Today’s guest is Jodie Cook. Jodie founded a social media agency at just 22 years old and sold it in 2021. She is a regular contributor for Forbes on entrepreneurship and was also included in Forbes list of 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs in Europe. She is the author of “Stop acting like you’re going to live forever” and several books on raising entrepreneurial kids. On top of all of that Jodie even finds time to compete in powerlifting for Great Britain.
In this episode, Jodie shares her experience in building businesses, from tips regarding her daily routine to how to land your first client. Jodie is a jack of all trades and gives great advice on how to seed your ambition without becoming burnt out. She shares a unique perspective as an entrepreneur and writer.
For full episode information visit: https://www.mindhack.com/episode/jodie-cook
Today’s guest is Jodie Cook. Jodie founded a social media agency at just 22 years old and sold it in 2021. She is a regular contributor for Forbes on entrepreneurship and was also included in Forbes list of 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs in Europe. She is the author of “Stop acting like you’re going to live forever” and several books on raising entrepreneurial kids. On top of all of that Jodie even finds time to compete in powerlifting for Great Britain.
In this episode, Jodie shares her experience in building businesses, from tips regarding her daily routine to how to land your first client. Jodie is a jack of all trades and gives great advice on how to seed your ambition without becoming burnt out. She shares a unique perspective as an entrepreneur and writer.
For full episode information visit: https://www.mindhack.com/episode/jodie-cook
Full Interview
[00:00:00] Jodie: I think that the quality of our lives are defined by the quality of the questions we can ask, because you can always just choose a different question. You can always, you can always say instead of, oh, why is this really rubbish? Or, you know, why am I so terrible at this?
Cody: Today's guest is Jody cook. Jodie founded a social media agency at just 22 years old and sold it in 2021. She is a regular contributor for Forbes on entrepreneurship, and it was also included in the Forbes list of 30, under 30 social entrepreneurs in Europe. She's the author of stop acting like you're going to live forever and several books on raising entrepreneurial kids.
[00:01:00] On top of all of that Jodi even finds time to compete in power lifting for great Britain. In this episode, Jodi shares her experience in building businesses from tips regarding her daily routine, to how to land your first client. Jody is a Jack of all trades and gives great advice on how to seed your ambition without becoming burnt out.
She shares a unique perspective as an entrepreneur and writer. So please enjoy my conversation with Jody cook.
So one of the two things that strike out to me is first about the power lifting, because I think we have this identity crisis in culture where a lot of women don't want to grow muscle or they, they don't go to the gym because they're afraid of bulking and perhaps this is just my ignorance, but can you explain to me how you actually got into powerlifting and what it felt like as a woman that competed.
Presumably against many other males.
[00:02:00] Jodie: Sure. So power lifting for me started off as nothing more than just exercise. So just going to the gym, but then, because it's a sport that consists of three, quite simple. So the squat, the bench press the deadlift. As I started doing just these three simple lifts that you can do in pretty much any gym. I realized that I started improving and then improving some more.
And then I actually met someone who competed in this sport. And that's when I started checking out the competition results for what other girls, my weight were lifting. And so it was, it was meeting that person who competed already and. Realizing that my numbers were up there with those competition totals.
That meant that I then went and started competing. And then I feel like once you start, you get the book for it, or definitely I did. And it gets super exciting. And then there are different goals that you want to hit and there are milestones and there are podium places up for [00:03:00] grabs. And then if you hit certain podiums box, that's when you get invited to compete for great Britain and then you compete in different countries against people from other countries.
And so it starts by really simply training. Well, And then it ends up at the powerlifting world championships, which looks like this big, impressive leap, but really it just comes up. It just comes from turning up at the squat rack at the bench again and again, even when you don't feel like it and then getting incrementally better every single year.
Cody: Where did the discipline and the interest come in with powerlifting in particular? So you just started going to the gym every day. You found this thing that was powerlifting, and you started going down this route towards competition. And how did you get yourself to go to the gym on the days you didn't want to go to the gym?
Jodie: When you first start power lifting, especially you get what is affectionately known as newbie gains, which is where you make about [00:04:00] 80% of the progress that you will ever make in the entire school, within the first six months or so. And then you spend everything after that, chasing that extra 20%. And so when you're in the new beginning stage, So exciting because every time you go, you're getting a PB or a PR, whatever you call it.
And you're just you're. So you're so ready to go to the gym and smash the numbers that you hit that you hit before. So I feel like the habit actually starts off in a really positive way. And then by the time you get to the stage where you're a more mature athlete, I guess in terms of training is and where you might not get those PBS, every single gym session, you've already instilled habit.
And you already can't imagine missing.
Cody: So my next question is how did you manage to combine the diet and the powerlifting? So I'm somebody, I would go to the gym regularly. I have a personal trainer and I'm making slow gains and slow progress, but I'm also experiencing this kind of rut [00:05:00] where I feel like, you know, I'm not making as much progress as I want to be making.
And so often in my own history, I would get demotivated because I don't feel like it's working anymore. Right. And I stopped going to the gym. How did you balance that? How do you track your macronutrients? How do you balance the, the, the intake of your diet and what's that like? And how does that compare to your powerlifting?
Jodie: I feel like with food, the most important thing to me is that I have a healthy relationship with food. And I think I try really hard to. Stay away from being obsessive about it. So, because I compete in power lifting, which has white Catholic res I'm in the 57 kilos weight category. So I walk around at about 59 kilos because you can water cut into your weight category on a competition day.
I'm pretty much that way quite naturally. So I tend to lose it. We track calories and protein and that's it. And then I know that if I, if I need to lose a bit of weight, then I eat a bit less and if I need to gain a bit of [00:06:00] weight, I eat that more. And I try and leave it as basic as that, because I think that if I could get rid of, I've got the potential to get really obsessive over it.
