BEST OF: Envato co-Founder Cyan Ta'eed on spending just 15 minutes a day on her phone

Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics used by the world's most successful people to get so much out of their day.

I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imba.

I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work date. I am on a little break from How I Work for a few weeks, and so I'm using this time to share some of my favorite interviews that I've conducted over the last two and a half years of doing this podcast.

So I'm very excited to share with.

You my chat with cyantaid Si is a good friend of mine and is also one of Australia's most successful entrepreneurs, having co founded Invato in two thousand and six and growing it to being valued at over one billion dollars. More recently, she tried her hand at chocolate because why not, and hey, Tiger is now one of Australia's fastest growing purpose driven brands, and you know, spare time. She recently launched Milkshake, which allows users to make a free website

And before I head to SI, I.

Would also just want to say thank you to everyone that has left a review for how I work.

It is super generous of you.

If you are enjoying how I work and have a left review, I would be so grateful if you did so.

It's just really truly.

Wonderful getting feedback from listeners that really brings a huge smile to my face. So thank you if you've done that, and thank you if you plan to do that today. So let's head on over to SI to hear about how she works.

SOI welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Amantha.

Where I do want to start is not where i'd plan to start.

But before we were about to kick on and get started, you told me that you'd like recently dramatically cut down the amount of time that you're spending on your phone. Can you tell me like what you were spending and what you're now spending.

So I was.

Probably spending about four hours a day and it was getting to the point where it was a little bit manic. I do have a tendency towards intensity, surprisingly enough, and I found that I was just constantly, you know, checking email, Shopify, Instagram, what else, like a whole range of different sort of different apps and pieces of data which I wasn't actually getting a huge amount out of.

And it was becoming quite a destructive habit.

And one of the things that you should know is that Amantha and I are actually part of a peer mentoring group together, and so I've known each other for quite some time.

And one day Amantha's mother came in and she.

Is a clinical psychologist, is that correct, And one of her areas of speciality is hypnotism. I'd never been hypnotized before. I am a control freak, so out of everyone in the room, I was exceptionally uncomfortable with this and actually said.

I'm very uncomfortable, but I'm going to try anyway, because she was so lovely.

And I trust and trust her, and she was Amantha's mum, and it was the it was really intense. I found that just after being hypnotized for five minutes, I went away and I went all the way to work afterwards, I didn't pick up my phone once, and I was in really in the present moment, and I realized I think I'd been veering a little bit too much towards kind of.

Fight or flight.

Adrenaline filled.

That way of being, and I thought, Okay, it'll be interesting experiment. I tend to like to experiment on myself a little bit in harmless ways, but you know.

To see what to see what effect things will have.

And I thought, well, if I minimize my phone used for a little while, what effect is that going to have on me? And I've probably gone down to an average of about fifteen minutes a day.

Fifteen minutes that that is nothing like out of interest?

What is consuming that fifteen minutes phone calls?

Honestly?

Wow, So just overnight you just do you know, I scaled down.

I mean, that experience with your mum was so intense that I you know, and I have to say, you know, prior, as you know, I was quite not critical of hypnotism, but I didn't understand it. And I haven't been hypnotized since.

So this was this one experience that I'm drawing on.

But I was just like, wow, this was really intense.

But the difference in me made me realize that I clearly was not present enough prior to this. So really it's kind of more about being, you know, trying to be in the present moment, I think, which is important for me. I tend to look ahead all the time.

And did you change anything on your phone to make it less addictive?

I tend to take apps off my phone, so I've you know, I'll wait until I'm on Wi Fi before I kind of, you know, load something back on again.

But I will take.

Off quite a few of the different apps that I have and then load them back on when I actually need them, as opposed to having them all the time, because if they're there, I will check them compulsively.

That that's a great trick.

So yeah, I've heard people do a slightly less extreme where they log themselves out of say social media apps, for example, but you'll actually delete them.

I delete it, but I don't.

I really need to do it to the most extreme because if I'm just not logged in Holy.

