of pushing too hard in a sense, because the reality, of course, is that we're only ever going to, uh, kind of influence or impact a very, very, very, very small number of people.
Ben:And I think it can be sort of reassuring and, um, sort of comforting to remind ourselves of that.
Ben:And so, in a sense, you know, like 99.99999% of people have no interest in the thing that you provide, nor will they, nor should they, nor does it matter.
Ben:The important thing is to know that 1e-05% or equivalent of who do really kind of need or would benefit from the thing that you provide.
Ben:And so it's really about kind of knowing those things.
Ben:And I, I like the, the kind of metaphor of the village, the idea around that.
Ben:'cause what comes up for me in that, you know what, if I think about like the colloquial idea of kind of village or the ancient Chinese idea of village, you know, you would know everybody.
Ben:Who you did business with, you would kind of know everything about them.
Ben:You know, whether in the kind of, or if we sort of took the analogy on the kind of, uh, the butcher, the whatever, you know, like the candlestick maker that you would have in the, in a, kind of, in a village idea.
Ben:Of course you would sort of, so you would know all of those people.
Ben:You'd know them instantly.
Ben:You'd know their families, you'd know what's important and you would have each other's backs.
Ben:Do you know what I mean?
Ben:The, the, the kind of commercial engagements, relationships.
Ben:Would, there would be this idea of something reciprocal built into it.
Ben:And now I don't mean by that, that there has to be something reciprocal in the commercial relationships, but this idea that the relationships are underpinned by a spirit of generosity, the relationships are underpinned by a care and they familiarity and they,
Ben:they kind of relationships are kind of, are kind of built around this kind of, sort of mutual support that could only ever happen.
Ben:If your community in which you sort of operate the community in which your little boat floats is all known to each other.
Ben:And so it's this, I guess it's for me, is as much about a kind of one of these, I guess in a way, just one thing.
Ben:These three questions are sort of the questions I always come back to when thinking about businesses that I run or work that I do with people.
Ben:And so in a sense it was not that these were just that things came out of this sort of little boat thing.
Ben:They're always the.
Ben:And they feel resonant to me for people who kind of navigate the, or who are navigating their own little boat.
Ben:So yeah.
Ben:So this thing around the village is about knowing, it is about relationships of trust, it is about relationships of care, that there is some sort of mutuality kind of built into that.
Ben:And, and that being a really useful reference point, we don't need to chase out there.
Ben:Hard, hard, hard, wide, wide wide.
Ben:More, more, more, more, more.
Ben:We need to come back.
Ben:Thinking, well, who is the, who is the village in which I am kind of best connected to?
Ben:Who is the village in which I can best help and serve?
Carlos:I've got Lord of the Rings in my head at the moment.
Carlos:I dunno that there's boats in there.
Carlos:Have you seen the opening scene?
Carlos:Where if you can remember it, for those of you who who've seen it, hopefully you can conjure up memories of this.
Carlos:Uh, and if you haven't, just think of a village lane or not village, a country lane just winding its way through a little forest towards the village.
Carlos:Uh, and this is the Shire.
Carlos:This is where the Hobbits live.
Carlos:It's a beautiful little kind of idyllic green.
Carlos:Connected village.
Carlos:And then there's the whole of middle Earth and Sauron is ready to dominate the whole of middle Earth.
Carlos:And, and that's the big everything.
Carlos:So there's is real contrast for me.
Carlos:It's like there's Sauron who wants to control the whole fucking thing?
Carlos:Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:Uh, and then there's Prodo who just enjoys hanging around in his village and eating apples.
Carlos:There's a sense of adventure still in him.
Carlos:He wants to go and see the world.
Carlos:Actually, this village life is quite a nice place to come back to.
Carlos:And so there's this, for me, there's this part of it is like, what does success mean?
Carlos:Are you Aron or are you actually a Sam Wise Gaji.
Carlos:Who is Frodos mate.
Carlos:Um, I, I'm just a bit of a Lord Rings geek.
Carlos:I've seen the film too many times.
Carlos:No way.
Carlos:And, and, you know, he, he yearns to be back in the Shire and this beautiful kind of simple life.
Carlos:And so I think there's this idea of simplicity here.
Carlos:particularly, and we're gonna mix all sorts of metaphors now.
Carlos:We've got a lot of the rings, we've got villages, we've got fucking storms.
Carlos:But yeah, in, in the eye of, in the, not even the, in the storm, you want to keep things simple because there's so much going on.
Ben:So I'm just gonna pause you.