And I don't want it to move into an unhealthy relationship with.
Cody: Right. That's the term called orthorexia think developed in the nineties where you have people who were having this obsession with food. And so the food. Something of a God of you. I, you, you idolize the food in a way that it's something that you are completely obsessed with. Every calorie, you track, every thing that you put in your mouth and it can become obsessive to a negative degree.
Surprisingly. And I think having that healthy relationship with food is a very difficult thing for a lot of people, including myself, where I know subconsciously. I sh well, why no consciously I should be eating more, but I feel subconsciously. I still feel kind of this body shame and it makes it difficult for me, want to want to eat [00:07:00] more, especially when I'm working out and doing strength training, which is what I should be doing in that scenario.
There's a great book on this topic called intuitive eating. Is that, have you heard of that?
Jodie: No, I haven't, but I know, I totally know what you're talking about in terms of the body shaming type thing and just feeling a bit strange because when I was a teenager, I remember in the netball school. Photo. I just remember kind of looking down and thinking, whoa, I've got massive legs and everyone else, these skinny legs.
And I just thought, oh, this is horrible. What do I do? And I really hated it. And I think my body tap definitely I'm in fashion at the time, because it was like everyone that you saw in magazines and on TV, they were just very slim. and it wasn't until I started thinking of my thighs as quotes that I started thinking of the MoFA.
I guess the potential in this and the strength instead of just what they look like. And now it's a bit different because the kind of Hench bell look is kind of in [00:08:00] fashion. But then I definitely remember a time when it wasn't and I felt just, just having attitude mostly.
Cody: So you at one point had, were actually self-conscious about having large thighs and then you had to reframe that in a positive way over time.
Jodie: Yes.
Cody: Is there anything in particular that you can recall about your strength training that you would provide, like kind of tips or recommendations that you can provide to others in regards to your routine?
Jodie: something that I always think about when I'm training compared to competing is that you have to think about them in the same way. So that kind of thing. The mistakes that you make in training will, will show up on the platform when you're competing. It's quite similar to life. Really. You can't just be one person in private and then expect for that person not to show up when you're in public.
So in competing, if you, if you don't squat to the right depth, [00:09:00] that's required for competitions, or if you do the, if you kind of. You know, you had lifted off the bench during a bench press. You might think that just in training, you can get away with it and it will be fine and everything will be different once you're competing, but it won't be because when you're ended up pressure and you ended up dressed and you're lifting maximal loads, it's the mistakes are going to come out.
So I try really hard to train as if I was competing at that very moment.
Cody: Yeah. And, and just those tiny differences can make a world of difference when you're actually competing, especially with those heavy loads. I think for me, working with a personal trainer has been instrumental. We need to make sure that I always have the right form no matter what exercise I'm doing. And I didn't realize for the longest time I wasn't making gains in certain exercises and it's because I had the wrong form and I didn't realize it.
And so that's probably a super important part about it. So outside of powerlifting, I know that you've started [00:10:00] a social media agency that you started when you were 22. Can you tell me more about that?
Jodie: Yeah show say up until I was 21, I was pretty much on what I will go. The education conveyor belts. And it's where you go from one step to the next. All under this guise of choice. And so you believe that you're choosing for yourself. So you choose your subjects. You might choose the college or the university that you attend, but really you're choosing from a very limited number of options.
And say, for example, the decision for me when I was 18, it wasn't, should I go to university? The decision was which university should I go to? Because it was just the debt thing. In some ways it was expected of me. And it was expected of nearly everyone my age. So I very diligently completed school, completed university, and then went to the next stage of the conveyor belt, which was a graduate scheme.
And I applied for loads of graduate schemes, probably about 10 of them and [00:11:00] got turned down for all of them. And then finally one accepted me and it happened to be in the field of social care. It's like social care is super different to social media. The idea behind this graduate scheme was that it was designed to create the next leaders in the sociopath industry that was evolving really fast and needed to change.
So I was placed in a social organization with a lot of different challenges. And I was, I guess, thrown in the deep end, in terms of like putting the marketing department was brand new and didn't necessarily know anyone. And there was 20, they were 25 other people on my graduate scheme who were all placed at different companies around the country.
And so I was going to go to, and from work at this placement, but then with the cohort of 25, We were meeting every month for different awaiting.
Cody: Yeah.
Jodie: And so the pretty much the first full-time job I had and the only full-time job I've ever had, on the side of it, I was, I [00:12:00] was taught how to think. So on those away days we had, we had a business coach.
We had group coaching. We did personality tests. We learned how to solve problems and have to ask the right questions and how to analyze ourselves and set goals. Cool. What we've learned. And, and because I was working in quite a challenging organization, but doing this on the side, it just completely changed how my wind worked.
And I think it helped me develop self awareness. And that was when I was 22.
Cody: What was this like a group? Was this a, an event? you tell me more about.
Jodie: Yeah, she'll say it was that it was no organization that ran pat homes for older people. So it had 13 care homes across one of the cities in the UK. And I was in head office and I had been going for a very long time and the industry was changing a lot and the company had to change, but it didn't know how at the time.
Cody: And, and when you say care homes, do you mean like elderly, homes?
Jodie: Yes.
Cody: Okay. And so how did that [00:13:00] job, or how did that teach you how to think, because that reminds me more of like a, a self-help convention where you get taught the different biases and fallacies and critical thinking skills.
Jodie: I think it was because it just had such a real life context because the 25 of us had all been placed in very challenging organizations. And the graduate scheme leaders knew that we would find it tough, but because they were because we were meeting up every month and because they were asking us, you know, what are the challenges you're facing?