Life, ah just think it's easy.

I need to kind of train myself out of it. And I think, you know, it's all about habit as you.

Know, fantastic and so what are you now doing with the three hours and forty five minutes that you're no longer consumed on your phone.

So for a long time, I've been aware that when I'm constantly surrounded by input, when I'm constantly consuming.

Output, becomes a lot more difficult for me.

I'm aware that I need to have plenty of time for output in order to do good work. So when I'm doing good, useful work, it's actually quite creative, and that means I need time and I need space. So honestly, I think, just you know, it's things like on the way in, not staring at my email and my phone the whole time, but instead looking around me.

It's really really simple things.

The interesting thing is is that I find that I'm more effective because I'm giving my brain time to figure things out.

Whereas if I'm constantly looking at.

And kind of external noise, I'm not nearly as effective in that way.

That's interesting.

It reminds me of something that that the previous guests said to me, who were actually just talking about before. Professor Adam Alter, who studied digital addiction, and he did this experiment where he gets a lot of ideas for research studies for example, that he wants to conduct and books that he wants to write, and in his notebook he writes his ideas, and any idea that comes when he's in a state of boredom, let's say, so, not.

Consuming stimulus, he asterixes them. And what he found when.

You look back at it is all the ideas that came to him in a state of not consuming stimulus he.

Thought were far better, which is really interesting.

So it's really.

About just being present and not sort of constantly in putting stimulus into your brain.

I think so, And I think that my tendency, you know, I tend to be very focused on results, and I think that sometimes I get into the habit of thinking that I need to be like a machine.

So in tech.

There's quite a bit of you know stuff about you know, biohacking, and I am going to document every single moment of the day and what I spend it on to see if I'm spending it on the optimum amount, you know, the optimum things.

And it's really intense, and.

It's not very nurturing, to be totally honest, it's not nurturing at all.

And I think for a long time.

I really veered that way, I'm going to become as efficient as possible and as effective as possible. And again, I do want to be efficient and effective, but I don't think it's also about the process.

It's also about enjoying and.

Being present in the process of what you do, and so reading things like you know, there's a book I'm reading at the moment which is called Daily Rituals, and it's basically the rituals of incredible writers, composers, artists, and they're talking about how they spend their day. So basically their day is documented out and a consistency amongst them

Yeah, it's an interesting book that one, and I want to know in your life, what rituals do you have that you found serve you well, whether they be daily, weekly, fortnightly, what does that look like for you?

I think the so in terms of yearly ritual, my family and I we play a game. My husband and I started doing it when we first got marri years ago, and it was this is the year that on New Year's Day. So I personally hate New Year's Eve. I think there's too much pressure. I'd write, go a bit early and then wake up early, you know, the following day on Year's Day, and go, Okay, what's this new

Thinking to go all right, you know, if everything's on.

The table, what is it that I actually want for this coming year, what is interesting to me so that I always really enjoy.

And then probably every quarter I try.

And reflect on those things and you know, are they relevant, are they still relevant?

Are they still exciting? How far can I come? But again not.

About have I succeeded or failed, because in the past.

My self talk has been quite very critical.

I think most people who are high achieving start out with their self.

Talk being very critical.

But you know, what is it that's kind of you know, what's exciting, what's interesting?

If I want to live a big life, what is it that I'm going to be doing again?

I you know, probably every morning I read either you know, something like Daily Rituals just one or you know, Tribe of Mentors just one chapter, and I just try and like, let let my day be a reflection of anything that resonated with me during during that during that reading session, and generally it's like five minutes. It's really not a long time. And I think the only other thing is ensuring again that I have time to be still and to really think and not just be running from one

It too far.

I don't have any time because it is very easy for me to completely.

Fill my time up and take it back to Okay, well, where am.

I personally providing value? What value do I provide in this equation to my team, to this business and other than that, I'm going to get my nose out of it and let the very competent people that I work with do what they're doing. And the book Essentialism was very helpful with that.