Ben:because this is the segue to quote number two.
Carlos:Oh, okay.
Carlos:The most important thing to know is to know the most important thing.
Ben:So, yeah, so this, this quote or version thereof is courtesy of the, another one from, from the East, so to speak.
Ben:Um, the Zen monk who, uh, a guy called Suzuki Roshi, who brought a lot of the, uh, Zen Buddhism to America in the, in the sixties.
Ben:And, uh, so the story goes, and of course I may be totally fucking misunderstanding all of this, uh, but it's useful for me so I shall continue.
Ben:Um, he, uh, when asked by a sort of student, you know, what is the most important thing?
Ben:Replied, the most important thing is to know the most important thing.
Ben:You know, which kind of links to what we're sort of talking about the, you know, before, with the last quote, this idea of kind of, uh, of, of, of kind of focusing down of relationships built on a smaller number of relationships built on trust and some idea of re reciprocity
Ben:and some idea of generosity and kind of that, that kind of familiarity feeling this kind of, you know, knowing the most important thing.
Ben:Of course, we live in times where we.
Ben:People, machines, we are brilliant at adding things.
Ben:We're always adding things.
Ben:We're always complicating, we're always adding in working, adding in new opportunities, trying to chase new clients, trying to add this idea, add this approach, add whatever it may be.
Ben:So we're always kind of adding.
Ben:So essentially we're always overcomplicating.
Ben:And as we're overcomplicating, we sort of slowing ourselves down.
Ben:We are making the doing of our work.
Ben:and also linked to this, you know, knowing the most important thing is that if we go through a process of kind of radical simplification, which would be kind of how I would kind of think about it or kind of feel about it, this invitation to a radical simplification affects our, the day-to-day of our work.
Ben:Like what is it that we're trying to do?
Ben:What is the, what is the sort of smallest number of things I should be aiming for this week, this month, this year?
Ben:Because if I kind of distill it down to the smallest number of things, of course I'm just increasing the likelihood that those things get the appropriate focus and energy that's necessary for them to thrive.
Ben:And so part of that, of course, so like I said, one of the, as, one of the ways that can affect what we're doing is just the stuff of my week.
Ben:But one of the other ways of course, that you were kind of just sort of starting to point to there is this who, who.
Ben:Is it that I am most interested in serving?
Ben:Like the, the, the tools and things you look at with the kind of love letter, the invitation to focus, the invitation to niche.
Ben:This kind of is the, is the sort of extension of the kind of village idea, but this, this invitation to a radical simplification.
Ben:What is it?
Ben:I can get off my plate and then like I said, that can be the stuff of my day, the stuff of my week, the stuff of my month.
Ben:But it can also be the stuff of wrong clients or the stuff or clients or customers which are no longer right, or the stuff of the products and services that I have that are no longer quite connecting with those people who I most want to help.
Ben:So I think for me it is this idea about a radical simplification which affects can, can shape and influence.
Ben:Of day and the stuff of our kind of work in terms of niching and all of that sort of stuff.
Carlos:What resonates for me around this in terms of this idea of focus, is I, I go to the idea of depth and mastery.
Carlos:It's like, what is it that I want to be a master of?
Carlos:Because that's my, that's my unique focus.
Carlos:That's the thing that I'm spending my time and attention on because I want to not only hone my craft, but then because of that, be able to help the right person in the right way, in the most impactful way I can because of the knowledge and experience and time, and.
Carlos:And I, I've been guilty in the past of just loving life because it's had so many fruits to drive.
Carlos:Well, stop it.
Carlos:Stop it, stop it.
Carlos:Now, you had your fill, get down and do the work, but there's, yeah, I, I know it's a struggle for many to just like commit to the, the, the thing, the most important thing
Ben:goes against.
Ben:Not just a, a kind of will to love life, which of course is a kind of beautiful thing, but it just go, it goes against.
Ben:Almost everything.
Ben:In fact, the way we're sort of schooled, what we grow up believing this, you know, it is, is a bit of a kind of, it's, it is a bit of a, kind of zig to a cultural zag, if that makes sense.
Ben:You know what I mean?
Ben:This kind of idea that we would be sort of simplifying that we, we would be saying, no, it feels like loss.
Ben:It feels like we're missing opportunity.
Ben:It feels like we're compromising ourselves.
Ben:It feels kind of like it, the idea is a kind of antithesis to what we should be doing.
Ben:To increase the likelihood of opportunity to increase the likelihood of there being things for me, for me to do.