Okay, well, what could you do next? And we were having all that coaching. It meant that I didn't just see it as this job that I didn't realize. I saw it as it kind of reframed it in my head. It's just challenges that I could overcome. And I don't know if I would have learned how to think in that way, if it hadn't been for that coaching alongside what was essentially my first job.
Cody: what was the, one of the things that stood out to you or that, that you felt like a strategy and ideology that you learned that helped you then.
[00:14:00] Jodie: So we were put in group coaching situations on those. On those few days away each month. And so we were put in groups of four or five and someone would come with that challenge. And we had to ask questions of the person who was on the hot seat, and we weren't allowed to give advice. You weren't allowed to ask a question that was actually advice, but it was just a sneaky way of asking a question.
You had to just ask questions and say, the person on the hot seat was that answering all these questions about what they could maybe do. And. Thinking about options. And I'd never been in that situation where it was this like group coaching environment. So even after that, if I wasn't in front of the four people who were asking me questions, I'd almost imagine I was.
And that was how I learnt how to go through challenges within that workplace.
Cody: Well, so, so is it like that you objectively try and ask yourself questions on a regular basis for a situation?
Jodie: Yeah. All the time that I do it all the time now, I think it just, it honestly reshaped how I.
Cody: Wow. So is [00:15:00] that like a conscious, because I know that we, we subconsciously ask ourselves questions, but we don't always know that we're asking a question. We just think, oh, this is a problem. Uh, let me try this. Do you actually like step back, like, do you write out the questions? Are you more conscious in terms of how you're asking the questions?
Because that's an interesting thought.
Jodie: Yeah, I'm very conscious of the questions I asked. I think that, I think that the quality of our lives are defined by the quality of the questions we can ask, because you can always just choose a different question. You can always, you can always say instead of, oh, why is this really rubbish? Or, you know, why am I so terrible at this?
You could always, you could always ask. How could this be better? Or how could I make this better? Or how could they make this succeed? Like at the start of the stone of the coronavirus times, it was like, how can we get through this year? How can we smash this year? How can we make this the best year that ever happened to us?
And so, yeah, I'm really, I'm really conscious of the questions that I ask them.
Cody: Yeah, there's a saying that a great [00:16:00] therapist doesn't give you the answers. They just know how to ask the right questions.
Jodie: Hmm. Yeah. I definitely believe that that the business coach that I was assigned that, and she, I don't think she gave me one bit of advice that in all the sessions we had, it was just question after question after question, but because she was also very experienced in business, she knew she knew the right questions to ask at the same time.
Cody: And internally, were you in, when you were in the hot seat being asked these questions by other people where you, how did that change your perspective on anything? If you can remember.
Jodie: When I remember that we operated and at Chatham house rules, which I don't know if that's like, that's like a British thing or an international thing, but it's basically a set of rules, which means that you everything's confidential and you can't take what you're hearing. You can't tell anyone else. That made it a very safe space to be able to say, okay, I'm having this challenge.
And you really felt like everyone that was on your team in your corner with you. So [00:17:00] that, yeah, I guess that was a, that was a big part of it.
Cody: So you learned critical thinking skills, how to think and how to ask the right questions from working in this organization at this care home, how did that lead you to then starting your own social media agency?
Jodie: It was that, and it was, it was also the fact that I came from quite an entrepreneurial family that meant that when I'd completed my year-long graduate scheme, starting a social media agency, or just starting a company just did not feel like a big deal. It just felt like not a risk, not a big step. Just something that sounded good.
And
I think.
Cody: were supportive of that.
Jodie: Yeah, well, they, they just, they were just like, you know, whatever you want to do.
I think at one point my dad's house, my dad said, you know, wait, why are you starting up? Because I say so just to go back a step. When I was working that year graduate scheme, I also had another full-time job. So I had two full-time [00:18:00] jobs in the same year and one was a nine to five and one was a six till 12.
And.
Cody: Wow.
Jodie: so I'd saved up quite a bit that year. And my goal was to save it so that I could afford to just live while I set up a business. And I remember one conversation with my dad when I was first doing that. And he said, oh, what do you think about getting a part-time job? And I was like, no, and I didn't know.
Why I was so adamant that that wasn't the right thing for me at the time. I guess it was because I just knew that I'd already done the part-time job thing. I had already done all the job stuff to save up to then go start my own business. So I was very one track mind at that point because I wanted to make it work.
but when I started out. When I started the agency, I definitely didn't set out to create myself an agency. I set out to create myself a job, and I think there's a huge difference because I was pretty much a freelancer at first. And it was. Six to eight months day-to-day I started building a team. [00:19:00] And so this was 2011, and I'd heard about this new shiny thing for social media.
And I'd had that there was some people working in that field and that's when I just thought, yeah, I could, I could do it. And then I'd heard that freelancers picked up clients by going networking. So I thought, yeah, I could do that. And then I'd seen the other people had websites. So I thought, yeah, I could do that.
And then I've made myself alone and then it was all just really small steps that added up to being this professional person who pretend potential clients quite wanted to chat to. And then it went okay.
Cody: What was your driving force behind wanting to do that? Because anytime you're an entrepreneur, there's always this huge amount of fear of the unknown. And especially a lot of people don't go the entrepreneurial route because they don't have the confidence that whatever the idea is, they don't feel like, you know, they're qualified or that they know enough.
How was that ever an issue with you? And how did you get past that?
[00:20:00] Jodie: I think because I just come from a year of having two jobs and because I'd always, I'd probably had four or five different jobs in hospitality throughout college and throughout uni, I just never thought that it was that difficult to get a job, but maybe I was just overconfident and I thought, well, I could get, I could get whatever job I wanted to.
So that can always be my fallback. So it didn't feel, option, plan a, I always just thought, well, I might as well do planet. Because why would you, why would you do plan B first? It just didn't make sense.
