Hit record and good.
So yeah, if you could just start by introducing yourself, that'd be great.
good morning Barnaby.
So I'm Holly Ternock and I sold my health tech specialist agency in 2019 to a marketing
firm.
Specialist in the area.
So we'd love to kind of hear about how you set the business up.
And did you do it straight out of university or what were you doing before that?
So at university, I went to work for the health sector.
So I went and worked on their management part of management training program in HR.
There was a big change in the NHS around that time and the strategic health authorities
were being closed down.
So I went and knew that I didn't really want to do strategic HR.
I wasn't particularly great at management.
and I wanted to be a journalist.
So I took the chance to go and talk to the HSJ, which were the trade magazine at the time,
did some, initially just some sort of freelance work for them.
And I ended up being sort of going and typing up loads of transcripts, lots of round table
interviews with senior leaders across the NHS, learned quickly the sort of style of
questioning, started to write some features.
and then went on to write, went on to do a postgraduate qualification in journalism and
then got an economics editor job, which I did for a while.
So I was a journalist before doing PR.
And then from there, I worked for the European Parliament where I was like a something
called sort of press attache.
So I was working across a number of committees, which was so much fun.
very much like...
you know, on these horrifically boring European legislation pieces and trying to find out
what was the interesting part of it.
And then liaising with journalists out there at lots of sort of swanky drinks parties and
things like that in Brussels and Strasbourg and trying to get stories in the papers of
what was going on to try and promote the European Parliament.
So I did that for a couple of years, an absolutely wonderful job.
And off the back of that.
I was asked to work for them on a more contract basis.
So that enabled me to set up my agency, which I call Journalista, because we took a much
more journalist based approach to how we found stories, rather than what I'd experienced
as a journalist when PRs rang me, which just seemed to be this sort of less punchy, more
anodyne kind of way of approaching stories.
So that was sort of the foundation of where we kicked off from.
And what was it that kind of made you take the leap?
Because it's quite a big thing to go from being in employment to setting up an agency.
And I think that with most things, it started with a drink at a bar.
And I had a lovely woman who was working at politics magazine, came over as a guest of one
of the MEPs.
And she asked me a great question, which is, know, where do you see yourself?
And, you know, what would be your dream in terms of what you want to be?
And I sort of surprised myself, I think, by saying I want to start a PR agency.
I think, you know,
I thought I saw so much of what was happening in PR because we were constantly on the end
of the phone for them and just thought you could do this so much better.
I would often talk to a company that had sent a press release and find a much more
interesting story based on a couple of conversations and I just thought, these guys have
been paid double, triple what I am.
And yet actually we're running with the story that we're pulling out and that feels like a
really fun process for me.
and then the company are happier and were happier as the magazine.
So I spoke to this journalist about that idea and she was really enthusiastic and we
initially went into business, the two of us together and started up the agency.
So, and so how did that was she from the US did you say or?
a political magazine over in the UK.
So we did that together and it didn't work out.
terms of like ownership structure, did you kind of set it up 50-50 or how did you?
it up 50 50.
But it took us a while to get going.
And so she was working more on the business and sort of in it and I was working freelance
back in the NHS to try and sort of fund the business in the first year.
And it just it just it didn't quite work.
We weren't quite ready to go into business together sort of 50 50.
So we called it quits after about 10 months and I just
sort of wrote her out of the business and she resigned as a director and went actually
into working for the European Parliament in the same sort of job I had been in previously
and I took over the business.
I see.
so that was, and that was presumably kind of no money changed hands.
That was a kind of fairly straightforward.
Yeah.
paid off the corporation tax for that year and that sort of stuff.
Okay, fine.
And then and then so when was this when did when did did you go it alone?
2009.
Okay.
So then talk to me about how how the agency grew over the sort of next few years.
so 2009, we started, it was very much like two sort of freelancers at the beginning,
neither of us have ever worked a day in a press, in a public relations agency, which
probably would have short circuited quite a lot of things and been particularly helpful.
Definitely felt that five years in.
But over the course of the next few years, the fact that I had
A specialist understanding of certain sectors like the healthcare sector really helped, I
think, in the quality and the scale of the contracts we could get.
So fairly quickly, we won one with Greenwich Strategic Health Authority doing a lot around
their sexual health campaigning.
I won several other ones around some sort of fairly complex areas of workforce management.
So the fact that I had been a specialist journalist and was able to grasp complex topics.
and make them clear for people was really what we sold.
And, you know, our strap line as we grew became, we make complex issues clear for people,
which was sort of very much what we did.
We didn't make, you know, we weren't consumer.
We worked in a range of areas.
We did a fantastic piece of work on hate crime.
