The cost of confidence: Why ambition isn’t a dirty word 🌱 | Lauren Currie

Something we don't talk about enough is the cost of confidence. As your confidence increases, you will lose people. People will not like it, and they will not like this new version of you. And that is difficult and sad. And in those moments, it's really important to remember that that response and reaction is about them. It's nothing to do with you. It's because your growth is a mirror to them. It's showing them all the ways that they are not growing, and they don't want to look at that.

Are you saying that they can hold you back?

Yeah, of course. So there'll be lots of people who don't want you to progress because they want you to stay in the small box that you're in. And I think we don't talk enough about that, the kind of grief of the relationships that you will lose.

This week's Millennial Master is Lauren Currie, founder of Upfront. She's leading a global confidence revolution, showing founders and leaders why ambition isn't a dirty word. In this episode, we talk about the cost of confidence and why growing means outgrowing people, how to practice confidence like a muscle, not a finish line, and why visibility matters more than talent, plus how to handle the cringe tax.

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Lauren, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

I am good. I'm so happy to be here. It's great to meet you, Daniel.

Delighted to have you on, Lauren. And I think this is going to be a super interesting conversation. And I want to start with the beginning. Because for those new to your story, I'm hoping you can take us back to the moment you realized confidence was something you'd have to build, not just have. So what sparked that realization for you?

So confidence is something that I talk about as a muscle. Like, it's not a finish line. It's a muscle. Like any muscle, it needs regular practice. So often you'll hear me say it upfront, you can't graduate confidence. It's not something you're ever finished with, and it's not a trait that you either have or you don't have. It's something you build through repetition, through discomfort, through community. And I have learned this personally as a founder, as a leader, as a mother. I think where my confidence journey is at, at the moment, and I have been building this global movement of Confidence Revolution, as we call it, for nearly 5 years. And where I'm at in my journey now is something that's known as Tall Poppy Syndrome. And this is a phenomenon that has been studied that shows us that the more competent and successful a woman becomes, or seems to be, the less likable she is. So it's essentially the cultural punishment that women receive for standing out, for being successful, you know, these types of women are consistently rated as less likable, more abrasive, aggressive compared to men with the same traits and the same behavior. And I have had, you know, that's a very ongoing presence for me in my confidence journey, is accepting and understanding that confidence is costly for women and that the world does not like confident women. And that can mean— that can make it feel lonely, it can make it feel isolating. And that's why I really center community, of course, in the work that we do up front. But it's why I really believe that confidence is like a collective act of resistance. Like, absolutely, it benefits you as an individual, but it's also about our collective power as as communities.

Is this coming from a personal experience you've had in years past when you realize that in a way a confident woman can bring discomfort to others and you set about getting the things on a different line?

I think now that I can look back with the insight and knowledge that I have, I can see the pattern that that has been happening to me. My whole life. When it was happening, I didn't know that nor understand that, which I think is one of the reasons why Upfront is so transformative for the people who take part in our bonds and in our, in our part of our community, because they have also been walking through the world thinking that there's something wrong with them rather than understanding that, you know, we live in a world where 90% of people have a negativity bias towards women. Throw confidence in the mix and it gets even more complicated. And the day that I understood this and this, the spark for Upfront was born, was the day that I was speaking at a conference in Bristol in 2016. And I was the only female speaker on the conference lineup, which, you know, now is much less common. Still does happen far more than it should. But back then, we didn't really have the language we have now to talk about inequality and gender and sexism and anti-racism and prejudice. But I knew myself that I was spending so much of my time speaking at conferences and attending conferences and was often the only woman on stage, often the only, the youngest person, the only person with a regional accent, the only person who didn't go to a fancy university. And at the same time I'm seeing like the same 5 white dudes give the same mediocre presentation over and over again. And so I guess I was naive, right? I didn't understand why that was happening because I believed the myth of meritocracy that I had been sold. You know, I thought, well, you know, you work hard, you get the opportunity. Of course, now I understand the reality is is very far away from that. And so I decided to call it out on the stage and say, what the hell? What's happening? What? Where are, where are all the women? What am I looking at? An audience full of women, and I don't see those women on stage with me. And I put a Post-it note in the women's toilets on the mirror that said, if you would like to speak on stage one day, 'Send me a tweet,' or 'Come and talk to me.' And so I had lots of tweets, and there was lots of people queuing up to speak to me at the conference, both men and women. And that was when I had conversations about public speaking, about visibility, about being on stage. And I realized, holy shit, this is really complicated. It is intersectional. There's people doing PhDs in, you know, how to build a more gender-equal world. But at that moment, I could, because my background is design and I've been trained to understand customer problems and listen for insight and turn those insights into solutions. So I could hear this pattern of people saying, I would just never go on a stage. I would never do that. People like me don't do that. And I realized in all of our professional development, there's always a way to learn. Okay. If you want to. Build a new skill, you go on a course, you listen to a podcast, you buy a book. There's a way to learn how to get good at that thing. If it's public speaking, you don't get to practice. You're either on stage with an audience looking at you and you're expected to be charming and funny and delightful and educational, or you're not. Like, there's no in-between. So the first iteration of Upfront was never— I was never intended to build a business. It was a very simple, how can I help lots of people get over stage fright? And my idea was this: I am going to take a red sofa and put it on stage with me every time I give a speech, and people with stage fright can sit on the sofa and quite literally acclimatize to being on the other side of the stage. Realize it's not that scary, get an insight into behind the scenes, and let's see what happens. And so I was speaking at a conference quite soon after that called Silicon Beach, and a brilliant man called Matt Desmear said, when I sent him an email saying I want to put a couch on stage with me and I want to send an email saying, do you have stage fright? Do you want to come and sit on this couch? He was like, sure, let's do that. You're a crazy lady, but find many, many people wanted to sit on the sofa, so we had to get deck chairs, make room for more people.