Cody: Right. And so then you started going to networking events. And also, did you have previous experience, like have you always just been this bubbly person that just knows how to write engaging content?
Jodie: I, I think it very much was a fake it till you make it type thing. I didn't, I wasn't nervous about going to a networking event because maybe I had, I think I'd got my strategy was I'm going to get there early and I'm going to assess it out a bit and I'm going to speak to someone who's there who [00:21:00] knows what they're doing and they get it.
They going to tell me what to do. And it was a networking event, whether it was about 60 people there. And we had to stand up and everyone had like 45 seconds to talk about their own business. And at the time I didn't have a company name. I was just like, I was just me being a social media. And I remember it was going around the room and it was getting to me and I was like, oh no, everyone's got a company now they're going to know that I'm only just I'm fine.
And in the, in the room at the time, there was, AML accountancy, and then there was JP entertainment and then there was, JS technical services and that was. Coming up with this formula for a company name. And then when it got to me, I stood up and I said, my name's Jody cook, and I'm from JC social media.
And that was the first time I'd ever said it. And I had it, my company name on the spot because I was so I was so convinced that I needed to look really, really legitimate for people to believe that I've been doing this, that for a little [00:22:00] while. So I think there were a lot of different fake it till you make it moments in there.
that I guess.
Cody: How did you get your first client? Did you fake like having clients? Because I, I will admit I have done that with some of my businesses, because like, how can you get your first client if they're like, if you tell them yeah, it'd be my first client.
Jodie: Yeah. I remember, I remember being a bit worried about that because I didn't have any experience to talk about, but I spoke to my dad about it. Through through his, a lot of his career, he has worked in the automotive industry. And when I was younger, I thought that he sold cars. And then when I was a bit older, I realized that he taught other people to sell cars.
And then when I was a little bit older, he told me that he didn't just teach people to sell cars. He actually went around different car dealerships that were failing and he turned around. So lots of his role was about, developing people. And he taught me a kind of concept, which is that knowledge, instills confidence, confidence, instills [00:23:00] enthusiasm and enthusiasm is what sells cars and vans.
And so I wasn't selling cars and bounds. I was selling social media, but. Premise just stuck with me. And so I definitely didn't have any past experience, but I had so much knowledge because I just researched like crazy. The first company I was going to meet and say, because I had all this research and this knowledge I was really in, I was really confident and I was really enthusiastic and that's what signed them up.
They didn't know who they were, my first client. And it was someone who was actually referred to me by another girl who was on my graduate.
Cody: Hmm.
Jodie: But they, they signed up and then once you have one client, that's easy. That's the hard part. Right. And then number two and three and four or five. Is it easy from there?
Cody: So then tell me about the story between that first client. And I know that you just recently sold the business. So can you tell me how many clients you had and what the process was like to get up to that?
Jodie: at the point of sale we had about [00:24:00] 55 ongoing social media management clients, and then hundreds and hundreds of, of training clients because training was quite a big part of the business. So at first it was, it was one client and then it slowly built up and some would be projects and some would be longer term, longer term things, or like ongoing kind of monthly things.
And I got to this stage where I was really busy with client work and I probably had 30 or 40 hours a week of client work, but I knew that I had a decision to make there about whether I just did that forever and just stayed a freelance. Or whether I started building our team. And that was when I decided to start hiring.
And I think hiring the first person was probably the scariest thing I've ever done in my life, because it was so strange being the other side of that table. And I didn't know what to ask them. And it was like, It was, it was really weird. I just, I felt completely out of my depth, but luckily actually I think, I, I think they hired the first person I ever interviewed who was still Jason.
He was just [00:25:00] wonderful. And I just thought, yeah, this is, I could definitely, I see myself working with this person and then how the business grew with every time we, every time we got into the 30 to 40 hours a week, client work, we had another lesson and then built it like that. So it didn't didn't take any funding on just, just grew by disagree by the client.
And then the reputation did it get, did a good job for our clients and then found more clients.
Cody: And so now the social media landscape has evolved where I think just recently, like, like this month is pride month and I was seeing a segment about how every company Coca-Cola even this military contractor for the U S like had like a pride flag. And it's almost becoming commoditized where you see these brands are trying to capitalize on.
I suppose social media, but you also, you've also had the rise of influencers and these influencers are being paid by these brands [00:26:00] and it's because people want to follow people, not necessarily brands. And w just before I go onto the next, do you have any, any comment, but on that.
Jodie: At the start of working in social media, it was such a different story because we were convincing brands that they have to be on it. And then it evolved to convincing people that they should use us and not someone else. And I think even now it's just a completely different, it's a completely different style.
It's a completely different conversation. I think that you could do a million different things on social media. Is there any point it's better off just doing one thing really well. I'm always, I'm always really in awe of brands that can navigate the, I guess, the social, social issues landscape as well as the social media landscape.
And I think that the brands that do it really well are the ones that decide what they're going to [00:27:00] stand for. And then incorporate that into everything they do. And that becomes part of that business. I don't think it works if your social media team is just like a bolt on team that doesn't really know about the business.
I think it has to be, or think it all has to be part of the same thing.
Cody: Right. There's one that stands out to me is the Wendy's twitter account is they always reply with these incredibly hilarious, funny responses that just get thousands of retweets and comments, and they'll actually poke fun at other brands. And it's a fine line because you want to be able to be comedic and have that.
That is it. We're in the city to be ironic in a way
Jodie: Okay.
Cody: you're also not crossing the line.
Jodie: Yeah. When you've got some brands just completely saying, no, we're not going to be on it at all. And then you've got some really embracing it and. All my training, that brand like a person who, I don't know, votes a certain way, thinks a certain way, supports a set, like a certain set number of [00:28:00] causes. I think that I feel like the latter is, is what people want from brands.