So we're bringing, we worked for a company called Faith Matters that was very much about
where you had
militarized or sort of religiously sort of militarized parts of the population, you know
Islamists, also sort of Northern Irish soldiers and we would and they would sort of look
as like what were the fundamental root causes of some of that extremism and look to build
bridges between communities.
So we did a great project where we took young radicalized Muslims
over to Ireland where they were talking to IRA militants and who were in jail and they
were both sharing their experiences and talking and that was and then we were part of the
program with Faith Matters where they had the evidence of that intervention bringing that
into the public eye and making it known with the right people so we sort of did that
mixture of like public affairs public relations around like really complex topics which I
absolutely loved and
Our unique source really was that we only employed journalists.
So we had at that time, I sort of employed a guy who'd worked at the Daily Mail, someone
else who'd worked for BBC.
And they were sort of very junior when they'd worked in those roles, but it had given them
an eye as to how those sorts of organisations operated.
And then I hired other people who'd worked at the same specialist magazines as me.
So.
had a number of people working at the HSJ and we were able to offer higher salaries and
know easier in some ways sort of easier ways of working and so that was quite and then
they would bring in members of their own team who they thought would get it as well so it
we grew that way of sort of a bunch of journalists who and that was very much to find our
style you know we were very like hacks going in depth in topics and really finding
the core details that were really interesting and we're well known for getting like
phenomenal coverage for people.
And how did you find it being the sort of sole owner of the business and a woman in
business and kind of leading the growth of your agency?
I mean, it's a good question.
And I'd say some things define me more than being a woman at certain times.
so I definitely felt as I started the business when I was 27.
And I remember wanting to look older for quite a while, like I felt like my youth was
almost like an issue.
And so I you know, and so it's like being a young business owner, I think felt
more of a problem than being a female business owner.
When I was a journalist, being a woman was hard work.
I was working in transport and my lack of experience often meant that I was literally
sitting on the front row doing this, this for my question for the minister and they would
just ask everyone other than me, you know, and I'd have to go and grab them at the end and
say, excuse me, you know, this is my question.
So I think, you know, that my youth certainly defined me when I was younger, I felt that
we got overlooked for certain things.
And then I
say there were some issues of being a woman like and I spent the Me Too movement really
woke me up.
I think you know we had certain clients who behaved in ways that you you would sort of
have to bat off advances and I think that was really hard because I didn't really know how
to navigate that because if someone sort of if your client who's paying you sort of six to
ten grand a month
comes on to you or actually, know, I actually set a member of our team in a really
inappropriate way.
Who do you go to?
Because it's, you know, if you then pull that up with that client and they might be the
owner of their company, they're just gonna cancel your contract.
So your option is put up and shut up and put protections around yourself or...
know, or make a fuss and you're just essentially going to lose that contract and you'll
lose out.
So there were some difficult things around that way that we had to navigate that I think,
post me too, I probably would have given myself a bit more compassion and taken a bit more
seriously.
But at the time I was like, this is just the way it is.
So you know, it's I think that there was a bit of a bit of a sway there.
And there were also some really Jesus, we had some really
We had some battles with the PRCA and they were over some sort of fairly horrendous
behaviour.
And I think, again, I felt like I was really banging a drum at a time for something that
felt like super uncool and like I was just causing a stink for no reason, which sort of
history showed perhaps that things were more on my side than I thought they were at the
time.
Yeah, it's amazing how much it's changed.
You know, my wife talks about it when she worked in an agency, you know, 15 years ago, and
just the sort of casual misogyny and, you know, abuse of power from people in charge is
quite something that, yeah, I think now reflecting on it, it's sort of completely
unacceptable.
But at the time, you just kind of...
that's just kind of the way it was and people just sort of went along with it because what
were your options?
And when you're younger as well, you just don't really feel like you have the experience
or the, yeah, to be able to stand up for yourself or, but did you find it different
actually?
Sorry, because you mentioned there was something that you had some bad behavior and then
an employee, did you find it easier to stand up for your employee than for yourself?
So in all honesty, I don't think what I did to look after that employee was as robust as I
would do now.
We were at an award ceremony and a senior person in this company had, if you wonder what
it had an erection in his pants and he told one of my members of staff about it on the
dance floor.
Now she sort of made a joke of it.
the next day, but was also a bit impacted by it.
Now, and he was also being like inappropriate and things that he was saying.
However, they all continue to hang out together for the duration that they all chose to
do.
So there was some, you know, whereas if you know, she could have walked away.
However, how much is that a coercive control relationship because he was a senior client
of hers.
So I what did we do?
she told me about it.
I apologize for that happening, even though it wasn't my point, know, and I, and I asked
her whether she wanted to move off the account and what steps would be put into place.