Such a good book. How do you catch yourself?

Like when when you have kind of gone too far and in one direction? If you like, like, do you have something that you do regularly to kind of go where am I at?

Or is it just a feeling that you get?

I tend it really is about a feeling that I get. So I know that if if I'm going into meetings and I'm not mentally prepared, I haven't thought through what is that you know I need to be getting out of them? If I feel rushed, then those are generally, you know, good signals to me that I need to pull back and have a look and consider. And I think also, you know, being aware, I've become a lot more aware like things like this. You know, I'm actually

A little bit quieter for the rest of the day after this, that's okay, like getting to know myself better.

Whereas if it's a series of internal meetings, I can do that all day, no problem.

Yeah, wow, how how do you function?

Like?

As I can completely relate to that, by the way, like an introvert kind of trying to do extroverted things during the.

Day, How how does that work for you?

Like?

How how I guess, like, particularly, do you structure a day even if you know that there is going to be, you know, something like this, which is very public and can be quite tiring for an introvert.

How have you thought about today? For example?

I think that for me, what makes sense is taking the pressure off and going, Okay, I'm going to go in here and I'm just going to try and be useful.

So my only.

Job is to try and say something in this hour or whoever long we've got that You go, oh, that was helpful, great, that was nice to hear. Oh, that helped me do my thing, whatever it might be. Otherwise, if I try and set myself up in my mind as trying to achieve these ten different purposes and trying to spook whatever it is that I'm doing at the moment, it's too stressful for me and it doesn't feel honest anyway. So I think there's that taking the pressure off myself.

I can head home and work from home, and that's okay.

It's one of the reasons why you know, I implement flex work wherever I can in my businesses because I know that sometimes I need to go home and you know, hibernate a little bit, and that's you know, that's okay.

We're human.

That's awesome.

I like what you're doing in the morning in terms of just getting that five minutes to read. Can you think of like an example of something that like you have taken from your morning reading and how that played out during the day, or how you kind of reflected on that during the day.

Recently, in Tribe of Mentors, I cannot remember his name, unfortunately, but he is an incredible chef, and he was talking about trying to divide up his day into all his time into a third for his work, a third for himself, and a third for his family.

I don't manage to do that at all.

So that was fascinating to me to look at somebody who's one of the most successful chefs in the world and say he has managed to achieve that, and he spends a third of his time for himself.

What does that actually look like?

And consider you know, I've had people multiple times say to me, so, what do you your hobbies?

And I said, I don't really have a hobby.

I I you know, I work, and I love my work, and I love the people that I work with. And then I, you know, spend time with my kids and my husband, and those are the things that I do. And I'm actually deeply boring. So even to consider I.

Am I like, totally honestly, to even consider what would it look like if.

I spent a third of my time for me what would I do? Is an interesting mental exercise. So I feel like I'm constantly kind of I think one of the things about being an entrepreneur and having a startup is that you you kind of you develop very very quickly, and it you know, self development is very very important because it's very challenging.

So what do you what else do you.

Do to to I guess constantly be learning and developing yourself.

I think that I just I try and surround myself with people that I can learn from. Quite honestly, I find that you know, if you if you say to me, okase I read a book about how to run effective meetings, I'll go, oh my goodness. I just I can't internalize it. Whereas if I'm inspired by.

Somebody who runs really effective meetings, oh go great. I just want to model you.

I'm very good at modeling, not very good at kind of pulling things from written material. So you know, I generally, like, you know, one of those things that I'll surround myself, including the people that work with me, with people that I feel like I can learn from you.

I just want to be around you. I want to watch you.

It's the same with my personal trainer, it's the same with like, I'm constantly intuitively.

Looking for people that I can learn from. And that's what that's what works for me.

Is that something that you're looking foreign in recruitment because Vado's got like three four hundred people six hundred now, six hundred now, oh my goodness.

Wow.

Okay, and you're obviously growing to other businesses, and I imagine you must have interviewed like hundreds thousands of people.