They want to know what they believe in. Cause you're not just buying into a brand new you're buying into the best companies and movements, not just brands.
Cody: Did you ever have a disagreement in terms of strategy of like you knew what was best for the client, but then they had something else and it was a frustrating experience or you even ended up having to fire the client.
Jodie: we worked with a lot of really nice clients, really fun people to work with who were aware that they, they hired a social media agency because they wanted assistance. I think that. What helped avoid those situations was being very clear on how much control the client wanted and if they wanted to always, if they wanted to control the money.
Or control the outputs and you can't do both. And what I mean by that is some clients would work with us because they wanted a service they wanted to set. And I don't know with that, a [00:29:00] number of tweets sending out or a certain number of blog posts writing permanent, then it was very much, okay. These are the inputs you go ahead.
And some clients would work with us because they had certain sales goals. To hit or they had set a metrics and that was where they were controlling the outfits. But then we would say, well, okay, they're the output that we're going to control the inputs. We're going to decide how you get there. And I think as long as the client is aware that they choose, they control the inputs or they control the outfits, you can avoid those disagreements, which we managed to do 99% at the time.
I can't think of any that come up where it was a massive problem.
Cody: Hmm. And so now, now that you sold your business, where do you fancy yourself going in the future? And also, what do you think is the future of social media? Because now we're living in this time where Facebook is being demonized, and there is all this new association between social media and kids with ADHD and other developmental problems.
do you see the future of [00:30:00] social media?
Jodie: As time goes along, it's moved from a harmless bit of fun, to a guilty pleasure to an addiction that
needs solving for a lot of people because we've, we are seeing the problems that it's causing in young kids who were growing up and having problems because, because their attention spans are too short because they're addicted to technology because they can't get off this Pez dispenser of dope.
I mean, that's just been around them since they were really small. So I think that. I think the bronze day to navigate that in order to do well on it. I think that it's a, it's a tricky, it's a very tricky thing because our people in the future, just going to sign off it altogether, I don't know. I think that there's, uh, there's, there's just got to be a clever way of using it to actually make, make it really relevant to people without just having them scrolling all the time.
Cause I think the days of scrolling all the time, But it's soon, it's [00:31:00] going to be seen, like it's going to be seen like gambling or smoking or anything else that we, we categorically know can lead to really huge problems.
Cody: Did you ever feel any guilt or shame for feeling like you were perhaps playing a role in that?
Jodie: No, because we were very, we were very clear that we would only represent rounds. He would doing good things and we got approached by lots of, I dunno. Not like traditionally, like not criminal, but an ethical brands where we're like, Hmm, I think that's really good for the world. And we would just say, and we would only focus on the ones where we knew that they would, they would do something good.
And in the office, we used to have this meeting part where people would come in and they would, they would really believe that what they were doing would change the world for the people who they were aiming at that. And so if our job was just to introduce that product or that service to that set of people, Then that's what we do, but we just wouldn't have represented any brands that we didn't didn't believe in it.
We didn't think were ultimately good for the world.
[00:32:00] Cody: Right. And on the, on the positive note, social media has had many positive impacts upon the world. And it's also, I think in some cases, Uh, allowed people to see other cultures and instilled a useful level of confidence in them that allow them to push themselves outside of their own boundary. And so in some ways, getting outside their own comfort zone, and that leads me to what your TEDx talk was about and you titled it creating useful people.
And so I'm wondering if you can tell me more about what you were talking about in that.
Jodie: Creating ease for people is quite similar to the title of the book I wrote called how to raise entrepreneurial kids and I guess, useful people, entrepreneurial kids, it's all means people who are resourceful and creative and positive and ultimately can make their own choices and have the self-awareness to realize that.
There is an education conveyor belt that exists. There is a career conveyor belt that exists and [00:33:00] you can opt out. You can choose a different way. And I think increasingly the traditional career conveyor belt, isn't really serving people and might not even exist in the form that it exists now for that much longer.
So, yeah, it's, it's all on the same. It's all on the same kind of theme, which is how do we teach people to think for themselves? How do we teach people to try and solve interesting problems rather than just see it as this goal to fit in with the crowd and just do what everyone else is doing?
Cody: Right. Like the educational system really around the world was designed and it's, it's almost kind of conspiracy, but it's totally not conspiracy is that the, it was designed to create workers, to create people that don't think that are going to do their job. Go home. Be a good tax paying citizen. You never learned about how to manage your finances or how to think, how to get through certain situations.
That's that's still strikes [00:34:00] me today as a thing that needs to be revolutionized.
Jodie: Say Seth, Gayden's written quite a lot of the things on this. One of the books. Linchpin. And that talks about the difference between a linchpin and the Cub. And he talks about how the education system creates called cause. And really no, no organization wants called cause. And this is how not to be one, but a really good, the fund that topic.
Yeah, John, the late John Taylor Gatto and the book is born weapons of mass instruction. And the way he describes the school system, you almost have to read it twice to just think, is that really what was happening? But of course it is. And it's what's happened with all of us. And so things like the fact that.
A lot of schools are they split boys and girls and you have to all wear the same uniform and you have to move around to the sound of a bell. It's almost like people are just being conditioned to work in factories and to fit in and to stay in line. And I think [00:35:00] that it's led me to believe that no one really succeeds because of school.
I think they succeed in spite of school, but it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to be that.
Cody: I'm remembering the story anecdotally. So I don't have all the details of a conversation I recently had with a guy named Jesse elder. Who's a millionaire mentor mentor here in Austin. And he was talking about how young there was, I think it was back in the. It was the 17 hundreds and America. There was a young, young person, 16 years old that in some ways helped to start some form of a revolution.