I didn't ring the company, but I would have had to have the person was the CEO.
So I'd have had to, although it was, it, I would have had to have gone to their board.
and so, and it was a big client of ours.
So I did a bit of brushing under the carpet, to be honest.
Yeah, now's the time.
Name and shame.
you know, what would I do now?
I'd love to think that, mean, okay, what I'd love to think is that I would ring up the
person and tell them that that was completely inappropriate.
However, I just know that they would then have just found a reason to sack us off the
account.
So, you know, it's maybe then I would say, if you sack us off the account, I'm to ring
your board and tell you that you've done this.
But is that blackmailing?
I don't know.
I would love to know really, how to be a better ally, and also be a business leader.
How can you, because the problem is it feels like the cost, you having to pay the double
cost as a woman, you're having to put up with the shitty behavior in the first place, but
then also take the financial impact of standing up for that poor behavior.
It's a really tough one.
And I'd love to know from other people what the answer is on there.
Answers on a postcard, please.
So back to the sale.
Can you give me an idea of the size and shape of the business, turnover number of
employees at the point where...
yeah, we were just under, we were sort of shy of a mill, just under and we had, but we had
a great profit and really solid books.
So we'd turned over like 35 % profit for the past sort of three to four years.
And, you know, that, and we'd, and we'd sort of kept sort of pretty like nice books and
stuff like that.
So
Well, you know, we've and we had dotted up and down in terms of our, we're dotted in terms
of our senior leadership team.
I wasn't great at building teams, you know, back then, I think I was good at running a
business, making it profitable, bringing clients as great as sales.
And I had a couple of times tied to bring in someone senior alongside me and it just
failed.
I don't think I was a particularly.
I didn't really get what vulnerability meant as a leader, how to share strengths and how
to really work effectively as a team in a sort of senior leadership way, which I became
completely, I've become completely obsessed with over the last three years in sort of
becoming a coach and becoming a team coach because I just realised how vital that is in
order to scale beyond that point really.
Yeah, yeah.
So how did the how did the sale come about then?
Were you were you kind of looking to get out or did someone approach you?
another bar conversation.
So I had known another business leader of their agency for a couple of years, mean,
actually 10 years, the whole time we'd run our agencies together.
And she had a really successful marketing business, but they didn't really do a lot of PR.
We often work, we often had shared clients over the last few years.
So we had a key understanding of each other's strengths and weaknesses.
I had just lost an MD that I had hired.
I was feeling a bit low.
And also at that point, I definitely said I was completely burnt out.
had, I didn't have very good boundaries as a leader.
And I sort of, I think what I recognized back then is that I had this sort of idea of
like, my superpower was forgiveness, which really doesn't work well in terms of like, in
terms of sort of fueling your own resilience.
And so at that point, you know, we had a
couple of drinks and she was like, don't we merge?
Like we've been talking about it for years, let's just do it.
But she also was like, let's do it quick.
And she wanted to, I think we're in August, she wanted to do it by November.
What was the time pressure from her side?
Or do you think it was a kind of...
quite a red personality.
So she just like, I think she wanted to drive it.
It was a good deal for her.
You know, and she wanted it to happen quick.
And then I felt an inordinate amount of pressure, I think, in order to make that happen.
I went to someone to broker a deal and we were back and forth discussing terms pretty
quickly.
Okay, who did you who did you go to to for advice on the &A process?
I spoke to a couple of people.
I spoke to sort of previous advisors and I should have found out, I cannot remember the
name of the guy who I went to for advice.
And I obviously have handed over all my emails with the deal when we finished the deal.
So I can't go back and find him.
It was a broker and they took a percentage of the sale revenue and they sort of started to
follow the sides for us.
And how did the sort of negotiating evaluation and the deal terms, how did that go?
We both, started just discussing, like it was a deck and so she would send over like these
are the deal terms on these words on these clients.
Have you having it?
It will be this.
And we started to talk about an initial lump sum initially, and then a two year now
graduated on sort of increased multiple increased revenue that I would be bringing in.
But I also was getting like a percentage of every sale I bought in as well.
Okay.
And then how, so did you manage to get it done by November?
Yeah, we did.
I think it's like the 10th of November, we ended up signing off on the SLA.
was like a service level agreement.
What's SLT?
What was it called?
Share purchase agreement, SPA.
Yeah, SLA is service level agreement with clients.
There's loads of acronyms.
So tell me what happened after that?
How did the integration go and what happened?
super quick.
think from my team's perspective, they had seen us lose a managing director who'd come in
and sort of come in bright and breezy and left under a massive storm cloud.
And so that was pretty hard work.