Yes, I'd say probably more to the hundreds. To the hundreds, I'm guessing, but yeah, you know, solid hundreds.

Yeah, yeah, because I imagine like part of that is, you know, can you learn from this person? But I'm curious, do you like that in that time that is a huge amount of experience. Do you have go to questions things that you're looking for to identify if someone is going to be like someone that you can learn from or someone that's going to be great in the business.

Look, generally speaking, you know, I actually try and source people, find people who aren't looking for a job, people who I see who are doing an incredible job at what they're doing, and often probably a bit you know, like just and the thing I know about them is that they're going to do something incredible and that there there's just they're just waiting for the space to do that. And then I slowly convince them I slowly convince them that they should leave what they're doing and they should

Should just come and work with me.

And then if they say, and then if they're considering it, we have a serious conversation.

And if they're not, I'll go, yep, it'd be really good. And then I just start like gently.

Like introducing it like as a joke, but not as a joke until it infects their minds.

And then I've been I've got a pretty good success right with it.

And I think my goal is to get people who, you know, all they need is the space.

And the permission to do amazing work.

How do you find those people? Like, how do you know? Because this is where I struggle with the idea of you know, essentially what we're talking about is poaching. Yeah, what it is so like because I've tried this for inventium and it's and.

I find it really hard because often I'm looking at someone on paper or I'm you know, maybe like reading about them in I don't know, different sources, and it's just like that can often be quite different from who the person is, So how are you identifying them in the first place? Who you're going to invest time in, you know, wining and dining.

I think people who are really just really passionate and obsessive about what they do. And oftentimes I think.

Where I can add value is because I've never been hugely confident. I've always been on shore of my capacity. Oftentimes I think that where I can add value is just giving them permission to proceed. So it's hard for me to explain because I think, honestly, it's one of those things.

There's a lot of things.

I'm not strong at, but I'm really good at reading people and I you know, and I'm good at figuring out if a person is genuinely passionate, really cares ambitious, and there's a there's a sort of you know, there's a craftsmanship or a crafts personship. I've never known how to gender neutralize that term, but there's a craftsmanship that comes through my dad always said to me, you know, you can be the best in the biers of cleaning toilets, it's about the it's about the process, and it's about

And then they do.

Says with Eric, so you know, it's it's it's one of those things that I it's a it's a horrible answer, and I'm sorry, but you know, sometimes you just you just know, you just know it about people.

You just see the way they are and you go.

I know you're gonna you're gonna give whatever it is your best and I and I want to work with you for that reason.

I love that you're finding people in cafes well jer wand lately, but still like I feel like there's something really interesting in that because I think that the average I think about the average recruiter and they're like, Okay, I've got this job to fill, so I'm going to look at people that are doing the exact same job because they're the only person that are going to be good at the job because they've done the job before.

And I love how laterally.

You're you're looking for people that I think would be great.

Passion will outweigh experience any day, and I think, you know people who are incredibly passionate and they're smart. I think because that's how I went into Invato, literally no idea what I was doing, but I decided, oh, we're just going to figure it out. Me and my co founders were like, we will literally just figure this out. And a lot of time we reinvented the wheel and maybe it wasn't the most efficient thing, but on the other hand, that meant we did a lot of things

You've mentioned the confidence is something that you know, it's kind of like being the thing for you and I know you've spoken about imposter syndrome and being a people pleaser, and you've developed really cool strategies for overcoming that.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah, So I think that I spent a long time feeling like I was trying to cover up, like I wasn't actually as intelligent, as capable, as good as everyone maybe thought I was. You know, I was running you know, a fifty person team at twenty seven, you know, and you know, deeply inexperienced in doing that, and had to learn on the job a lot. And my coping mechanism was to go, I've well, no, it's okay, I've got it all figured out, when in fact, I, you know,

You know better in some cases.

So I kind of had to figure out what it was that was going on with me. I think, especially you know the tech VC world in the US, they talk big game.