Squeeze in.

Yeah, and it was a huge success for the people on the couch. It really did transform their thinking around what it feels like to be on stage, what it means to tell your story on stage. And so I kind of packaged it up so that all of my peers and friends who were also speaking at conferences, they could have the upfront sofa on stage. My mum made upfront cushion covers and we used to post the cushion covers to the different conferences around the world so that there would be some brand integrity on all the different sofas. And we had like eventually over 300 people sit on this sofa and they just absolutely loved it. Many of them went on to give speeches themselves one day.. And of course, when I would talk to them after, they'd be like, Lauren, this has been amazing. Do you have a book? Do you have a podcast? Do you have a workshop? And of course, I was running my other business at the time, had none of those things. And so when I looked out into the market to find a workshop or something to share with these people, I just saw a massive gap. I saw a huge opportunity because there was nothing in the world that was public speaking, confidence, communication training for women, built by women, that was centered on the idea that this is a systemic societal cultural problem. It's not an individual woman's problem. And so being the entrepreneur that I am, I decided to build it and the rest is history. Now we are, now we have a flagship product, which is an evolution of that workshop from many, many years ago. Which is a 6-week online learning experience called The Bond. And we've had over 15,000 women from 24 time zones have graduated from The Bond. Bonders are more likely to apply for leadership positions. The average salary increase for a bonder is 49%, and it changes lives. And we are scaling all over the world.

So what's a bonder?

So a bonder is a person who has been in a bond. So we host bonds for different sectors, for different organizations, and for different people. So we have a bond every year that's open to the public. So our next bond will be Bond 10 in November. You can go to weareupfront.com, buy your ticket. It is a 6-week online learning experience in confidence, visibility, and leadership. We also host bonds for organizations. So we've just hosted a Nike bond, we're building a Sainsbury's bond, And we host bonds for sectors. So we have a charity bond for charitable organizations, government bond for people who work in local and central government. And so all of those women who have been through those bonds call themselves bonders because that's what they are.

And you said that you were, you had a business before you were doing Upfront. And Upfront is not your second, not your third, not your fourth, not your fifth, but your sixth business. What's, what's your, what's been your entrepreneurial journey like that, that got you to Upfront? I understand now that you were on stage at conferences doing talks and found a problem and then a solution, which you turned into a business. But what did you do before that?