I think they could see that I was pretty battered.
And one of my senior leadership teams was like, you're selling the company, aren't you?
I was like, no, I'm not.
And she has to lie.
I'm the worst liar.
You can read everything off my face.
And this particular member of the team is just she's just like she can see through you.
She's really intuitive.
She's brilliant journalist and continues.
She went back into journalism afterwards and continues to be a phenomenal journalist.
She's a mind reader.
So I was having to work alongside her all the time, sort of knowing.
that's that for me is the really hard bit, the secrecy.
But we're sort of batting forth and
agreement terms and things like that and the agreement was that it be secret on both sides
until we agreed it.
And then once we agreed it, I then went and took the team out and told them they were sort
of quite reluctant.
were kind of happy for me but none of them had shares in the company and I think that
would have made it a much better transaction and I definitely recommend that for people if
they're looking to sell.
We do need other people to have skin in the game alongside you.
Otherwise it just feels it was quite hard to navigate without that.
But we were then quite quickly moved into their offices.
And that was also difficult because I think the team probably needed a little bit longer
to adjust.
needed to, but I think.
And, you know, I think, you know, my sort of anxiety levels and exhaustion levels going
into it didn't.
mean that you sort of, I think if you're feeling quite exhausted going into a sail, it's
just not the right time delay, like take some time off because it's like frying pan fire,
you know, you need to have this enormous energy to then make that transition really work.
Whereas if I was just sort of burnt out and then went way more burnt out, I got hit with
these like horrendous two weeks of total insomnia, which was really bizarre and just could
never had it before and just couldn't sleep and was just really
kind of quite in flight or flight I'd say for the first couple of months of that sale.
When did the insomnia happen?
that post close?
I think I had this sort of horrendous feeling that I was somehow going to be caught out or
that I, yeah, I think when you're, when you're a CEO and you have run my own company for
10 years, you can have a really lumpy carpet.
There's loads of places to hide stuff, you know, like you can, you know, if you stuff
something up with the client, well, then it's, you know, on your head, it.
And you can kind of,
Not that I did that regularly, but I think it was a, I had become comfortable in managing
myself and knowing how I worked.
And then all of a sudden having someone who was managing me and it's the first time I had
been employed for such a long time.
It just activated my fight or flight or like all of that.
I didn't want to call it.
imposter syndrome because it's a very complex, broad thing, imposter syndrome.
It's not really one thing, it's something different to everybody.
But I think I had this sort of feeling that I was going to really let people down, that
just came out of nowhere.
It was a very strange new feeling.
So how did you kind of get through that phase then?
I spoke about it a little bit with the person who ran the business is quite understanding.
I don't think it ever really went.
I don't think I was ever really myself doing the earn out.
I found it quite hard not to focus on people who were less warm to me and get obsessed
about trying to make them like me, sort of terrible people pleaser.
I think winning sales, like getting back into my strengths really helps.
Like I won a couple of big accounts quite quickly.
And you know, I like winning, you know, and I think when I can like persuade people, you
know, I sit, I focus a lot on strengths now and really helping people understand them.
And I think when I could be in that like enthusiastic, persuasive, empathetic part of
myself, like that's how I do sales, like that's my magic formula.
I'm really able to see things from the client's point of view, put myself in their things
and then flip that to sell to them.
in quite a sort of enthusiastic, persuasive way.
What I found really hard was getting for the first time quite a lot of 360 feedback and
things like that, which are normal in an agency.
But the way that it was often done was we love your passion, we really need you to dial up
your emotional control.
Or like we need you to be, we love your passion, but you need to be less emotional.
It's just work at the end of the day.
And I'd be like, what?
Like work is my life.
I was very, you know, as an entrepreneur, it's like, but work is me, I am work.
You know, I had never really had that side of things.
And I think I didn't really, I would, I am quite an expressive, emotional person.
And I think this company was a lot more restrained.
So I would sort of, I think that's what sort of created my imposter syndrome.
So I just didn't know how to be me whilst there.
I always sort of had this feeling that I was a bit too much for people.
And how did that play out?
with over the over the how long did you did you do the earn out and when did you end up
leaving?
Okay.
2021.
And so how did it play out?
I think I didn't really understand then what was going on with me, like why I'd suddenly
developed this terrible sort of sense of anxiety, which I've never had before, which is
what led me has led driven me for the past couple of years of my career to really focus on
the psychology of teams and coaching and understanding strengths.
I think when you tell somebody
to be more of something that's a weakness for them.
It really, it really is like that.
So we all have negativity bias.
So I would say 10 positive things about you Barnaby.
