INBOUND Bold Talks: Leslie Bradshaw "A Return to Childhood Exuberance"

So normally when I give talks, I'm talking about data visualization, visual storytelling, how to start a company, how to even. I do a lot in agriculture. My family has a farm, so I talk about trends in agriculture. But today I'm really excited to talk about why I'm so happy. And if you would have looked at me three years ago, you would have seen someone who wasn't very happy. She was exhausted. That woman on the right had two hours of sleep before she spoke in front of the economist world in 2011 summit. I had probably about 15 hours of sleep that entire week. And that was after four years of working 100 hour plus weeks back to back to back. So sure, I got on some lists. I got on the inc 500 two years in a row for growing my company 868% and then 973%. But I was absolutely burnt out. And the woman on the left, that's me today. That's me being happier. Me putting things that matter to me at the center of my world. My family and my health are my two core things that come first before anything else. And wearing color because I wore way too much black and white for way too long. I lived in Washington D.C. you know, I had plenty of those kind of Hillary Clinton pantsuit things going on. But I went to my closet today and I said, what is your favorite outfit? What makes you really happy? Leslie? I'm like that one with the flowers that kind of pop off and that one bracelet with the frog and the gecko. Let's wear that together. I know Coco Chanel says, whatever object you see first in the mirror, take it off, I put it back on. And that's really what I want to talk today about is happiness. And happiness when we think about our world. And I love that Coco kicked it off with deoptimizing because that's something I'm definitely thinking about here. But just because we have so many different screens and the ability to always be on and a lot of convenience, it doesn't mean that we're necessarily. And in fact, I want to argue that it's not about advancement, but it's about getting back to some basics. So I kind of did a little bit of swagger jacking on Maslow's hierarchy. And I decided there's five things if I were to re engineer or reverse engineer why I'm so happy between 2010 and 2013, five things come to mind in this order. The first thing, and this is Thursday. So it's Throwback Thursday. That's me and that's my dad. The first thing is sleep. And I love that. Arianna Huffington already spoke and is a big advocate of sleep publicly. But I used to pride myself on saying, oh, I pulled an all nighter. I pulled two all nighters back to back. And if anybody watches Mad Men, there's in the last season, there's this moment where Don has been on this like kind of crazy kind of fever dream. And he comes to the very end of this fever dream and he's got sweating and his beard and he calls the team and he's like, I've got the idea. And he explains the idea. He said, this is bigger than advertising. This is everything. And that was basically me. I think my team thought I was pretty loopy. So sleep is really important. And in particular, I'm going to advocate for between seven to nine hours every single night, five to six hours. Not going to cut it. Not good enough. If you are going to have an extended day. And in Miami, I went to a dinner the other night at 11:30pm that was our reservation. I'm thinking to myself, 11:30, that's 30 minutes. I've been in bed already. So I had to take a nap during the day to get ready for that. I also think it's incredibly important to get that screen and that non natural light away from your eyes so you can start returning to that state of nature and getting ready to go to sleep. And I do that with candlelight. And I can tell you right now the kind of sleep, the deep, deep sleep that really is restorative. I went from thinking, oh, I'm so productive. I'm up all the time, I'm on the ball. I actually am more productive and able to access more knowledge that's in my brain. I went for about three years there with a big file not found spinning around my head whenever I try to find certain vocabulary words. And all of a sudden, in about February of this year, after sleeping properly for a couple of months, it all came rushing back to me. And the other thing, I'm a big fan of eye masks and earplugs. Now, maybe that makes me an old lady. I did turn 30 last year. But I love whenever I go on a plane, even when I'm in my own room, sometimes you just need to kind of quiet the world. And I grew up on a farm, so there was no noise and there was no light. And it really helps me get back to that kind of home state. Right. This is all about returning to your childhood. And sometimes you need to do that through earplugs and eye masks. Now, I love what Winston Churchill, one of the greatest people in our collective history. He's even advocating for naps. So the next thing I want to talk about, I want to get real about food. Now, I've done every diet under the sun. I've done Atkins, I've done Volumetrics, I've done Weight Watchers, I've done Paleo, I've done the 17 day diet, I've done the Plan, I've done every single diet. And if you saw that photo of me on the left, that was me 50 pounds heavier. And it wasn't that I hopped onto one of those diets to get where I am today. I actually took some Universals. And I'm going to give you the learnings from all those diets so you don't even have to worry about doing those diets. In fact, don't even go on a diet because it's a short term solution. Here are the food rules that I'd like to pass on to you. And these are things that actually, when we were younger, we did without even really realizing it. We had snack time, right? So I like to start my day out, eat breakfast like a queen. Or if you're a man, you can eat like a king. Make that the biggest meal of your day because you've got to start your engine and then have a mid morning snack. And then it's lunchtime and you're gonna be eating like a princess or a prince. And then dinner time comes around and that's when you're ramping down. That's when you're getting the screen away. That's when you're getting your candlelight going, getting your eye mask all prepped and you're going