Problem Solving Happens in the Subconscious

I mean, you've got so much stuff day to day. How do you make that decision? I mean, you've got a small team, you've got so much going on, small growing business in a crazy world. How do you prioritize what to do?

Uh, first of all, I hire a very good producer.

That helps.

So it comes down to, I've been, you know, having to learn to really delegate all tasks away. Whatever I can delegate, even if it's to my mom, just give it away, you know. Yeah, from business and private. So that's the only way to loosen up the weight of my shoulders, because it's so important to be able to stop and reflect and think. Because if you're constantly moving forward, um, you know, if you're constantly switched on, it's, it just, it becomes too much, you know. And that's what I really noticed this year after all the busy projects that I've been constantly switched on. Until it almost feels like a mini burnout. I mean, definitely not as heavy as a burnout, but just like, yeah, it's just like it becomes harder to get up in the morning, it becomes harder to find pleasure in the things that we're doing. And we've had really awesome projects this year that I've been just so happy about. So those give you energy, you know, to get up in the morning. Yeah. But then at the end of the day, it's like, oh my God, it's crazy because we're only It's basically Amber, creative director, doing all the creative direction, social media, thinking concepts, this. And then Marloes, our producer, doing the planning, trying to hire freelancers to take stuff off. And now we have Adriana, business development, to make sure that we actually have projects in the pipeline. So it's not like this agency way of working, you work your ass off for this. One-off project, deadline hits, and then you're asking yourself, "Yeah, what's next?" type of situation. And that's what it's been for like 6 months now.

So how do you actually— you say you have to take a step back. What do you do to take a step back? What's the thing that you do?

Oh yeah, good question. First of all, I have to really tell myself to take a step back when it really feels heavy. I have a hobby, so I do two different sports.

Tell me what you do.

One is called floorball. It's an offshoot of ice hockey. So I have an ice hockey history. So during the summer we just play this game, you know, there's no skates, you know, it's just shoes and stick. And then I do CrossFit just to kind of keep healthy. But I also can't do that too intensely because if it takes away energy, then I can't do my work. So it's kind of like it's forced meditation, right?

Yeah.

Because when you're doing CrossFit, you know, it's like 1 hour and you have a trainer saying, "Oh, you're gonna do this now." And then your mind is only at that task.

Yeah.

So you take away from the work side. So that's the way I find balance. And now my current learning is like, okay, when I come home, is to be home and not take my work home.

Okay. I always find team sports really help me. I can't really do singular sports because they don't get me in that, or they don't give me that same respite. Whereas I quite like the team side of it, so I play like 5-a-side football and that's— yeah, I need that in a week to really, I don't know, have a different mindset about things. And actually I find that whether it's CrossFit, floorball, football, not thinking about work lets you think about work a lot better when you come back to it. Yeah, yeah.

And that's what they say about the creative aspect, that actually 90% of your problem solving happens in your subconscious mind. So if you're constantly, you know, putting your active mind on the problem, that's actually much worse than letting your subconscious mind come to the conclusions. I mean, everybody knows this, like, you know, you have a heavy day and you just kind of, you know, you just have to solve that one more problem, but you just can't. Then you go home and next day you come there and you solve it in an hour or something like that. Oh yeah, it's like, that was simple. It's just because you give your mind rest and you let your subconscious mind take over. And that's really the difficult part, you know, when you get stressed out, you know, you're constantly, you know, so immersed in that problem. And if you can't let go of that problem, it becomes harder and harder and harder to solve the problem. And that's what it's been with us because, I mean, we're a very young startup and we have early success now. How do we deal with that? Even something simple like, you know, getting 200 emails in your inbox. How do you manage that? You know, like, How do you start filtering out? Because back in the days, it was so easy to just answer every single email that comes in. Now you have to be very selective, you know, which— what is the email that matters? And then the vision becomes so important. Does this fit my vision, or does it not fit my vision? Uh, if not, out.

And you're trying to base that on the back of an email, which is quite a sort of one-dimensional form of communication as well, you know.

Indeed.

Yeah, it's quite hard.

Yeah, it is, and let's say that's the smallest of our challenges.

Yeah, I was gonna say.

But it can take away so much energy. Yeah. So it really just starts becoming about dividing the energy to make the startup roll. Delegation, number one thing, it's the biggest keyword in my dictionary at this moment as it is partnerships and recruitment. Those are the three things that I deal with. And then to make sure that, you know, everything's rolling, you know, like how do you build a digital pipeline when you don't really have any examples? You just have to keep trying. So it's, you know, it's pretty cliché, but it's this, you know, how startups should operate. You know, you fail, fail, fail, fail. You know, it's like out of 10 tries, you maybe have like 1 half success, and then you really have to celebrate that success. Because otherwise, you know, your whole life just feels like a failure.

Yeah.