Carlos:And I think this is this, for me, this kind of focus comes not at the beginning of this journey of work, but towards the middle, towards the end.
Carlos:It's like I feel for the first part of.
Carlos:For many, at least for me, for the first half of my working life, it's been about what works, what's nice, what's what passions do I have?
Carlos:What, what doesn't work?
Carlos:Who do I wanna work with, who do I not wanna work with?
Carlos:Until I get to a point of, like Ashley, I know where I work best.
Carlos:I know my work to do.
Carlos:I know what it feels like.
Carlos:I would love to get better at that and do that more and spend more of my time on it and less on all the peripheral stuff that needs to be done.
Carlos:But I'm not the best, the person best place to do it.
Carlos:And so how do I, uh, say no to certain opportunities?
Carlos:Because I know that I'm not gonna perform the way I need to perform and notice certain tasks because I know they're just not, they're not places where I can actually add the most value.
Carlos:and that question though, asking, finding out what that most important thing is, that's such an important in itself.
Ben:And how, which is a, which is an open inquiry really, you know, that it is difficult to kind of know that, and what feels the most important thing today may not feel like the most important thing to Warren and how you hold the contradictions around that and how you hold also to the other thing.
Ben:You are pointing to how you hold the contradictions around the idea of.
Ben:Kind of diversity equally being important in some contexts.
Carlos:Yeah.
Ben:Uh, and, you know, and kind of balance being important in some, some contexts.
Ben:So, you know, these, these things are not, of course, not absolutes.
Ben:There is contradiction built into them.
Ben:But the, the kind of the invitation, like you put it, the inquiry, what is the most important thing, actually is a really good avenue.
Ben:To kind of go down actually specifically when sort of, in a way when, uh, contrasted or contradicted to the sort of third quote that we were sort of talking about,
Carlos:So the third quote, which I love, and it's some of the worst things in my life, never even happened.
Ben:So, again, I'm totally bastardizing somebody else's quote.
Ben:It's one of those ones, it's attributed to Mark Twain, uh, American writers.
Ben:I don't know whether it's his or actually exactly what he said, but the, the kind of spirit of that, of course makes sense that what we do as people is, you know, we are very, very good at catastrophizing.
Ben:We are very, very good at weaving a story of disaster, uh, together in our minds.
Ben:You know, particularly if we think about being in our little boat on the choppy sea, kind of going back to that, when sort of shit is bubbling up around us, it's really, really easy to get sort of stuck in the, in the kind of negative feedback loops.
Ben:The kind of the, the kind of worry story that I'm basically on course for some sort of, you know, some sort of, basically my boat is gonna be wrecked.
Ben:And what he's sort of pointing to and what he's sort of talking about is, you know, as real as these things kind of feel at the time.
Ben:Are they actually true?
Ben:Do they actually even end up coming to pass?
Ben:And you know, I'm gonna know this for for myself too.
Ben:It's very easy to kind of get stuck in that kind of loop of imagining an outcome and in fact, spending a huge amount of time imagining outcomes which never actually come to pass.
Ben:And we just sort of move on to the next.
Ben:But when we're held in the grip of that, when we're held in the storm of the thought.
Ben:It feels unbelievably true, unbelievably real, and an unbelievable risk.
Ben:And of course that, you know, kind of creates a culture that's reinforcing the culture of uncertainty, reinforcing the reinforcing the culture of anxiety, or the kind of internal culture of anxiety, which of course starts to shape an effect for not for good.
Ben:All of the decisions that we're making in terms of running our business, all of the things that we're doing come from this place, you know, of a reinforced uncertainty.
Carlos:It's, um, reminds me of the phrase, uh, you perceive what you believe.
Carlos:Mm.
Carlos:And that becomes a self-reinforcing phrase.
Carlos:Yeah.
Carlos:Is you exper and it becomes a pattern.
Carlos:You believe the world is scary, and so you only see the scary things, which reinforces the, the world is scary.
Carlos:And so because of that, you never do anything risky because you might get hurt.
Carlos:and, and that for me is, if you are on your own and you are always thinking about that, then you'll never shift.
Carlos:And there's something about opening your self out to others to share your fears and worries, and to share what you think might happen.
Carlos:A, you realize you're not the only person who does this, so you can just like, mm-hmm.
Carlos:Pull out and not be so self critical about it.
Carlos:But B, they also can offer a different perspective and say, yes, that is possible and this is also possible and I see it this way as well as you see it that way.
Carlos:Which can I hope us out?