to eat like a popper. The other important thing to think about is making protein and fiber the core of your diet. And when you go after carbohydrates, they're not bad. We were told they were bad by south beach and by Atkins. They're not bad. You just need good ones like sweet potatoes and parsnips. I didn't even know about parsnips. They're really tasty. I love them. And smart fats. Coconut. Oh my gosh, coconut is so good. Coconut oil, get on that. And if you don't know about Thug Kitchen, the Tumblr blog, also get on that because you're going to crack up. They call avocados nature's butter. It's hilarious. There's also a lot of cursing. But just before One, it's called Thug Kitchen. What do you expect? Now the next thing I want to talk about is play. This is me and my younger sister. I'm pushing her in a little cart. And part of this exercise in becoming happier is I went back to my albums of my childhood and I looked at the photos and I said, why am I so happy? What am I doing there that I'm not doing in my life? Well, one, I'm sleeping. Two, I'm eating regularly. The third thing I'm doing is I'm playing. Now, the other day, instead of going out on a date with someone, I decided, you know what, let's build a fort and let's get pillows and let's construct it. And it was a really great exercise in team building, as well as having something to kind of hang out in afterwards. The other thing I think about, it's not about just going to the gym and getting on a treadmill, and you're like, oh, I've got to work out for 30 minutes. I hate my life. Or like, listening to Rihanna on repeat. It's about building something that you want to have for the rest of your life. So I'm going to use this analogy a good girlfriend of mine, Julie Fredrickson, came up with. And the difference between getting on that treadmill or getting on that piece of cardio equipment, that's like renting. Because when you get on that piece of equipment, you're doing something that burns some calories. I think the machine is lying when it says, like, 250 calories, you're like, maybe. But when you weightlift, ladies especially, I'm talking to you. When you weight lift, you create a whole new metabolism, a whole new physique, and it's the equivalent of wanting to own your body for the rest of your life. The way that you're going to own your house, you're going to invest in it, you're going to remodel, you're going to put energy into it. So. So don't rent. Buy. Now, the next thing, now that we're eating right, we're sleeping right, we're exercising, we're playing, we're having fun. Now it's time to get a little curious. Now, show of hands, how many people did a science fair with those cardboard things with the three panels? It's almost unanimous. Let's get back to that. Come up with something that you want to know. Why does it do that? Right before, it was about photosynthesis, right? And understanding that process. Maybe there's something in Your organization that you want to prove out, Maybe you've got some skeptical stakeholders that you've got to show, hey, we can move the needle. So you have your control and your experiment. You have a hypothesis, you test it. And you know What? Forget the PowerPoint next time and bust out that three panel. Go old school, go throwback. Right? Have fun with it. Now the final point I want to end on is expression. And here I am, I'm painting, and I'm also winning a local coloring contest at Easter. Very excited about that. My sister, not so excited, but I'm very excited. And the thing about expression is that when we start out as children, our parents teach us about shapes, and then we learn about colors. And that's our first introduction into the world and understanding our communication between humans. And after that, we learn about letters. And those letters form words, and those words are things that we learn how to write. And we learn how to connect and make it cursive. And then we learn the quick brown fox jumped over the whatever the log. And we learn how to type. And as professionals, as marketers, as business people, all we really do all day is type. And we never look back. We never utilize all of those other things that were the building blocks of our brains, of our ability to communicate with one another. So I challenge you. Look back, get excited about graph paper. Get out some noodles and some glitter. Have a craft day. Express your ideas not through PowerPoint or through a memo or through an email, but go with mixed media. Think about when you would draw art projects for your parents. And many of you, I'm sure, in this room are parents and your children bring things home from school. Maybe your parents or, sorry, maybe the students can become the teachers on this. And you could do an art project together. And you then show an infographic to your boss made out of glitter and sand and stickers. Now, it sounds a little funny, but at the same time, it's going to stand out. And as a dear friend of mine in one of the pre preeminent content marketers, Joe Chernoff, says, the secret to a noisy landscape isn't more noise. It's sounding different. And to sound different, I think we all have in our back pockets a lot of the solutions. Because we were young once and we had that childhood wonderment. I remember the first time that a snowflake landed on my jacket and I looked at my mom and I said, mom, it's just like we make them at school. They're all different. They're all different. And think about that in your own expression, as you're marketing, as you're thinking about being happier, how can you bring some of that childhood wonderment back into your life? Now, here's your homework assignment. I'm a practitioner at heart, so I'd like everyone to go home, look at some photos of you when you're young, and we're talking, you know, 3, 4, 5, 7, maybe up to 10 years old, and look at the look in your eye and look at what you're doing, and look at how you're interacting with other people. What are the things that are bringing you that happiness and joy? Because for me, I love wearing my tutu, and I wore it to school quite a bit. So today is the adult version of me wearing a tutu. And please do be my pen pal. Thank you all very much. Sa.