I never did. What did that mean about me? You know?

It was it was one of those things where I felt like I really needed to address it, and there was a few things I did, a few steps that I went through. The first thing was is that I went and looked around me to people who people that I just felt like had a really natural confidence around them.

And it was.

It meant that I needed to ask questions constantly and I needed to.

Not care whether it made me look like an idiot.

I think I also needed to start saying yes to opportunities even when they really scared me, because for a long time I kind of tried to avoid failing really and I had to get really used to and comfortable failing all the time and figuring out how to cope

Because they didn't succeed. And close them down, I mean, all that.

Didn't work, all right, Better shut that down and keep on going. And I think the final step, the final piece of the puzzle for me. And again it's making it sound like I've got this completely figured out, which I don't.

But the most the most effective thing I did overall.

Was I got really clear about where I was weak and where I was strong. So I think you know when you have imposter syndrome. And I'm basing this anecdotally on other people that I've spoken to, which I think is a fairly human universal issue.

The more and more time that goes on, I believe.

That one tends to the whole concept of where you're weak is so scary you never look that way. And I think I had this idea in my mind that I needed to be incredibly strong.

In all areas.

Again, I had to be this machine who was as right brained as I was left brained, and you know, and just had to know everything. And I think I realized that that was impossible, and I was setting totally unrealistic expectations on myself and again not treating myself with a great deal of compassion.

And I decided that I needed to have.

A really critical look, learn where I was really strong, but also learn where I was really weak. Because I can adjust for my weaknesses, I can hire. I hire out my weaknesses. Now I find people who balance me out and that can kind of adjust.

I'm very left brained person, so.

I need the left brains around me because they do absolutely incredible work. And I think most people, if their left brain, will hire other left brains. I need guns of right brains. I need operational guns around me. And I think once I realized where I specifically could add value and where I just needed to get out of the way and find really strong people and trust them,

You mentioned self talk a couple of times, and like even just before we were about to start, you know, recording or doing what we're doing, you know, you mentioned that you were feeling nervous.

Okay for me to say, like, what is yourself talk before.

Things like this and your approach I guess to overcoming the nerves that you might be feeling, which I must say shocks me because it's.

Like you got this, like you're awesome.

Yeah, I think.

That I genuinely just I wouldn't say that I get downright nervous anymore. But I was saying to a couple of people that I know before I came in, I

And it's it's.

About me providing, hopefully providing some value in.

This conversation and of being an interesting conversation.

So I think I used to get exceptionally nervous, and a couple of things really helped. Once I was on a panel and the interviewer asked a very very complicated question and the woman next to me and I was freaking out, like I don't know how to answer this, Oh my goodness, And the woman next to me said, ahh, I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that question.

Can you come back to me? And I thought, that's a great answer. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take. And again that's the thing about you don't need.

To know everything, you don't need to be the authority on everything, which to me has been very, very freeing and very helpful. And the other thing was yet again, you know, I was about to go on stage that

Belt, so they were like, what are you going to do with this?

So I'm like standing at the back in kind of the audio visual area, pulling up my dress and trying to stuff it into my underpants.

It was like just just.

Like not the most empowering way to start an event.

But anyway, going up, the journalist said to me, she said, Okay, we're going to talk about I'd really like to ask you this question about what's this new ruling with listed companies.

It's new ruling with listed companies.

What does it mean?

Invite is not a listed company.

It is not an era of interest for me at all, like literally not even slightly and I could feel my heart starting to you know, boom boom boom boom, imposter syndrome.

I'm gonna be found out. They're going to realize I shouldn't be here. This is going to be super embarrassing. And instead I just turned around.

I said to her, listen, you're very welcome to ask me that question, but I honestly have no idea. I have no idea what the answer is, so I will literally just stay on stage. I'm so sorry we're not listed. This isn't an aera of interest for me. You should ask someone else. And again, they sound like really little things, but really helpful in times, you know, in times like that where you're kind of there's pressure and you're on stage and you kind.