Carlos:Again, with effort and time, maybe different beliefs.
Carlos:Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:Which then allow us to act and behave differently.
Carlos:So, so yeah, there is a, it, it's a, it feels like an evolutionary thing in the first place that we, we've, um, have these images.
Carlos:Thoughts that come up to us that are trying to protect us, keep us safe, the homeostasis thing.
Carlos:Mm-hmm.
Carlos:But because we have these amazing brains as well, we should be able to, or the invitation is to look beyond those fears and try and create more positive futures so that we can act in a more beneficial way for ourselves and for the people around us.
Carlos:I think the theme around all of this is like, if we're on our own, in our own little boat, it's very hard to forget or it's very easy to forget that big isn't always best, very easy to, forget what the most important thing is or even find it really hard to even an start answering that question.
Carlos:And very much so, we will get lost in our own heads of doom and gloom.
Carlos:And so there's something here about being in community, being in a group, being with a coach, being with someone who can actually, uh, give you a different perspective of things or, or at least help you nudge your along a certain direction that is of use.
Ben:Yeah, definitely.
Ben:And.
Ben:Because part of the thing you were talking about there about sort of, uh, beliefs, you know, the kind of make giving people space from their sort of, sort of beliefs and the thing that we're talking about around the kind of village and knowing the most important thing, you
Ben:know, all starts to, to talk a little bit to the intentions that people have and these being, these being important and clearly a group.
Ben:You know, even if, if, if you are a company of one, clearly that's a very, very lonely, that's a very lonely little boat to be on, even if you are a, a company of few.
Ben:And you were the person who's responsible for navigating that boat
Ben:and you.
Ben:some of the biggest value that people get irrespective of any sort of shit I might whip blonde about or whatever.
Ben:The biggest value people get actually is just the opportunity to speak to each other, to speak to each other, to hear from each other, to like, you put it actually when they, that somebody else articulate the thing that they worry about.
Ben:And it's like, oh, right, actually how enlightening it is when somebody else articulates.
Ben:It's like, oh shit.
Ben:So I'm not the only one.
Ben:And actually, so the, the kind of hold of those things, the hold of those little seeds of kind of catastrophic or cata catastrophizing story, the, the kind of hold of those things is kind of loosened, is weakened just by some, by seeing somebody else kind of articulate a similar thing.
Ben:So yeah, undoubtedly.
Ben:Need to be in community.
Ben:That village idea that we're sort of talking about relates yes to a market you might want to serve, but equally relates to the, the kind of the, the kind of culture in which you run your business.
Ben:So the, the village idea can be a support to you.
Ben:The village idea can be people who you would serve as well.
Carlos:Uh, I was talking to um, Lana, who's helps us with our Vision 2020 program.
Carlos:and we were just talking about sometimes we, we need space to just talk out our thoughts.
Carlos:You know, I, I'm a, I'm a talk to think person and I'm lucky in my community I have an abundance of ears.
Carlos:You know, I could just click on Zoom, send out a, a message on WhatsApp, and I'll have someone to.
Carlos:And I think that's really important to be able to know that there are people out there who will listen.
Carlos:But the trouble is, I think when we are afraid to ask for help, mm-Hmm.
Carlos:We don't give permission for other people to do the same.
Carlos:And so while we don't want to be a burden or we don't want to feel like we are the stupid one, or we don't wanna feel like we're, um, being incompetent business people.
Carlos:Actually sharing, I think offering the need for support is a gift for others, because then there's something about being the person who can offer support.
Carlos:That's such an amazing feeling.
Carlos:Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:And then within that as well, to be in a space where there is a culture of not being, not telling people what to do, not just straight away jumping into fix.
Carlos:Being able to just hear, reflect, share your experience, and then if required, tell them what to do.
Carlos:Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:And so there's there for me, there's, it's really, I think I would love, and this is the thing I reason why I value our community so much and, and the spaces that we've shared together is like there, there are other spaces in the business world that feel so unsafe to say you are struggling.
Carlos:Or so unsafe to say, you dunno what you're doing.
Carlos:And even if you do, what ends up happening is like you get 10 people telling you what to do more often than not.
Carlos:10 contradictory statements.
Ben:And probably 10 awful statements.
Carlos:10 awful statements.
Carlos:And that doesn't even help, you know, feel like, oh, I got so many answers.
Carlos:You do nothing with them and you feel even more shit because you've just been told things.
Carlos:Having space with others and also having, being in the right spaces as well.