So my first business I built straight after university and This was never my intention. You know, I did not grow up with people running businesses around me. I didn't kind of identify with the idea of being an entrepreneur or a founder. I went to art school to study product design and wanted to be the next Steve Jobs and imagined that I would work for Apple or work for IKEA and build, you know, design beautiful objects that would change the world and make me very rich. And then at art school, I discovered this new emerging discipline called service design, which is very commonplace now, you know, design thinking, customer centricity, which is essentially applying design principles to experiences rather than products. And at that time, that was a very new emerging field that I became incredibly excited about and passionate about. And so when I graduated, I decided to build a service design consultancy because it was either go be a service design consultant in London, but really I wanted to help the people in Scotland. You know, I wanted to help the services in my local area and in my country be better. And so that was my first business. I had a co-founder, we got one client. Then we got another client, then we got another client, then we hired one person, then we hired two people, you know, it was very bootstrapped and I was 23, had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Uh, so that was my first business and I ran that for the best part of 10 years. Then my second business was shifting. So I could have started in product, shifted to service design. And then I realized that, you know, even when you build incredible services and we were working with brilliant clients. To help them deliver great services, whether it's education, health, um, if the culture of an organization is not effective, that service usually doesn't get delivered the way it should be. So then I started to get interested in the kind of invisible stuff that you design in organizations, team working, rhythms, rituals, leadership, culture, ways of working. So then I joined, uh, a co-founder in the States to build the European office of an organizational design consultancy. And that was much more focused on the private sector. We were serving FTSE 100 clients to help them design the invisible parts of their organization with the same attention that they would design their physical products. And then it emerges to the next phase of the journey because I got tired of consulting. I'm sure you'll have lots of consulting consultants. Listening in, it is a hard business model and, you know, you're in the sales cycle and selling your time. So I wanted to build a product, so I joined another co-founder to build an app, and that app was on a mission to democratize leadership development. So my co-founder had raised a small amount of money to build a prototype, and it was my job to raised the first round of investment to build out the product, to get our first users. It was called Stride, and it was all about making leadership development accessible to the masses. And that was great fun for a year or so. Didn't work out the way either of us had intended. We decided to, you know, go separate ways. Learned a lot. And then in between that, I launched a coffee truck business. In my local area because there was no good coffee nearby.

Again, you identified a problem that was hitting yourself as well.

Yeah, so that's what I like to do. I mean, to be fair, the coffee truck was more my, um, my partner's business, and I, you know, I showed up to for the photographs and to, to write the signs on the door, but I, uh, really supported him in building out that business model and figuring out the customer service. And it was, it was very successful very quickly because it also kind of coincided with the pandemic. So because people had nowhere to go and everybody was stuck at home and in their local area, they all wanted to come to the Horse Box for coffee. And the other business was an e-commerce business that I built whilst I was pregnant, again because I saw a problem and saw a huge opportunity, and that I wanted gender-neutral nursery art, like for my baby's nursery.

Mm-hmm.

I couldn't find any. All it was just steeped in pink for girls and blue for boys. No thank you. So I decided to create my own. It was called Letter Love Shop, and it was based on the alphabet and wild animals, and we created bespoke name prints and alphabets and gender neutral. Colour.

And it was at that point when you were doing the conference circuit, were on stage, and the idea for Upfront appeared to you or presented itself to you?

Yeah, I mean, not quite, but we won't bore your listeners with the chronological order of things. It was probably halfway through that, halfway through that journey was where I came up with the idea of Upfront. And then Upfront was my side project alongside a lot of these businesses, because for me it was just, we're just helping women get on stage. I was never imagining it was going to become a business until much later.

So Lauren, then you mentioned kind of like jumping from one business to another in a way, having the same design, product design, design service principle at heart. But you also mentioned that a lot of accomplished leaders can have what we now call or is widely known as imposter syndrome. So I'm moving, I'm wondering, what's your method for moving past that when it creeps in, when things go a bit sideways, and you start doubting yourself, or when you're just at the beginning of a journey and you don't necessarily feel qualified, even though you're trying to tackle the exact type of problem that you faced, in a way that you think it should be done and you see yourself as the ideal customer.

I don't believe in imposter syndrome, especially the way it's sold to us as a personal flaw that we need to fix. So I believe that imposter syndrome is a systemic response to systemic conditions. So what looks like self-doubt, I think, is often a very rational reaction to being the only woman in the room, to being the youngest person at the table, to being the only Black leader on a board, to being the only gay man in a room, you know, whatever that looks like, being the first in your family to do the kind of work that you do, that's a very natural response, feeling like an imposter, feeling like you're going to be found out, feeling like you maybe don't belong here. So when I talk to founders about imposter syndrome, I always say, you were never the imposter. You're operating in a system that was designed to make you feel like an imposter so you stay out the way. Because often the imposter syndrome is just a signal that you are challenging the status quo just by being in the rooms that you're in, that you are disrupting the norms. So the voice that's saying, you know, you're not ready, you don't belong here, they're going to find you out, I don't think it's ever about getting rid of that voice, but it's understanding where it's coming from and seeing it differently. And so in my book, I talk about a practice called scheduled self-doubt, where you can give yourself space to, to listen to it. It's like, okay, let's, let's go with the fear. Let's set a timer, 20 minutes. Let's go. Let's write it all down. And then you're turning it out there. Yeah, give it space. Then you're turning that self-doubt into data. And that's what I want, you know, the, the Millennial Masters, the high achievers who are listening to this conversation. It's like confidence is never about the absence of self-doubt or the absence of feeling like an imposter. It's learning how you keep going and keep taking steps forward despite those feelings, despite those fears. And I think for founders in particular, it's so important because you will be in rooms that were not built for you. You will be asked to lead in systems that don't expect you to succeed. And that doesn't mean that you're faking it till you make it, or you're not being your true self, or you're not being authentic. It means you're challenging the status quo. And that's a really brilliant thing. Like, we need more people to do that. And it, for me, it's proof of growth. It's proof of learning. So rather than thinking, you know, how do I get rid of this feeling? How do I stop feeling like an imposter? We want to say, like, what system benefits from me feeling this way? Like, what stories have I been told that are encouraging me to feel this way? And then you go do the thing anyway, with action, with truth, and ideally in community. And that's where the magic happens.