Of you want to you want to perform and be useful.

That is a goal I'm going to use that. I'm actually on a panel in a couple of hours on the other.

Side of the city.

I'm hoping that they asked me a real josy of a question. So I got no idea.

That's great.

Now you're you're involved slash running three businesses, obviously less involved in Invado. I want to know structurally, what does that look like, and also mentally you compartmentalizing. How do you have three successful businesses that you're involved in.

It's one of those things where I was I do try and divide up my days. So I try and divide up my days into I'm either thinking about milkshake or I'm thinking about hay Tiger. The reality is is that both of those things are growing very quickly, and

To do it.

I think that, you know, the best quote I heard in relation to this is the Game of Thrones documentary.

I know I'm a total geek, but it was really really, it was really interesting.

And the director of you know, a bunch of the best Game of Thrones episodes, you know, the Red Wedding and things like that, quite an eccentric, quiet guy, but clearly.

An absolute genius. And they asked him how.

It was working on this gigantic project and he said, you know, I'm just the conductor of fine musicians. All I do is I wave my hands around, And honestly, I thought, this is the most apt description of what it is that I actually do. I think the really hard part for me is focusing in and going all right, I've got to find the musicians, these really incredible musicians.

We were heading.

And then you know, honestly, it's time for me to honestly just just be there to cultivate leadership. That's actually all that I'm doing now with these people.

They're very competent.

Yeah.

Wow.

And so you said that you've kind of got this intention that the day will be around a certain business, but it's probably not in reality.

Like I go to different workplaces and then I try and work mostly on the place that I'm at, but it doesn't always work out that way.

You're in the tech world and have been in the tech world for like most of your adult life, are you I want to know, like, what are the the technologies like apps, gadgets and so forth that have served you best? What are the things that have made the biggest impact in your life.

I've gone through a lot of periods where I've found things very, very useful. So, you know, I did.

I had that app on my phone for a while which told me I was going to die five times, five times a day, which we were talking about.

Basically, all it says is five times a day.

It just comes up and goes just a reminder you're going to die soon.

Which sounds really intense.

But on the other hand, if you're trying to get back to the core of like I want to be present in my life and I want to make every moment count.

Of it's really good. Just suddenly, Oh does all of this actually matter?

No?

Probably not.

I'm just gonna enjoy it. So that was an interesting one.

But again, I think, you know, having that come up five times also, once my eight year old.

Could read that was the one. Yeah, you know, I did. I took that.

I took that off, but it was very you know, very useful for its time. Funnily enough, the Calm app is the one app that I've had, you know, for months, years, years, like I think, basically since it launched. And that's an app that basically has a series of meditations and sleep stories and music to help you focus.

Or help you do whatever it is you might do.

And out of all the apps that I've ever had, I think that's the one that kind of I come back to most consistently.

Hmm, that's cool.

Yeah, I must say I do like Calm, and they have been a sponsor of the show's.

Right because not why I said that, to be clear.

And I've read that your your kind of go to to do list manager is Bear.

Yes still the case.

Yes, I still use Bear. I really live off Bear. So I am a massive list writer. In fact, my parents have often said because my parents are super cool, super hippie, intuitive, arty people, and they're always like, we don't know how we got this little girl who just loved writing lists. I had like glasses and a mono brown I organized, and you know, so I do. I find lists very very helpful and very soothing, and I think they helped me find purpose and systems.

In what it is that I'm doing and help me, you know, remember things.

And I've lists for everything. I've lists for you know, the funny things. My kids have said, I have lists for the place so I want to travel to. I have lists for every one on one that I have, and you know, and you know, they're all categorized and sought and it's it's pretty intense when you look at it, but.

But it's useful.

And I don't have a diary, and it's but I there's a book called The Art of the List, which is a French book about a woman who lives in Japan and is French and writs lists. And she just has a million different lists that you can write. It's very soothing. What are the best meals I've ever had? One of my favorite restaurants?

It's great. I'll stop talking about lists now.