Carlos:Where, where you can not only ask for help, but also offer help in a way that's, Mm-Hmm.
Carlos:Well received.
Carlos:So, um, one of the things we are hoping to do, is to help a group of small boats, these choppy seas.
Carlos:Particularly around the work that we talk about here around the pricing, around the money, and, and not only just how much are people gonna pay me, but the stories that we have around this that stop us from doing the thing to be able to, get support in the moment.
Carlos:And with the Happy Pricing course, it's quite time bound.
Carlos:We, we offer some knowledge and, and approaches and strategies that you can take and use again and again and again.
Carlos:But from my experience, Elise, and I'm sure Ben will, will echo.
Carlos:This is like, and this is an ongoing practice and this is also something you learn best while doing in the real world, while doing on a live situation.
Carlos:And unfortunately in that live moment when you need to apply some of these principles.
Carlos:When fear kicks in and you start catastrophizing and the boat is rocking and the sea is just splashing over the side, these things go outta your head, and so it's always, it's actually most valuable then to have someone remind you.
Carlos:Remember that, remember this, stay calm.
Carlos:Most important thing is this.
Carlos:You've got a group of people around you and it isn't gonna be as bad as you think.
Ben:One of the things I think it's important to when the waves are choppy, and particularly if it, if there, if there is a kind of very, which may be a very real.
Ben:Impact on people's money, the amount money that they're generating.
Ben:You know, as kind of Ray points out, it's very easy, particularly with money, which is such a hugely emotionally charged thing.
Ben:Maybe one of the most emotionally charged.
Ben:Of our lives, it's super easy to kind of disappear into Mark Twain land.
Ben:The thing that we've sort of talking about, the the kind of catastrophizing, the, uh, the kind of inevitable sequence of certain company death or whatever version of that it might be.
Ben:And one of the things that can happen when that happens is, um, we get kind of in our nervousness, we start thinking, shit, I need to work out new ways of making some money.
Ben:Of new ways of earning some money.
Ben:But one of the kind of important things to remember is that money is a, it's a secondary thing, right?
Ben:Money is one of the things that we get in exchange for sort of being useful for other people.
Ben:Uh, and so one of the kind of invitations a little bit to people if they are in that place of sort of struggling, if they are feeling a kind of very real, sort of decline in income or money being harder to.
Ben:Resist the temptation somewhat to basically hold the object of money super fucking tight, super close, and to remember that actually.
Ben:All of the kind of root of their success so far, whether that's considered really big or whether they don't consider it really big at all, the, the kind of root of that, the source of that actually is in a contribution that they have made, an impact that they have made to somebody else.
Ben:And there may be many of those people.
Ben:There may be one person, whatever it may be.
Ben:But the important, the important thing is to not hold the money bit close, not to kind of go desperately seeking the money.
Ben:Go desperately seeking.
Ben:The value go desperately seeking the contribution.
Ben:Go desperately seeking.
Ben:Hold on.
Ben:What is it that the people who I want to, that I hope to serve or do, serve?
Ben:What is it that they most need now?
Ben:Uh, and.
Ben:That was sort of some of what we did with the, uh, people in my, my meditation business when, but you know, we created, we actually kind of created the opportunity for a pause a moment was get people outta the day-to-Day, which is a little bit what you were sort of talking about in terms of the value of the group, although we didn't do it as a group, but we're like more internal group.
Ben:Get them outta the day-to-day so that they're not.
Ben:In that zone a little bit and to kind of practice at that somewhat, get them outta that so that, um, people are, are not just sort of stuck in the cycle of thinking about money, which was kind of one of the things that was kind of weighing people down.
Ben:We can get them out.
Ben:We can hit sort of momentary, a kind of momentary pause if you like, give some space to be able to kind of reconnect to thinking about this a little bit more creatively.
Ben:And one of the things around the question is, what is it actually?
Ben:The people in our community or the people who we most wanna say, what is it that they most need?
Ben:Then kind of invites the question, well, hold on a second.
Ben:Are we really sure?
Ben:Do we remind?
Ben:Who are those people that we're talking about?
Ben:Do we need to reflect again on who those people are?
Ben:Are our assumptions about who those people are?
Ben:Actually the assumptions that maybe were true in a time.
Ben:2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years ago, maybe they were true then.
Ben:Are they true now?
Ben:What is it that we know about those people now?
Ben:And once we've kind of painted that picture, like in in your idea, yes, it's about niching or the idea of a kind of love letter or whatever it may be.