And if I said, but you this thing, you need to work on that, focus on that, or you would
come out with me.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And those of us who have a more neurodiverse
Like we have that rejection sensitivity disorder, which is just the pits, you know, like
we just really obsess around the negativity.
And, know, from an evolutionary point of view, that totally makes sense.
know, ADHD is seen in some.
So I got diagnosed with ADHD like about four months ago, just out of interest, because I
had been taken.
My son has quite found ADHD and sometimes I would take his medication to help me focus.
So I just was like.
maybe it might be helpful to have it more longer term.
They're like, yeah, you're off the charts.
Again, something that is really easy to manage when it's your own company.
But suddenly when you're then in a different company that hasn't built the sort of
allowances in that you would have provided yourself to create that more sort of
neurodiverse space.
I think it got sort of very triggered.
And so when I would sort of get feedback quite consistently about, you know,
we like these strengths of yours, but you really need to focus down on these areas of
weakness.
It's just really hard.
Like nobody can improve an area of weakness.
Like it just doesn't work.
It's really, it's really kind of distressing for people, but also demotivating.
So for me, an area of weakness is emotional control.
So someone says you really need to work on your emotional control.
It's really hard.
If someone says to me, can you just dial down your enthusiasm a little bit?
and maybe dial up your strategic thinking when you're in meetings.
I'm like, yeah, I've got that.
Great.
Because you're asking you to dial up a strength rather than dial up something that you're
obviously working at all the time, but it's just something that you really struggle with.
So I think, you know, I think like in terms of those two years, like how did that play
out?
Like I found it very hard because I was, I was sort of being forced to work in areas of
weakness, like
managing people, which was, you know, in a particular way through someone else's lens in a
way that I didn't really agree with, trying to control my emotions, which adversely had
the opposite impact.
Because I'd sort of tried to sort of be like that all the time, rather than just like more
my authentic buoyant self.
So yeah, it was a was a tough two and half years, I have to say.
And at the end of it, my health was way worse than even when I went in.
So, then kind of what sort of led to you leaving and what kind of happened after that?
it was so we had the lovely job of doing an earn out over COVID, which definitely sort of
I think played into it as well.
It was really, really tough time to do an earn out.
Both in terms of making and it was weird.
I remember talking to my accountant and they were like, I think I was like a couple, I was
about 20 grand off my final earn out figure and, and then she said you should, you know,
talk to them because actually, you know, you did your own out over COVID that is
really a tough time to be making big multiples.
And I was, I didn't at the time sort of see it in that way as I know why would it be
harder?
But his healthcare, I suppose, had a big up initially.
And then it was really hard because the news was just COVID, COVID, COVID.
So I wasn't able to see the wood for the trees, I think, a lot of the time during that
turnout.
And in the end of 2021, had, I couldn't sit down in a chair at all.
So I had a spinal injury from when I was younger that really, really flared up.
And so I was, my sciatic nerve was enormously inflamed.
And so I would be in meetings just hopping around sort of in agony.
And I had a sense that I knew I was going to have to have an operation for that, which I'd
have to take six weeks off for.
And rather than thinking, which would been great, I'm a salaried job, why don't I do it
here?
I thought I had to quit in order to go and have that surgery.
which was a bit daft.
think I was sort of at that time, I just felt like I was, yeah, I just, I kind of had just
got...
bit burnt out during the role and just wanted to quit in order to look after myself.
I couldn't see how I could do both at the same time.
Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, yeah, I guess that kind of just shows how sort of in how I
guess how, how, how, how difficult you were finding it, because you sort of weren't able
to think, think clearly through it.
So what did you end up having in operation?
So I did, yeah.
I kind of left with sort of this idea of, I'm going to go and have surgery.
And then it was post-COVID coming out of lockdown, my husband's Australian, the borders
opened and he was really panicked wanting to get back to his family.
So I was like, maybe I'll be a bit optimistic.
Maybe I could go to Australia with him and bit of sunshine and swimming and my back will
feel better and take the pressure off working and everything.
So we flew over there, spent a couple of months there, which was meant to be a dream, like
a trip of a lifetime.
And instead I ended up in a wheelchair and having to be sort of emergency flown home first
class to end up sort of, I had Claudia Aquina.
So it's where your whole body just goes numb to have emergency surgery on my back in May.
Yes.
So, cause I had a back problem after I sold shares in my business, but the Claudia Aquina
was the thing that they keep, that's the thing.
They keep asking you questions that are relating to that because if that happens, then it
gets really urgent.
So,
I've still got a permanently numb right leg.
So I get, so like two years on, I probably get woken up two or three times a night with my
whole leg, like rigid and like rigor mortis type style with really bad cramps.
And I've got no, my foot feels like it's frozen in a ski boot constantly.
