These Two Truths Are All You Need To Know.

Ten years ago I was running the business I’d help co-found, FreeState.

We were delivering projects worth £10m or so each year.

We had studios in London and Singapore.

A few years before, we’d won the first of a stream of massive projects; that first, a single project equal to our previous five years turnover.

Great, by almost all measures.

On winning that first big project, however, a little voice inside knew my time was done. That my best effort in the company was behind me. That my work here was done.

Letting go of the old isn't so easy though.

I liked the perceived success, the money, prestige. We flew around the world in nice seats. We had freedom. The work was sometimes casual and always creative. It felt good. Having a successful company made me feel bigger. It made feel like someone.

So I ignored the voice, the pull to something new.

But while I held on, everything around me was changing. Changes to the business, to the clients we served, to the work we did and the plans, hopes and wishes of my co-founders and the teams generally.

While I was holding on we were separating from the old - old clients to new, old ideas to new, old ways and habits and people, to the new.

And I held on, for many more years.

In the end, I left with a gentle push, bought out by a bigger partner; the end of the relationship for me and the beginning of a new relationship for my partners.

Are you familiar with the Satir Change model? Check it out. It talks to the process of change. It talks to a chaos which follows an 'inciting event', an event which disrupts a preceding status quo. My inciting event was finally severing the chord of comfort which has tethered me to the old.

And in the chaos were failed attempts at new businesses, new partnerships, new relationships, new ideas.

But things settle. And new things are born. Like Sangha.Live, the online platform I partly own and help run, currently home to more than 10,000 people learning to sit down, be quiet and mediate. Or Happy Pricing and it’s sister podcast, Waking Up To Money, a series of unfolding experiments, talks and trainings with Dr Carlos Saba helping entrepreneurs and founders get a grip on money, marketing and mindset and find a way to earn what they’re worth. And not to mention the many, many agitators, innovators and creative wizards I’ve been able to help embrace unconventional, but necessary strategies, like:

- not chasing scale, but chase connection.

- not chasing scale, but chasing change.

- knowing that most people are not interested in your stuff. And that’s good.

- remembering that people decide emotionally and justify rationally, so story counts.

- you are lazy, crazy, needy and greedy. We all are.

- work is what you do to feel good, connected, to learn and contribute.

- create a revolution. Incrementally.

- the importance of ending things well and often.

Maybe hiding in these thoughts are only two important truths.

1) everything is always changing,

2) everything has a time to die.

Amen.