Ben:Once we've reconnected to that, then we can start to explore a little bit more creatively.
Ben:What is it actually.
Ben:Those people need because have we actually just been holding on an idea of what our right products and services are to kind of use that vote based on assumptions which have maybe changed ideas which have maybe changed understanding, which has made, maybe changed.
Ben:'cause the thing that kind of happens when you're in that sort of kind is one of the things that happens is people hold ever tighter onto something.
Ben:And so in our case, in the meditation business, people were just holding ever tighter onto an idea.
Ben:Products and services, just to use the generic idea that actually were true and valuable and relevant.
Ben:But actually three years ago, in a peak of Covid time, which was very relevant to what we were doing in the, in the meditation business, but the, the context had changed, the understanding had changed actually, who those people were had changed, what they needed had changed.
Ben:But we basically, in holding or never tighter.
Ben:We're losing sight of who those people were and what they most needed.
Ben:And so in creating a bit of a pause to come out of it, to not be thinking about money, not be kind of weighed down in those kind of Mark Twain thoughts, even momentarily created the space to start thinking creatively about the things that we could provide that were most useful to those people.
Ben:And that just was a bit of an unlocker.
Ben:It created this little window of, of, of space, a little window of kind of creative energy so that we could come at that again.
Ben:And that became a little bit of a, you know, like a sort of, sort of stepladder climbing out of what had felt like a casse, felt like a, um, you know, a bit of a hole actually start to come up because we were focused on.
Ben:We were focused again on the most important thing, and we were focused again on giving ourselves some space from the catastrophizing, and then the thing starts to shift somewhat.
Ben:Then you are kind of, you know, you have more creativity around it, you have kind of more insight.
Ben:You have some space, and then you can start to get to a place where you are reconnecting again with the people who you most kind of wanna serve with, what it is that they most need.
Ben:And then you can start to kind of iterate your way out it.
Ben:So that was just kind of where, where we got to and back to the question you asking around.
Ben:For me, there's a couple of answers to the why question, why, why am I interested in, in doing this?
Ben:One is actually me also asking myself the people who I'm interested in, uh, in working with, serving like all the people who, you know, we work with on the course, or people who exist in the, um, happy Startup community, people who are trying to do their own good creative work, which is well intentioned.
Ben:Well, reason, their kind of hope is positive.
Ben:The impact that they're trying to make is positive.
Ben:Kind of feels to me that lots of these people do need support at the moment.
Ben:And so why am I interested in this?
Ben:I'm interested in it because I'm interested in being able to lend the support to people, um, based on this sort of experience I've had so that these people are better able.
Ben:To do it.
Ben:And so that in just in a kind of, in a practical sense is part of kind of why, but also the, the kind of general kind of arc of my work and kind of Ray knows comments on this and Alex too.
Ben:I think the, uh, part of the, the kind of arc of my work over the last sort of 15 or 20 years, it's been trying to work out how, what it is that I kind of know and have got from my own inquiry into Buddhist practice.
Ben:How that interrelates with my work generally, uh, and how that might interrelate with kind of others.
Ben:And that's not about being sort of overly sort of prescriptive in terms of being a Buddhist, but it's like lots of the ideas and the principles, the adaptability that you can get from it, the creativity that you can get from it.
Ben:The kind of opportunity to kind of, sort of to exist and live at ease with the changing conditions.
Ben:Feel like really kind of important.
Ben:I guess those are things I am kind of keen to learn ever more, and the idea of kind of bringing those together more cleanly and clearly with the work that people do also feels like important work to me.
Carlos:So, yeah, I, if, if that resonates with you, if that feels like, You'd rather feel a lot more ease in this storm rather than piss your pants in the boat and just, and yeah, this idea of just then being able to navigate it, get to the calmer waters so that you can then more fish, more peacefully, you know, be more peaceful in that space.
Carlos:Then I would urge you to contact us if you go to happy pricing.co and, and sign up to the newsletter, then you'll, you'll get some information or you can email Ben, uh, ben@tenpercentbetter.co.
Carlos:uh, and he can tell you a bit more and he'll get to know you a bit more as, as to where you're at and what would be of help.
Carlos:Awesome.
Ben:Yeah.
Ben:Or search up budda on the board.com and you'll
Carlos:find your way to bud board com.
Carlos:Awesome.
Carlos:Okay everyone, thank you very much for your time.
Carlos:Thank you Ben.
Carlos:Uh, and thank you.
Carlos:I hope you have some plane sailing for the rest of the day.