And afterwards everybody got together. And because back in like the 18, 17, 16 hundreds is that all the school children in the area. We're in the same building. So you had five-year-olds in 15 year-old altogether and they were learning from each other. And in some ways like the, the textbooks, if you'd look at a textbook, I think back in the 18 hundreds or 19 hundreds, it [00:36:00] is college book level today.
And so they separated the kids where all of a sudden it was, it was. Divided by age group and different grades so that you were only around kids of your age and in some ways that was to control the level of thinking involved.
Jodie: Yeah, I think schools just cater for the slowest moving because they have to, because they have to make sure that no one gets left behind, but whilst that might be good for the slowest moving, it's not good for the fastest moving, but it's not good for people who do want to push him. So I think that you might, and lots of it's just because people naturally just learn at different paces, but you might have someone who is letting it really fast paced.
And what they learn is no stay in. I rein it in slow down. Don't, you know, don't get Bovie station and it's just not a very good message for you and pass them.
Cody: Right. Yeah. And so hopefully with the rise of technology, making it easier to access raspberry [00:37:00] PI, we're seeing lots of new products on the market, especially you hear those stories of. Like a young kid who created, uh, an app that got a million dollars or so. And so I think we are starting to see that, but the education system is still lacking because it's not pushing any idea of independent thinking or entrepreneurship.
That's still something that they have to seek outside of the thing that they're told that they need to do. And perhaps that needs to be expanded. What are your thoughts on that?
Jodie: So a few years ago I set out, I set about finding the answer to the question. How, how do you raise entrepreneurial kids? But it was actually the question. How, how was someone raised to be entrepreneurial? Because I thought if we looked into the childhoods of entrepreneurs, say, or people who, who had kind of bombed past the education system to go and make their own roots in like, make their own mark and make their own routes through whatever they wanted to do, we could almost reverse engineer.
The the [00:38:00] findings and replicate those influences for today's kids and inspire the next generation of business leaders by looking at the ones today. So in order to do this, I use a program called Harrow, which you might've heard of stands for
help out. So it's where journalists can find sources, their stories, and I submit it to you.
And one was, how were you raised to be entrepreneurial? And one was how are you raising entrepreneurial kids? Yeah. I hope to get three or four responses because I wanted to write an article, but instead of three or four, I got 500.
So the answers to these, the answers were just incredible if they were, they were so in detail, they were so useful and some of the respondents were pouring their hearts out, just telling me all these things that happen in their childhoods.
And it was like they were having a Tiffany's house. They were writing. It was like, oh, that thing happened. Oh, maybe that's that. Oh, maybe that meant that. And it was, it was quite nice to [00:39:00] read actually, because you could almost see how excited they were getting when they realized. Excellent. So why which dizzy and say that's when I realized that these 500 responses were more than a blog post, they had to be a birth.
And that's what turned into the half, the rights on Pharaoh kids book. But the, the, all the responses pretty much split into these four separate areas. And one was entrepreneurial mindset. One was entrepreneurial skills, one was entrepreneurial opportunities and one was mentors or role models. And so I feel like that.
They're the four influences of which there are lots of different ways that you can, you can influence someone with that kind of pillar, that, that lead to people, making decisions for themselves and being resourceful and being entrepreneurial. And I think there's a massive difference between raising entrepreneurial kids and raising kid entrepreneurs.
But if we do the former, then it will be a really, really good thing just for the way.
[00:40:00] Cody: Did you ever fear or confront the possibility that parents will look at having an entrepreneurial kid? I think it's a good thing that we're, we're now changing it to the point where if you say you're an entrepreneur, it's not as stigmatized as it once was, but I can also see parents being, you know, there you've got that you should be a doctor or a lawyer, and then they end up in a career that they hate.
How often would a kid be pushed into entrepreneurship by their parents and not be an entrepreneur? How do they find that?
Jodie: No one pushes that kid down the route of being an entrepreneur, because I think it would be a really horrible thing to do if you really didn't want to do it, it would be terrible. I think at least if you're pushed down the route of being a dentist or, you know, a career that has existed for a very long time, it has a very set path.
At least then you've got, you know, you've got a manual to follow. You've got a smart team to follow almost, but being pushed down the route of being entrepreneur, it will just be terrible because you wouldn't get anywhere. Would you? I just think it [00:41:00] wouldn't work. but the, the title of the book. Kind of antagonistic on purpose, you know, like, like before I work, where you go like, look, lots of different books have called that because they want to make people, they w they want to make people think, Ooh, what's that what's that about rather than, and think that they don't necessarily understand.
But the book is going to be about, but we've definitely answered questions about people who were thinking it's raising kid entrepreneurs, right. Rather than raising entrepreneurial kids. And I'm very out of that. It's the it's raising entrepreneurial kids.
Cody: So if a parent came to you today and asked you, Hey, my son, he he's like, he likes to code. He wants to build an app. And how should I approach that? Because I think maybe he has some traits that about being an entrepreneur, how young is too young, how do I help him go on this path of entrepreneurship?
Jodie: Well, because we've got so many stories from different parents and different entrepreneurs. Lots of [00:42:00] those different questions are covered just, just through not, not even through advice from me or from my coauthor, but just from stories of what other people have done. So one of the stories that I really like is from a dad, who's talked about how to.
I guess how to develop mastery and his son and what his kind of tactic of strategy is, is this concept of doubling down. So if his son is ingested in dinosaurs, they will double down on dinosaurs. Now go to dinosaur museums and read about Donna. So it wasn't forced on us. So films and they will get dark, get a dinosaur bedspread, or just pretty much they really down the route of just, just understanding this whole arena until yeah.