So Lauren, what do you think is like one thing you wish more founders and leaders understood about building this confidence and overcoming the self-doubt, if we're not going to call it imposter syndrome?

I think I want people to understand that it, that it can be overcome, that it's not, it's not an enemy, it's something to understand and to almost make friends with and realize it's part of being human. It's part of being somebody who wants to make change in the world. It's a very natural consequence of doing this type of work. Like, I am very at peace with the fact that I've chosen a path in my life that means I am very uncomfortable most of the time, that I am operating in a space of intense uncertainty most of the time. Like, I'm good with that. I'm, I'm all right with that. But I've had to work hard to get there and to understand and accept that. And I guess for a long time, I thought that those, that uncertainty and that discomfort meant that I was doing something wrong. And, you know, it's easy for folks to look at me and see me on stage and see me writing books and look at my company and think, oh, she's the confidence, you know, she's got all the confidence stuff figured out. And sure, I've got some of it figured out, but it, it's never done. Like, every new level brings a new devil, right? It's like now there's a new confidence challenge to figure out. As I mentioned before, the tall poppy syndrome piece, the being judged, being dismissed, other people trying to cut you down the more successful you get. And, you know, that will look different If we have this conversation again in 12 months, it will be something else because the work is a journey. Like there's no finish line. It's a path that we're always on.

So what's your framework or any practical steps that people can apply in order to build up this confidence?

So I think it's a tricky one because people are desperate for 7 steps and 3-step framework and The truth is that the bulk of this work is emotional work. It's heart work, and that work isn't easy to summarize into, you know, sexy catchphrases. But I think the practical things that I always come back to is doing over talking. So it's like doing the thing, trying. What is the minimum viable version? Up front, we call it skateboards. Okay. So rather than trying to build the Cadillac of your idea, of your podcast, of your book, build the skateboard. What's the scrappiest, cheapest, shittiest way that I can prove this is a bad idea so I don't spend any more time on it? Mm-hmm. So that's one thing. The second thing is to stop apologizing. This is particularly for the women who are listening. Women are taught from a very young age to apologize unnecessarily, and it's something that we see role modeled constantly in media, in films, in books, in TV. Women say sorry for, for speaking, sorry for having an opinion, sorry for being hungry, sorry for being tired, constantly apologizing. Sorry is a really important, beautiful word. It's really important that you say sorry when you are sorry. So stop saying sorry unnecessarily multiple times a day, like just that will change your confidence. If you start to really think about your relationship with how and when you say sorry, things will change. So think about your skateboards, say sorry less. And the third one is to surround yourself in other people who are also on this journey, who are also learning and unlearning, who are also striving dreaming, building. I think we drastically underestimate the importance of community and support network, and that is why it's so central to the bonds. It's why the bonds are so powerful and transformative, because not only are you having the learning experience, you're leaving with friends, colleagues, peers, neighbors, new people in your life. So those would be my 3 practical tips.

You're not the first one to say, Lauren, that you need to surround yourself with like-minded people. In order to get out of your comfort zone. But at the same time, surrounding yourself with new people means getting out of your comfort zone from your close friends, from listening to your family and relatives. It's in a way you're breaking yourself apart from that world in order to become a new more confident person. Isn't that also very tricky without losing, you know, that familial connection?

Yeah, I think something we don't talk about enough is the cost of confidence. You know, as your confidence increases, you will lose people. People will not like it and they will not like this new version of you. And that is difficult and sad. And in those moments, it's really important to remember that that response and reaction is about them. It's nothing to do with you. It's because your growth is a mirror to them. It's showing them all the ways that they are not growing, and they don't want to look at that.

Are you saying that they can hold you back?

Yeah, of course. So there'll be lots of people who don't want you to progress because they want you to stay in the small box that you're in. And I think we don't talk enough about that, the kind of grief of the relationships that you will lose, but the relationships you will gain. You know, you, there are people in the world you have not even met yet who are your biggest fans, best cheerleaders, clients, partners, whatever that looks like. There are new people who are waiting to love and celebrate and adore this new confident version of you that is 100% always true. That journey is not easy, but it's one that I want everybody to go on.