I feel I love lists. I want to know what are the categories of list do you have? And also you like do you have shared lists as well?

I don't have shared lists.

Funnily enough, might be might be a great thing to do, especially with Collis. I can imagine with my husband. I think that would be really really good. My categories of lists.

Yeah, I have work to do. I have work goals, so.

You know that like the macro and the micro effectively, I have kids, I have home life, I have fun, I have travel.

A fun list like what's on the funds a category which is fun.

So if it's like, here are the I love cooking, here are the things that I want to bake that's in fun. That's categorized by fun and home and kids, So I feel like this isn't actually.

I love getting the insight into the mine show of list. I think that's great.

I do.

I do want to ask you about something that happened in late twenty sixteen where you were kind of struck with an eye ulcer and had the risk of going blind. And I want to know if you can sort of just share what happened during that time and what did you change about how you kind of rang your life.

I guess after that.

That was a really interesting time. So I just in twenty fifteen I won the Telstra Business Woan of the Year award, and up till and then I'd been completely under the radar, hadn't done.

Any public speaking, had just been purely.

Focused on Invarto and When that happened, it just went whoomph and I started doing a huge amount of public speaking, and you know, we're on a bit of a hiring kick, so it was a really useful thing to do to start talking about in Varto publicly within Australia. Because Invarto's only four percent Australian market, so there's never been any reason to do local.

PR before it's all US and Europe.

But from an employee brand point of view, it suddenly made sense, so did a huge amount of that stuff found it.

It was a period of intense growth.

I had to kind of, you know, look at a bunch of things and try and get comfortable being uncomfortable in a way that I hadn't before. And interestingly enough, the last night, so basically you do it for a full year, and then the last night before the new awards take place, you do a panel where you speak to the finalists of the following year and that morning, you know, put my contact lenses in as usual, and I come during the dad and like, my eye kind

Because your eyes just messed up.

And I had an aggressive bacterial ulsa on my corneer and so effectively it looked like kind of a milky halo was just taking over my eye very very quickly. And so we went to the hospital and the ie specialist said, look, this looks very aggressive.

You might lose.

And so it was one of those oh crap, what does this mean kind of moments you're thinking, can I rock an eye patch?

Like you know, like really you know? And there's a story I always.

Tell, but it's just I just can't not tell it because he's just such a pure human. Collis was like, don't worry, I'm sitting at the hospital. He's like, I'm gonna go get us coffees. I'll be back in five minutes. And he came back five minutes later and he said, honey, it's gonna be okay. I just went all the way to the cafe ordered and came back with one eye closed, and I was fine.

And it was just one of those moments I think I'll remember on my deathbed of just what a pure, beautiful human that man is.

So but I basically the way that they treated it was I had to have like antibiotic eye drops in my eye every hour, twenty.

Four hours a day for quite some time, like you know, more than a week. So I became woo sleep deprived really bizarrely.

You know, if you're not getting any rem sleep and you're only sleeping forty five minutes at a time, that's like, you know, it's like kind of what they do torture people. As far as I understand it, not that I'm deeply experienced in that area, but I I've been told, so, you know, severely sleep deprived. And imagine you're going from you know, working really long hours pushing yourself really hard, running really hard. You have two little kids, so two

Is this the best way for me to be using my time?

And I already established, like you know, life's you know, in my mind, life's probably about two things. Having really big experiences, so experiencing it, really living it, and hopefully in your own little way, doing something that's kind of useful and helpful to the world. Leaving it in a tiny weeny bit of a better place than it was when you arrived. I think, when it boils down to it,

I know that I want it to be a social enterprise.

Because that is, you know, Withinvata, one of the things that always resonated with me was how effective it can be at being helpful to people, serving its community. And I think that business is very focused on oftentimes, you know, serving its shareholders only, and I believe that's an outmoded kind of attitude and philosophy to business, which leads to a lot of you.

Know, the injustices in the world.