Until mastery is developed. And then if he wants to do it with someone else, something else, he can do it with something else. So I think on that point of how do I get them to develop, you know, develop their interest in certain areas. I think it is just doubling down on [00:43:00] whatever they're interested in and then make making it okay for someone to get really, really interested in really obsessed with a certain effect.
Cody: So, what are some of the other stories in your book, or that really struck out to you about parents raising entrepreneurial kids?
Jodie: There was one that I really liked because I hadn't ever thought about it in this way before. And it's about the care you need to take when administering labels. So if you call a kid Clemens, They will just act cleansy. They will almost become that label that they have been given. And it's the same with silly or it's the same with just, you know, the creative one or the clever one or whatever, because the labeled, they will unconsciously just start to identify with that.
And then they will start to be that. So the person who submitted this story just said that she was, she was really conscious to choose really empowering labels and say, You know, [00:44:00] creative or resourceful or knows what she wants or not like bossy, there's actually a campaign. I think that Sheryl some bag is involved in to ban bossy because it's always a term that little girls, girls are called and.
It's not assertive and it's not knows what she wants. It's bossy and it's this bad thing. So I think the label side of it was, was a super interesting story that I know a lot of people have taken a lot from, and it's changed the way that they talk to kids and even talk to other grownups because it's probably, it's probably relevant for people of all ages.
Cody: Right. You are what you think you are. W w when I was in school, there was a point at which I started this hosting company. And then I really defined my experience from that point on is I labeled myself. I'm an entrepreneur and I went through so many incredibly, somewhat tragic circumstances. But even when I was actually called out on the internet, because a guy found out that I was 16 and his website was down as he shared that on this entire forum.
And I remember [00:45:00] crying so hard that night because I was trying to tell him like, no, I'm legitimate because in the hosting world, that was so easy to get into in a hosting company. And just twenty-five bucks a month, you can, all of a sudden sell hosting is that you had these fly by night, Katy hosts who would set up, they'd get some clients and then they would just lose it.
Whereas there was some part of me that held onto this idea of I'm an entrepreneur. And it's what made me wake up at 3:00 AM. Whenever the server crashed. And I had to figure out how to restart it, you know, and I went through so much work and effort because it really defined me. And that's not something somebody else.
Made me, it was a definition and a label that I applied and I would even go to school. Like I would have, uh, this was back in the early days when I would have like a PDA with the little stylist. And so I would be on the bus to school, responding to support tickets because that's how invested I was in this idea of being a successful entrepreneur.
Jodie: Wow. Well, it's, it's also similar to going back to what we talked about, going to the gym and [00:46:00] creating a happy hour that someone is so much more likely to. Take 10 up and go to the gym every single day. If they, if they identify as someone who goes to the gym compared to someone who just says, I want to lose weight, I want to get healthy.
It's when it's, when it films part of your being and who you are that, that, I guess we humans want to act consistently with it.
Cody: Yeah. And there's so many experiences that we fear the unknown. Like we fear going to the gym. And I remember when I first moved to Austin, as I live right next to this beautiful trail is I wanted to get outside. And I want it to run, but I felt like, oh, I can't do run. I'm afraid of running. People are going to judge me or I'm too fat.
I won't be able to run. And then somebody is going to judge me because I'm walking instead of running, like all these thoughts. And for the longest time it prevented me from even going out and running. And then I got to a point where I was able to push myself slowly outside that comfort zone. Do a little bit of jogging.
And then at one point I was running four miles a day for over a year. And now I don't [00:47:00] have that level of self-consciousness even going to the gym. It felt the same of like, people are judging me, but you slowly realize people don't give a shit about you
once you understand that it makes it a lot easier, but time and time again, or life, we face these challenges.
And it requires that certain level afforded to you. To push ourselves just to get it, just to try it, just to put our toe in the water, because that is often the hardest part of anything we might start.
Jodie: Yeah. And I, when everyone's just thinking about themselves, they ones really, but you think they were thinking about you, but they're just not, and that's, there's real free. There's real freedom in that also. Kind of on a stimulant. I, I, I think about mortality so much because I just think one day I'm not going to be here now.
There is anyone I know. So all in all, it doesn't really matter. And I try and always remind myself that because I think it helps me keep perspective.
Cody: Right. There's a quote. Life is [00:48:00] very short and anxious for those who forget the past and neglect the president and fear of the future. And so I guess Seneca in that way was saying that we should focus on the present because we ended up. Too stuck to our past our, we fear the future. And then we end up in this anxious mode where we don't do anything.
And there's, there's all these studies that ask people on their death bed. What are the things that you regret the most? And the number one thing is always those opportunities that came and their life, but they were too afraid to go because so often we're afraid of failure and in doing so, we D we never tried.
so we
Jodie: Yeah.
Cody: fully actualize our true potential.
Jodie: I feel, I feel like sometimes my biggest challenge is striking the right balance between a really good sense of urgency that might, that means that you do the things you want to do, and you do make the progress that you want and a really happy, peaceful sense of contempt. I feel like [00:49:00] I'm constantly trying to find the exact right balance between those two things, because that's where I feel the most happy.
I think if I go too far into, oh, I'm really happy, then I'm really happy in contempt with everything. Then it takes away the ambition side. And if you're just all about the ambition, you never stop to appreciate it.
Cody: Yeah. And I find that the busier, I am the happier I am, but when I'm in that, when I'm in the hot seat and I'm so busy and I'm doing interviews and I'm building companies is that I want to be out of it. But then when I'm out of it, if I take a rest day, then it really feels like I'm missing out. Or it feels like this.
I have this attachment to always wanting to be busy. But to find that balance where you're not stressing yourself out too much to the point that you burn out and that you do have these recreational activities where you're either reading, you're watching TV or playing games to pull yourself out of that mode, I think is truly important as well, to have that balance.