Lauren, have you ever felt pressure to dial down your ambition, especially when you've had, in a way, you have 6 businesses which you try to change the world around you in one way or another?

Mm-hmm.

Why do you think some people worry about being too much?

Yes, is the short answer. I have thought a lot about my relationship with ambition, and I think it is another example of something that's very gendered, where we celebrate and honor men who are ambitious, whereas ambition in women is often met with critique and suspicion. I mean, let's take take two examples of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos versus Taylor Swift and Beyoncé Knowles. So those women are regularly critiqued and, yeah, dismissed for their ambition, for their wealth, in a way that men with similar status to them are not. So I definitely think that ambition is political in that sense, and I think a big part of it is the, the kind of stories we have around work-life work-life balance, especially if you're a woman, especially if you're a mother. I think work-life balance is a myth, and it becomes another, another stick to beat women with. So we're, we're constantly told you can have it all, you can be it all, but the truth is there are always trade-offs, I believe. And those trade-offs are much steeper for women, especially mothers, because we're operating in systems that were never designed for mothers and families to thrive in. And so for me, when I think about work-life balance, I think about being intentional with the trade-offs. Because if you don't, if you see it as something that you're trying to achieve, a balance that you're trying to get to, you will just constantly feel like you're failing. Because we've been conditioned to be very successful, very high achieving, and endlessly available. To be a leader and to be everybody's friend, to go big but also be humble. It's like these, these things are impossible. It's impossible standards, impossible narratives. Academics call it the double bind, and there's so much data that shows us how that trap is working against women at every level of organizations. So for me, I always talk about my support networks. Like, my male partner was a full-time stay-at-home dad for the first 3 years of son's life. That's the only reason I was able to build some of those businesses that we talked about earlier. Like, there's an unspoken infrastructure behind success. And it's like, I would really love journalists to start, and to start asking men about their paid nanny, about their chefs, about their drivers, about their personal fitness trainers, about the inheritance money that they have received from grandparents about the land they've inherited, the second house in Spain they've inherited. You know, all of these things matter. They really, really matter when you're a founder and an entrepreneur. And we don't, we don't talk about it enough. So we don't see the nanny, we don't see the private school, we don't see the family wealth. All we see is 6, you know, 6 books published, a million LinkedIn followers, whatever it looks like. And it's not to shame anyone, but it's This stuff is structural and we need to talk about it. We need to, we need to name it. And I want—

let's name it. What, what, what are we going to name it? How are we going to call it? Are we going to call it like privilege, unfair advantage, the patriarchy? What are we going to call it?

All three of those are great. They all work. Yeah, those all work. And I really want women to know that ambition is not a dirty word. It's like, you are allowed to have amazing things. You are allowed to have money. Nothing bad happens when women have money. Like, I am so against this idea of humility and being humble. So the dictionary definition of humble is to have a low opinion of yourself. Like, that's no thank you. That's hindering, hindering your progress.

Isn't that something inherently British in a way?

Absolutely. And I think it shows up in different cultures. You know, if we were having this conversation in Japan, it would be, it would be very different again. But I, I think it doesn't help in any culture in any way. It's like asking, asking people to be humble, especially expecting women to be constantly humble rather than saying, I am the greatest in my field. You know, we see it in people like Serena Williams who will stand up on stage and say, I am the best in the world at this. And that is like, how many women do you see owning their skill, owning their talent on a global stage in that way? Not very many. We see a lot of, oh, I was just really lucky, I just worked really hard, or really it's all because of my mum, or I couldn't have done this without my, you know, it's— and it's not good. I think it's really not good. It's not the 1950s anymore. Like, we're not— we don't have to pretend that we are— that we have a low opinion of ourselves. It's like, I am not modest. I am very, very good at my job and I know what I'm great at. I also know all the things that I'm bad at, but I'm not going to pretend that I'm not good at those things to make the person sitting across from me feel more comfortable. That's on them, not me.

So you spoke about work-life balance.

Mm-hmm.

Am I right in interpreting what you said that, and this is also maybe a little bit from my experience. That you can have it all, but not all of it at once. Or could you?

Spicy. I like it. But having it, not having it at the same time means you're not having it all. That's the point of it. It's like you want all of it now. You want all of it at the same time. So yes, I think it's much more sustainable and poetic to think about, you know, what are the things that you want to have? At different stages in your life, to honor the seasons of your life. I think that makes a lot more sense for sure.

So coming back to that work-life balance then, what does it actually look for you day to day?