So is it kind of painful throughout the day as well?
Awful.
So what sort of triggered the onset?
So did you have to go back to the UK to get it seen to, or could you not have that done?
wanted me to go quickly back because they were like, you know, you've got a couple of days
and they want to do this.
I suppose the insurance company made the decision.
They were like, it's easier to fly back home and be treated in the UK rather than having
like, you know, four months of paying for, you know, post-operative treatment in Australia
where I could just be at home.
Right.
What a shame that getting flown first class when you're in that much pain.
What a waste.
I mean it was definitely a bit of a, Mark Webber was next to me and I remember being,
their toilets are enormous in first class and I remember just totally spinning out because
I'd taken too much Oromorph with the time frame change, with the time zone change and I
was like this is just like some weird celebrity like Oromorph overdose in first class.
It's a very similar site.
Yeah, I got I got given some Oramorph as well, just very limited amounts, but it was
great.
That was the best one.
Really everything's fine on R &R.
So, So, you know, obviously that was, I mean, it's kind of interesting because I sort of
had a similar sort of thing where I had a very like clear physical issue.
just had a slip disc, essentially, it was just pressing up against sciatic nerve,
incredibly painful, but it kind of
also coincided with it was about a year after I'd sold chairs in my agency, there was, I
had all sorts of other, I essentially like had a breakdown.
And it just sort of really felt like a sort of physical expression of that.
Even, I don't know, even though there was like a clear mechanical problem, but what, was
it?
exactly the same.
So mine was a slip disc from a horse riding accident in my twenties that had gone up and
down.
And I thought, it's all in my head.
I was listening to this podcast about, I listened so many books on pain and doing the
meditations.
was like, this is just all in my head.
I can get over this.
I need to relax and then I won't feel the pain.
But yeah, it was just a very physical thing.
Did you have an operation on yours?
I did end up having an operation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause it got for me, it kind of came on in January of the year before last.
And it was kind of, it was pretty bad, but manageable for sort of four or five months.
And then it was getting a bit better over the summer.
then I fell off a paddle board.
I just kind of slipped and just aggravated it again, but then it got really bad.
And I was just in bed for two and a half months, basically unable to.
I'd do anything really.
I mean, I could go for like a short walk every day.
But I was taking so many painkillers that I was out of it a lot of the time.
I'm falling asleep.
yeah, so I was on progabalin on a really strong dose and then or a morph and Valium as
well.
Yeah, they just tend to throw everything at you when really if I'd have had said
I know had like this list of my daily sort of schedule and it was like sort of every two
hours it was a different drug basically.
And then in the night as well, I'd have to wake up when it got too painful, take whatever
it was and then stand there for about 45 minutes until the pain subsided and I could go
back to sleep again.
So it was pretty grim.
been through that level of pain, it's very hard to understand what it is.
It's just your obsession, isn't it?
Just managing that pain, like getting to the point where you feel you can survive.
It's really hard.
Yeah, yeah, it does.
And it becomes sort of all all encompassing.
You can't really I mean, I couldn't I couldn't work at all.
I was I was consulting at the time, but I just had to sort of down tools and and go to
bed.
Anyway, back back back to you.
So so yeah, I guess sort of what like reflecting back on that time, what do you how do you
kind of see what happened now?
with a bit more like distance and clarity.
question.
think, you know, I think we then go on to make our last mission what we wish we'd had at
the time, right?
So for me, like looking back, I had a wonderful team many times and I wish I'd done more.
think the thing that I took away from having run a business, the real joyful bits were
when I'd really just enjoyed being with that team and that they'd all come together
through something I'd created and
we have the opportunity to do cool stuff together, like off-sites, away days, beautiful
dinners, thoughtful gifts, all those sorts of things.
They're the bits that sit with you, the memories and how you've impacted someone's career
positively.
So I wish I had lent into the joy that I found that a bit more and just really let myself
feel that rather than the relentless up and down of winning business, losing business,
which is often where...
you you sort of let yourself focus a bit too much and that's just life, you know, and it
that's life, that's life cycles.
And I think greater acceptance of that would have helped me really focus on the elements
of joy.
So, you know, I think and I had lots of coaching and things like that.
think.
Yeah, I think that looking back, I probably wouldn't have sold when I was burnt out.
I could have got a lot more for my business had I have just been a bit more on it.
I think giving myself more periods of structured break and leaning into what I knew.
could often say I just want to go away for a week by myself.
That really was what I wanted.
No husband, no kids, nothing.
I just wanted to be by myself.
And actually now I know myself more.
I know that I'm that big introvert and a big extrovert.
I am both.
I think I'd have leant into letting myself have that.
and asking myself those difficult questions, what do you need?