Do you, how do you balance your own ambitions from own stress and your [00:50:00] realization and more time?
Jodie: I think I try really hard to avoid boom and bust at all costs.
One time of someone called Joel who started the company buffer. And he does lots of different experiments and lifestyle design. And one of them was that he wanted to see if he could have the exact same day, every single day. So it was where he got up at the same time. Every day, he did the same amount of work at the same time.
Every day, he went to the gym, he did the same thing as me thing. And he tried to run it every single day. And actually he didn't end up doing it in the long term, but I thought it was a really interesting way of seeing how could you do some things. Every single Davis that is sustainable, that you feel like you could do it forever.
And I feel like that's where I try and get to. So maybe you don't end up having the same day every single day, but you could, because you're never having a day that feels too [00:51:00] empty or too full. You just got a nice balance. I think it's all, every, every part of it is all about balance.
I guess how I do it is just a lot and try and stay as self-aware as possible and try and work out how I'm feeling.
Just at old times and then try and make, try and make like little, little tweaks and little edits rather than like throwing everything out the window and doing something else. Like a colleague once told me that she was feeling stressed out and she wanted to book this yoga retreat and it was like a seven day thing.
And I was like, oh, so how often do you do yoga at the moment? And she'd never taken a single class. And it was like, we can almost feel that we need to flip right to the other end of the spectrum when really one year the class could have sold everything out, but she felt like she needed a whole seven day thing.
Okay,
Cody: Right. Yeah. Simply building many parts of that routine into your life can make a huge difference. That's where meditation or exercise comes into play. It pulls you out of that of a certain way [00:52:00] of thinking of a certain mindset. And I think that's super important to balance your life and to not become too stressed out.
So, yeah. Are there any specific things that you do in your day or on a daily basis that help you distress besides the, the journaling and just being self-aware.
Jodie: Something I started when locked down one first happened to me pay. So in March, 2020, and it was when the government had just announced that we will have to stay in the whole time. And I just read a stat that said that Netflix subscriptions and Disney blesses scriptions have gone through the roof. And I thought that I don't want to do that.
I don't want. Waste this time. And so I think that just read atomic habits as well. So I was so super where that how I spent the first few days of locked down would probably be how I spent its duration. so what I decided to do is it's, it's going to sound really geeky, but if it, if it's useful for someone, it doesn't matter.
[00:53:00] I created myself a 30 day challenge and it was, I it's even got a spreadsheet with little boxes to color it. And when I completed it every single day, But every single day, I have these 10 different things that I've made myself do. And at the start in the first week or so. I would forget about it until the end of the day and then I'd rush to finish everything.
So it was things like that do attend 10 minute meditation from the daily calmer. And it was doing the, the VIM half methods, the breathing method in the cold shower, and it was trained and it was do at least 10,000 steps and it was featured inspiring person and it was write a thousand words. So there was, there was just all these things, right.
Like kind of referencing every different area of life and work, but I have a time rather than them all being squished into the end of the day, they just became part of my every day. And I then really enjoyed completing that challenge. And then it felt like it was, it was just great in these habits that overtime felt [00:54:00] effortless.
And I'm really pleased that I did that now because it just instilled all these things that I now just do everyday without even thinking about it.
Cody: Yeah, the atomic habits by James clear, it was a very well-written book. As he had a habit himself of writing a blog post a week for a year, and then being able to use that content for them. And it was really well researched and developed for sure. yeah. And I think on that note, I think this has been a lovely conversation and I hope to have another conversation again soon.
Jodie: Yeah, for sure. I just want you to ask you a question as well about what what's the next step. Cause I realized that we talked about it earlier. And there is a 1993 film that you might have heard of called searching for Bobby Fisher. Have you seen it? It's called innocent moves in the UK, but it's based on the light.
I have Josh, Waitzkin the chess, the chess player. And in the film, Josh has a [00:55:00] chest here called Bruce Panda beanie, and it's all based on real life. And he's in the final of the national chess championships where, where he's playing and he's stared. And Josh is staring at the chess board and he's channeling Bruce's coaching when it's his turn.
When he's looking at the board in the final stage of the game, he doesn't know where to move, but because he's like, because he's channeling Bruce's coaching, he's got an idea of what. And say the line that the film really dramatically, if you remember, I realized Bruce's voice as saying is don't move until you see it.
Don't move until you see it. Just keep staring, keep analyzing because there's a wafer would here and you could win here and you need to find the right play, but don't move until you see it. That's a concept that I've learned about in the last couple of months, which has been super valuable for me as I work out what to do at the next step.
but I feel like it's a concept that could almost be useful just for anyone who's working out, [00:56:00] what to do after uni, after, after school, starting a new business or whatever they want to do with the next stage of their life, just don't move until, you know, it's absolutely the right thing to do.
Cody: Right there, there is a, there's a quote from the movie that says psychologically, you have to have confidence in yourself and this confidence should be based on fact. And that strikes me as very accurate because often if, if somebody wants to go to the gym, they'll feel this rush of motivation. They go to the gym, they do all sorts of machines and then they don't do the dumbbells because they don't know what they're doing.
And then they may have this routine for a little bit. But then they lose that progress where they're no longer making the after that newbie game. And those initial sore muscles is that they get up because you know, nothing's happening, but it's because they, they they're just rushed on this, this high of motivation.
And they didn't actually do any research nor work with somebody that actually designed a plan based on science to help them [00:57:00] achieve their goals.
Jodie: Yeah, I think mother Google is, um, it's just everywhere.
Cody: Yes. We're in the age of Google. Well, brilliant. think it's been a lovely conversation. I hope to have another one again.
Jodie: Thank you so much.
[00:58:00]