So I think how, how I have designed my day-to-day life is one, like I try to do these things with intention. Like intention is the word that I use, not balance. So intention is, yes, there's a trade-off, but I have chosen that trade-off. So it's like, yes, I'm going to work this Saturday. That means I will miss a Saturday with my son and my partner, but I am choosing to do that because then we will go on a brilliant holiday that my business has paid for. You know, so, and then that makes it like, I don't feel guilty about having that time, having to work on that Saturday because I can see the bigger picture and see the intention. And one of the ways that I do that is to keep coming back to my values. I think once you know what your values are, these decisions become much easier. So my values are honesty, imagination, courage, nonconformity, leadership, and contribution. So those things become my compass in a way that I should be able to explain to a 5-year-old, to a 95-year-old, that it makes sense why I live my life the way I do, why I'm choosing a difficult path, why I'm choosing to live in Sweden with no support work, no support network, away from my family and friends. Why I'm choosing a path of entrepreneurship, where in the short term I could have a much easier day-to-day and a much healthier bank balance if I had a salaried job and was employed. I think values make all of it seem, all of it feel easier. It's like, I often get asked, what have you done to make the Bond so transformative given it's all online? Like, how does that work? And my answer always includes values. It's like, when you're really intentional about what your values are the people who choose to come into that space or that journey with you also share those values, and the result is really beautiful. So for me and my partner, we both work in the business. Our team is remote, spread around the world, and I have really strict policies on how I use my time. For example, I've got no notifications on my phone, and I don't have email on my phone, and it has been that way for many years. And I tell people this, they are like, flabbergasted that I don't have email on my phone.

I was about to say, not having email on your phone is something totally new that I have not heard before. So share with me the, the method of how you manage that.

So I have not had email on my phone for years, and I have email on my browser. Like, that's it. It's really not that difficult because when it's there, it becomes another social media. So you're just open and swiping, open and swiping to get the dopamine hit. And email can literally, can change my and I know that I'm not alone in that. You can get an email that can make you really happy, piss you off, make you feel anxious, make you feel confused. I do not want my mood to be at the beck and call of these emails. Do I check my emails on the browser too much during the day when I'm working? Absolutely. I want, I, like, I'm not, I've not figured all this out. I'm also addicted to dopamine the same as you are and same as your listeners are. I've got no notifications on my phone. So that means, yeah, I don't, I don't get, like, I'm just amazed when I'm in company and their screens are just constantly things flashing up on their screen, because for me, that's just incredibly distracting. And I wouldn't be able to focus on the conversation that I was trying to have. Other things, things that I do, a really good one is turning your phone to grayscale. When your phone is in grayscale, it's really not fun anymore. Like, Instagram is so boring in grayscale. You do not want to be scrolling anymore. So I don't do it as often as I'd like, but it's really easy. You do it in the— go to Settings, Accessibility, change the color to grayscale. Another big one is that my team don't use email. So we have 6 people in our team, and we communicate through Slack and WhatsApp. So I don't get any emails from my core team. I also have no meetings on Wednesdays and Fridays. What else? I think those are my favorite ones.

So you said your team is distributed remotely across the world. And so what are some of the tips and learnings you have for managing teams remotely? Because obviously you've had businesses pre-pandemic as well, and you remember that always in the office world as well, and how you designed and built this business differently, also for allowing you not to be in the UK, but also to be based in Sweden.

Yeah. So I think my number one tip would be a tool that I'll share with you called the checking in and checking out, which is probably the most low impact, high, high, sorry, low effort, high impact. Tool that I teach in The Bond, and it's something that anybody can do. Maybe you just have one colleague, maybe you have 20 colleagues, maybe you have 200 colleagues. And the way that it works is at the start of any meeting or any gathering, you take a moment to check in. And so you ask everybody one at a time to please share what you're bringing with you into this meeting, or you might ask them to share How are you feeling out of 10 today? Something really simple, one word. Some people will share, I'm hungry because I missed my lunch break, or I'm anxious because we've got the board meeting tomorrow, I've not prepared the papers. Someone else saying, I'm a bit distracted because I'm waiting on a delivery. Someone else saying, I'm a bit hungover. Someone else saying, I'm feeling super pumped today because I've got 4 meetings I'm looking forward to. Doesn't really matter. The reason that that is a brilliant thing to do is number one, it increases psychological safety. Psychological safety is the sense in a team that people feel they can talk about mistakes and things that have gone wrong without fear of reprimand. And it is the number one ingredient for high-performing teams. And if you check in regularly, your psychological safety increases because your trust increases. The second thing that it does is it reduces the risk that we're going to miscommunicate and misinterpret each other. So if you have just told me that you are distracted because you're waiting on a delivery and halfway through our meeting you disappear, I'm not going to be so pissed at that because you've already told me that you had a delivery. So I know that you're not being rude or dismissive because you've told me. Similarly, it's a moment to cognitively offload. So, science tells us that if you verbalize something, you are less likely to be distracted by that thing. Uh-huh. You can take a moment to verbalize anything that might be distracting you or anything that's on your mind, means it's less likely to impact you over the course of the conversation. And the last reason it's really important is it primes contributions. And this is particularly important for very large teams because I meet women in the bond every day, who are spending their days in back-to-back meetings and they don't speak. I also meet leaders who are running teams saying to me, why is nobody speaking in this meeting? I mean, there's a whole other podcast. But when you check in at the start of a meeting, it means you hear everybody's voice. It means we are more likely to hear everybody's voice over the course of the meeting. And then you can also do a checkout. Same thing, end of the meeting, one thing you're taking away from the meeting, one word that sums up how you feel. There's a bazillion check-in websites where you can get these questions. But for me, we check in at the start of every team meeting, we check in at the start of every one-to-one, and I think it's an incredibly impactful tool. It really, really Works.