And then giving myself it.
There seemed to be this big gap between what I intrinsically knew I needed and what I
would give my permission, self-permission to take.
And at the end of the day, I think that's when you then really lose out and also your team
and your family lose out.
So a big part of what I now love doing is working with founders.
and their teams to create like really joyful moments through the work we do with Wilder
Work.
It's all ultimately about helping people tap into their like innate sense of what they
feel is right and then helping them develop the skills and the strengths to give
themselves permission to take it.
I think ultimately like that's this weird and I think the gap between us knowing what we
need and taking it is shame.
And I think we sort of feel like we don't deserve it or we just need to work a bit harder
if only we did this, we're a bit late.
Like all these weird like self-shaming beliefs that I think block us from our own
happiness and that's really, you know, I wish I could have applied a bit more of that to
myself back then but actually I'm really grateful that I get the opportunity to do it now.
Yeah.
And how did you find the bit sort of post-sale where outwardly it's a huge success, right?
You've sold your business.
That's what so many people want.
They never get there.
There's a capital event, know, and people are like, wow, it must be so amazing for you.
And then your experience is completely different.
Yeah, yeah, my experience was I actually got like this weird, I vomited loads for the
first 24 hours, I had this like awful, almost like physical reaction to it.
I just found it very surreal, I think at the time.
And also, I think it allowed like a big flood of like weird feelings of inadequacy to come
in.
So I think having, I think anyone going into a sale who
you know, should should really get some scaffolding around them before they go into it.
Like, because that's the other thing is, my scaffolding unraveled when I did my sale.
So I had a business coach who I worked really closely with, who obviously then wasn't part
of the deal.
So I would have had to pay for that out of my own personal money.
So I just stopped having her.
I also had the scaffolding of all my like entrepreneurial community, which, and I had
these like week monthly networking events that I go to and things like that.
that also came as a cost out of the business that then I wasn't really an entrepreneur
anymore and how I saw myself because I was now an employee.
And similarly, the person who bought my agency, they went out and did that sort of stuff.
I stayed and worked in and on the business.
So that scaffolding came down for me as well.
So I think going into these sales, I think you really need to think about what is the
scaffolding that you need.
in order to thrive and maintain your identity.
How can you keep that going throughout the sale?
So whether that is financial, I think you absolutely need to have a plan with what you're
going to do with the money and talk through any weird issues you have with money before
you're suddenly landed with a load of it.
How's it going to split with you and your partner?
Where will you invest it?
All of those things.
Because when that money's sitting in your bank account, it does weird things to your head.
It's a bit like Gollum, you know, in the in the ring, like I kept telling myself like,
you're gonna waste it, you're gonna lose it.
And I probably made some daft decisions, because when we're so focused on fear, it's
actually then what we act out, you know, so I think there's some like, I think getting
like being able to talk, have people around you as well that have gone through a sale and
talk to them about what was their strategy with their money?
What did they do?
You know, have some
I think women as well, I'm from a working class background, I didn't have any peers who
had gone through something like that.
So I didn't have anyone really to talk to about it.
I felt quite an anomaly and a bit almost like, I don't deserve this.
Why have I got that?
So I think.
think, I think the identity piece is fascinating as well.
Like I had the same, same thing, you know, I was CEO of, you know, global business with 60
employees or whatever it was, you know, and then, and then suddenly you're not.
Whoa.
yeah.
And how was that for you?
How did you, how did you cope with that?
really badly.
I kind of thought it would be okay.
And I did exactly the same thing, just sort of made some poor decisions about money and
investments, and just sort of didn't really like have a proper plan.
And yeah, did did some strange things for a couple of years.
And only now really, like sort of three years ago, and it's kind of now I've
launched this new agency group.
I've got a new business partner.
There's like a very clear mission.
We're out, you know, we know what we're doing and it's like super exciting and I'm sort of
feel like I'm back in it.
But it, yeah, it took basically three years to get back.
So interesting.
you finished 2021 as well.
2021, yeah.
But I had a weird, mean, I had, sort of, there was about a year leading up to me leaving,
cause it was quite, cause I was exiting the business.
And I, and I, so I needed to kind of negotiate.
We needed to like get the, like raise the money from the business and from new investors.
And it was quite a sort of complicated deal, which I sort of like worked on quite a lot,
but I was in this weird,
limbo state where I was not doing my job anymore, but I was still employed.
and I was, but the, the deal was kind of going through different variations and it wasn't
clear that it was definitely going to happen.
And I wasn't really sure that I wanted it to happen either.
I was only just like 51 % sure.
So there was a lot of, yeah, kind of thinking about whether it was the right thing to do
or not.