So a social enterprise seemed like the logical conclusion of that way of thinking, and I decided I'm just gonna I'm gonna look for an idea and ideally I'd like it to be something I can hold in my hands, was my other metric.

So how do you build like this rest and reflective kind of mode into your life since twenty sixteen? Is that something that you've deliberately done so you don't end up like back in hospital.

I try to, and I'm not always entirely successful, to be told.

I mean, I'm not having ended up back in hospital, but.

I'm not entirely successful at balancing. Balancing is a constant struggle to me, So What I find that I tend to do is I push really hard. I try and do everything, and then I have a period where I go, oh no, need to pull back. I need to pull back a bit, and then I readjust so it's almost like I work in I work in cycles. I have these cycles where I'm have this tremendous output and I do a huge amount of things and I set things up and then and then I need to pull back

What does that look like when you pull back? Like practically speaking.

So when I pull back, I try to work less, which is you know, hard for me.

I try and be less involved in my you know, in my.

Email, in my day to day and generally speaking, it coincides with a time when you know, I'm like, oh no, the team actually has this, and an actual fact, it serves them best for me to get out of the way as well, because sometimes I can, because I'm trying to do so many things, I can be like a traffic block, so it oftentimes serves everybody really well. If I suddenly go, okay, I'm not coping very well at this point, I can see that I've gone too far

Now, I've got two final questions for you. Firstly, the Hunger Project, which which I can share that we've raised one hundred and thirty six dollars, so thank.

You everyone for your donations.

And psy can you tell me a bit about what the Hunger Project is and why that's your charity of choice?

T HP, the Hunger Project garner is Hay Tiger's chad partner.

So Hay Tiger is a social enterprise.

It exists to support cocoa farming communities in Ghana, and beyond that, it kind of it's honestly a bit of an experiment in terms of.

Figuring out how kind of what a.

Business can be if it exists to serve the communities that it interacts with. So this concept that all parties rise in the transaction I find to be a really interesting concept. You know, people don't like talking about capitalism, but the best possible version of capitalism where everyone wins.

I'm not saying we're there.

It's going to be like a ten year project, but I find that concept a really interesting one. So a big problem in the coco industry is that generally farmers earns seventy three cents per day, which is well.

Below the poverty line.

And cocoa farmers in West Africa and there's two point two million children in child labor on cocoa plantations in West Africa.

Those are both things that felt to me like.

Really really broken components of an industry that you know, is responsible for something that I absolutely love and I know that I and many people get a great deal of pleasure out of so when it came time to look for a charitable partner to donate funds from.

Each bar too.

I was really looking for an organization that would holistically support these communities, these coco farming communities, because all the kind of all the research on this issue seems to be that it's about it's a greater issue than paying more for coco. So we source all our coco ethically, but that alone is really not going to shift the doll because there are major systemic issues. So what I

Way to go about doing it.

They tend to just put more money back into their local communities than men.

Do for whatever reason.

And I think what's interesting about THHP is that, you know, it covers everything from microfinance loans for women farmers, to farming practices, to First one thousand Days of Life programs to save birth to HIV AIDS education. It's the more I dive into it, it's this multi step, holistic program based around education. That is that it kind of has a virality to it, which I find really really interesting.

That's awesome.

And my final question, if people want to discover more about you and what you're.

Doing or your businesses, where should they go?

So I guess you could go to Instagram.

I'm at Science CYA, NC tied taw D.

I've got a complicated name, so spelling it is.

Necessary, and or you know, you know, hey, Target dot com dot are you has you know a lot of information about what we do in the chocolate that we make and why we do it.

And then there's Milkshake, which is the new app we launched, which is basically.

All about being able to set up a website in your phone within ten minutes via Instagram, which is very pretty and very useful. I think to a lot of entrepreneurs who you know, run their businesses from their phone, So any of those things.

Awesome, fantastic, Si, It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much. Never enjoying. Thank you.

Try that is it for today's show. If you enjoyed my chat with Sie, why not share it with someone else that you think would also enjoy it.

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