So something so small in a way can make a huge difference.

Yeah.

Now, Lauren, speaking of confidence, you've also built a powerful public brand or a personal brand as we know it nowadays. What are some practical steps that you would recommend for founders? Entrepreneurs or just leaders who want more visibility, but they struggle with self-promotion. And maybe we'll, I think you dubbed that the cringe tax.

Yes. So making your dreams come true is embarrassing. Like, I really do think it's the most embarrassing work in the world. It is uncomfortable. It's sweaty, ugly. You pitch bad, you cry in toilets, you post things that make you cringe later. You're misunderstood, you're judged, you're underestimated, but we all keep going, right? Because that's what founders and entrepreneurs and leaders do. And I think we have overcomplicated visibility and personal branding so much. My algorithm's full of all these strategies and frameworks and tools and Visibility is showing yourself and your work to the world before you're ready. That's it.

Mm-hmm.

It's not about being loud. It's not about being extroverted. It's not about going viral. It's not about being a content machine. It's showing yourself and your work to the world before you're ready. But that means the before you're ready bit means that it is deeply personal and it is courageous. And it's brave, especially for women, because we know that women are 33% less likely to self-promote than men are, even when their skills and performance are identical. And we know that inside organizations, employees who are visible are 65% more likely to be promoted. So this gap has financial consequences, like being invisible is affecting your bank balance. And I see it all the time. Incredible women leaders, founders, entrepreneurs doing incredible work behind the scenes. Nobody knows who they are.

The so-called unsung heroes.

No, I don't know if that work— I don't like that label because that ties into this, oh, you're just really brilliant in the background. It's like, no, you need to advocate for yourself. You need to advocate for your work. Because the lie that good work speaks for itself and that someone will eventually find you and call you an unsung hero is a lie. And it's really sad and frustrating and annoying, but the world we live in is you need to advocate for your work as well as do a good job. Like, just doing a good job is not enough. And so upfront, we talk about sharing to learn, not to shine. And that reframe, I hope will help your listeners where it's shifting visibility away from a place of ego to a place of generosity. So it's like, it's what we're doing in this conversation now. I am sharing my journey, sharing my insight to help your listeners, not to get more attention.

Mm-hmm.

Likewise, why you created this podcast in the first place. So it's like you're, you're growing your influence intentionally. It's not about being online every day, not about being on TikTok, being on every single channel, needing hundreds of thousands of followers. You just need something to say and you need the courage to say it. And yeah.

And the learning journey, at least for me. Yeah.

And yeah, it's awkward. Yes, you will cringe. So what? Nobody will die. Awkwardness is not fatal.

And this is what I've learned from 35 episodes of Millennial Masters. For most of my media career, I've been behind the screen, behind the keyboard, never on the camera. So this was also an exercise in getting me out of my comfort zone and growing with it, even though I always enjoyed meeting new people, chatting with them, and asking the questions. But now I also get to do it on camera and put myself out there.

Perfect. Brilliant example. And well done. Well done for taking that step because nobody's ever going to come and find you and say, hey, Daniel, I think you should come out from behind there. I think you should sit up front. I think you should take up space. Nobody's ever going to do that.

We like to think, but personal experience is clear. Never gonna happen.