And
Yeah, so that I had a really weird limbo stage, then kind of six months of like, wait,
I've got some money.
I'm free.
Let's have some fun.
And then, and then the beginnings of a sort of year long breakdown with health problems
and all sorts.
So, you know,
I don't think I had like a full on breakdown.
Like some people just stop talking or they go to bed or things like that.
I definitely had a sense of, I think I had some real dark times and just total loss of
confidence.
Like bizarrely, I felt like I'd just been sort of stripped to the bone.
Yeah, yeah, it was the same.
could, I was still sort of functioning, but I, yeah, it was just, I was, I was doing
everything.
I was pulling all the triggers that you could pull to sort of improve your mental health.
So I was not drinking.
I was spending loads of time with my family.
I was eating healthy food.
I was meditating.
I was getting regular exercise.
And then I was like, but I still feel I was getting therapy.
Yeah.
was like, but I still feel awful.
what?
And I don't know where to go from here.
Like, I don't know what else I can change.
Yeah, I was like mood tracking a lot.
I was like really into like mood tracking and just trying to really constantly tweet like,
okay, that was a six yesterday instead of a three.
So what made it a six?
How can I do it?
Yeah, it's hard.
I think when you attach so much of your self-worth to your productivity, you know, and
actually it's shown that the one thing that actually makes people feel happy is doing a
good day's work.
So then when you take that away and you think it just...
the whole meaning of life, things start to unravel.
Yeah, but then you sort of beat yourself up as well because you're like, but I'm spending
all this time with my family and that should be making me happy.
And why isn't it?
And what does that mean?
that that was sort of like the holy grail of like I would be so happy if and then it
happens and certainly for me as a mum like I had two kids whilst I was running my business
my first little boy I barely breathed before I was back on my laptop you know it's like
you know I was back at work when he was six weeks and
I was like, with my daughter, I had a bit longer off and a bit of a more stable team that
could carry things for a couple of months.
But this, you know, I'd always had a full-time nanny.
The story I told myself was like, I will be so happy when I am like this full-time mom
and, you know, make it, you know, having this like bucolic countryside existence and I'll
be doing gardening.
And the weird thing was when I saw the business in the year after it, I wrote, like, you
know, I kind of.
I did the gardening like less than I'd ever done.
And all these things that felt like lovely places for me to go to relieve stress just
weren't imbued with the same sort of meaning as they were when I didn't have work.
Like, so then I just wasn't happy anywhere.
And I realized that having my kids 24 seven made me miserable.
And I felt like all of a sudden it's like housewife.
And I was like, the whole relationship, my husband changed.
It was awful, you know, and I was just like, I was like, and then, but then I had nowhere
to go for my.
fantasy because I thought that this was what would make me happy.
was tough.
Nearly tough.
Yeah.
This is turning into little therapy session which is being recorded.
Luke.
It's really like, but it is, think now it's like, actually it is all about the balance.
And you kind of then realise that work does give you so much joy.
And I realised I got this, I had this one day where I didn't get a single email.
Like soon after I'd like exited the business that had bought my email, I just felt like I
went mental.
I was just like, I'm not needed for anything.
And no one can, like, I'm just pointless, you might as well just cross me off now, like,
realise how much of myself worth was wrapped up in, like, what a dopamine hit I got from
solving problems.
And I didn't have any problems to solve.
had that moment as well, just sitting on the sofa in the living room, dropped my daughter
off at school.
And I was just like, I've got nothing to do.
There's literally nothing to do this morning.
I'd get my laptop out and sit next to my husband in our office where we used to work.
He's like, what are doing sitting on your laptop?
was like, I don't know what else to do.
And it was like all this stuff that before I'd have loved the day off and I'd have filled
it with all of this lovely stuff.
It felt meaningless when it wasn't like the relief to something else.
Yeah.
Good.
All right.
Well, I think that's probably a good place to wrap this up.
So.
I don't wish it all away.
suppose it's like have that plan, I think.
that's, you know, is that like, have a plan of what you're going to do and probably just
if you're an absolute workaholic, you burn yourself out.
Don't think that taking that away will be healthy.
It's like a sort of graduate graduated relief, I think.
And definitely now, like I love what I do and I'm busy five, six days a week, but it's
just more things that I
just stay in my strengths.
Like I stay in what I'm good at.
I keep doing things that energise me and light me up.
And yeah, I think that's all we're looking for.
But yeah, exiting your business.
Definitely you need that scaffolding, you need that framework, you need to be aware of all
the pitfalls that we've both shared.
I think it's fascinating.
It sounds like a really similar journey.
Thank you very much.
Wise words.
Well, thank you, Panabe.