No, you have to do it when you don't feel ready. You have to start. You have to show people what you care about. Like, where to start is you just start. It's like, talk to me about something you really, really care about. Talk to me about something that, that you love, something that makes you angry, something that you've learned recently. Like, that's where you start. You will have something to say and you have the courage to say it. Doesn't matter where you say it or how you say it or who you say it to. That doesn't really matter. Because you're building a muscle. You're building the muscle of sharing, sharing to learn, publishing, pressing go, pressing post. And there's lots of ways to be visible. You know, it's not all about being online all the time. I think that's also important to recognize. And of course, joining a bond. We have a free visibility bond. So if any of you listening are like, right, this is the year. This is the time I am ready to do what Daniel Ionescu's done, come out from the shadows, step into the spotlight. You can come to our free visibility bond. You can join at weareupfront.com.

So let's do some quickfire questions now, Laura.

Okay.

What's the best or worst piece of advice you've received about ambition or leadership?

Best. Or worst advice? I think the worst advice I got was to stop wearing high heels or stop trying so hard, like something about my appearance, which at the time I really took to heart and like really paid attention to and listened to. And now I'm like, fuck that person. So that was definitely the worst advice. I think the best advice is one that feels precious to me, which is accepting the path that I'm on, like accepting the consequences of leadership as a woman and understanding that those consequences are not a personal flaw or a personal failing, that they are very much a reflection of the world that we live in. And that being a woman who is also working in the open and leading in the open is a very new and it's still a very new and a very radical thing to do.

Next one. Are there any boundaries or rules you've set yourself and broken when it came to work, family, and ambition? Did you break any of your own rules?

Have I broke any of my own rules? I think one that I struggle with is friendships with my employees. I've been on a, been on a journey with that. I think especially my first business, I definitely broke a lot of rules. There. I think I'm on my phone too much. I think I break that rule. Still? A lot. Yeah.

What's your screen time like?

Oh, I don't know. I don't look.

Two more.

What would you like your legacy to be? Not just in business, but how you show up in the world.

I want to live a life that my grandchildren are really proud of and tell stories about.

And Finally, the question I like to ask everybody, and we're going a bit introspective here.

Mm-hmm.

6 businesses, moving countries, confidence, opportunities, relationships, children.

Mm-hmm.

What are the biggest sacrifices you had to make to be where you are today, Lauren?

I'm very tired. I think I would be much more rested had I chosen a different path. So my energy, I think, has been a cost.

That's one way to put it. But again, we can't— do you have any regrets?

No, none.

So no regrets, even though you sacrificed your energy and went on the entrepreneurial path. Constantly throughout your life?

Yeah, I think I don't. I almost, I kind of hesitated at your question because I don't ever think about the notion of sacrifice. I think the language of cost feels more real and more kind of appropriate to the stories that I tell myself in my head. But I have chosen this path. I have been employed twice. And over the, over the last 15 years, both very briefly. One, a very positive experience with a brilliant boss and a great team. And one, a very negative experience with a very incompetent boss and a toxic culture. But I do, I do believe that my, my superpower and the thing that brings me the most joy in the world is building something from nothing. And I think I'll still be doing that hopefully when I'm 75.

Speaking of superpowers, and this is definitely going to be the last question, Lauren, if you would be able to write a letter to 23-year-old Lauren when you started your first business, what would you say to her?

It's funny you should ask that question, Daniel, because one of the businesses that I nearly launched and developed a prototype for was a business to enable people to send physical letters to a future date. So I have got—

Have it like a time capsule letter.

Yeah. So I've got letters. I've got a letter in my parents' safe that I wrote maybe 10 years ago that I will open when I turn 40. And I have opened letters over the years that I've written 10 or so years ago. It's an amazing thing.

But this one would go backwards.

Yes. But you know what I mean? The same, same. And I think it's an amazing thing to do. All of your listeners should definitely do it. And if I could write my younger self a letter, I would say, get a lawyer and pay attention to contracts and equity much more than you, than you did. And you have time. Like, I think my— I think there's two types of founders in the world. One where they are constantly feel like they're running out of time and need to go, go, go and need to build, build, build. And then the others who are full of incredible ideas but find the action and the doing part really hard. Lots of procrastination, lots of delays, lots of excuses, lots of, you know, it's, it's just, it's slow for them. And I am definitely the first kind where I don't need anybody to remind me that life is short. I actually have a tattoo. I don't know if you can see. I have a tattoo on my arm to remind me that life is long, that I've got lots of time, that I am in a lifelong relationship with my ambition and my creativity and my ideas. Like, I don't need to do all the things yesterday. So that's why I would say that.

That's an interesting point to wrap up our conversation. Many people try to push through as early as possible. Possible and think that life ends at some point and you retire, but you're definitely taking a different view and reminding yourself to it. So thank you so much for sharing your journey and your learnings and wisdom so far, Laura.

You're so welcome. Thank you for having me.

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