What's up, welcome to sweat head with my pull out of have Zoe scam and founder of Bodacious over in London, so he's been in the strategy world for a long time in many different places, and we're going to talk about moving around and trying to find where you fit in today. Welcome Zoe. Thank you very much. So you just set up this consulting firm. You were born in America you grew up in West Sussex. You've worked in London and New York and Sydney. Are you about to find your place? I sincerely hope so I I think that I probably have found my place geographically from a home perspective now. I think I'm sort of firmly based in the UK and I have yet to Define as my place when it comes to work. I still have no idea what I'm doing, but that's part of the fun. I think a lot of the people I know who have found is they're really trying to find what they're about. That's what that's how I psychoanalyze it very cheekily. Does that resonate at all? Yeah, I think so and I think when you identify yourself as a CEO for me that feels quite limiting in terms of what you actually do. They say basis when you have your own thing, I think founder for me encompasses all of the different hats that you've got to wear on a regular basis. So, you know, you have to be a project manager. You've got to be a financial director. You've got to make your own coffee, you know, you've got to organize meeting rooms. You can go to India with the invoicing so you wear so many different hats that CEO feels to me like all you're doing is just a sort of Direction and the overarching decision making a business but there's so much more to it than that and I think founder is Be the easiest way for me to say that I am running around like a headless chicken the majority of the time. Hmm. What pushed you and Drew you into setting up your own consulting firm. I think it's probably that. I have never really felt like I fit in anywhere in particular. I think the only place and we could talk about that later that I felt like I was at home was when I was at naked and Sydney and that's probably the last time and also the first time and I think since then I've kind of bounced around and I've tried a number of different roles. From management consultancy to bog standard strategy roles to Media to International Development even in Ethiopia and nothing really felt like it could take every single books that I had and so it felt quite obvious to me at that stage that I just needed to start my own thing, which would then allow me to pick and choose the projects that I wanted to do and it felt a bit more solid than being a freelancer and it also meant that I could start pitching for bigger projects and bringing a network of different people. So I think it was an inevitability. T to a certain extent but it really took me a while to get on with it. So I think I had the idea for it probably about a year ago and then I just sat on it because I was so scared of putting something out into the world that was mine as opposed to just being a freelancer and I was terrified of failing. I'm still terrified of failing but at least I've tried now or I'm still trying and it took one of my friends to actually say, you know, what's happening with Bodacious and I sort of said all you know, I've got the design stuff done and I know what I want to do and she goes great in why haven't you started yet? Well, you know, I don't have a website yet and she goes well, how hard can it be? I'll do it for you. Now. I said no. No, it's fine. It's fine. Please don't know I'll do it for you now and so she went on to Squarespace to for 30 minutes. She built me a standard website. She goes right put it on your LinkedIn now so always what kind of forced into it by a friend who just wanted to give me a kick up the ass really and I've got probably a lot to thank her for getting me started. Did you feel that you fit in with your family growing up God? No, we were a family of individuals as opposed to your family collectives that we all kind of do our own thing all very very Three different characters and it kind of remains that way today. I think it was the same, you know in school as well. I basically got expelled twice once when I was 12, and once when I was 15, and I never really fit into the academic piece either. I was always asking questions kind of going you know, what am I going to do with Pythagoras Theorem when I'm in my 30s and they just couldn't answer any sort of said, you know what it's the curriculum and I said I want to learn this and then I get put outside the classroom for the rest of the term having to do something else entirely. So I think I was always thinking that I Really want to follow a particular part and so I felt uncomfortable with going on to do a levels, which is your UK kind of sick form from 16 to 18. And in the end. I don't even sit my a-levels. I don't have any couldn't go to university, you know, even if I'd wanted to do so I didn't have the qualifications and I just felt like that linear path of these are the steps you're supposed to go through. This is the end result. This is what your end goal should be didn't really work for me what you do at the age of 12 to get kicked out of school. I started a kind of mini business, so So I ended up basically selling cigarettes one pound per cigarette to the girls that were there has in a posh girls school and it made me a decent amount of money. And then when I got caught they sort of said don't do it again. And I said, okay and then I went back to doing it again and that was the end of my time at that school. So I lasted just under a year. How do you feel about that decision now while the school's decision now, I think it was probably right given that I was selling cigarettes. Do you think they could have done something with my entrepreneurial spirits but they hadn't recognized at the time. I was a bit of a troublemaker. Mmm. Did you feel that you fit in in West Sussex? I think not at the time. I think now I feel like I do so at the time. I just wanted to be anywhere other than West Sussex is quite sleepy place, you know big green Rolling Hills Countryside pubs that kind of stuff and I wanted to be in the city and I wanted to be going to nightclubs and I used to regularly take myself apart totally and go to a drum. A Bass Club at the age of 16 and said of danced till three o'clock in the morning when I didn't even know my own name. And so I think I was always wanting something a bit more lively and it's taken me probably until the age that I am now, so coming up to 35 to realize that actually this week the countryside is quite a nice Blissful bomb for the work that I do and the place that I Live Now do you fit in with yourself? I think I'm still learning to do that. I've been on quite a long trajectory on that just in terms of making peace with who I am and what I want and I think probably being in my mid-thirties now is the most comfortable in my own skin that I've ever gotten to and I'm hoping that's going to continue. So I'm looking forward to the 40s and 50s. I think it's that that sense of self and that sells sense of comfort is probably just going to get stronger. It's funny because I read things and talk to people about how the idea of self is not even a thing. Thing is not real and yet also there's the union Carl Jung idea of individuation individuation which just takes time and that tends to from what I can see often happen around the 30s and 40s. So what can you point to that goes back to your earliest beginnings of this not fitting in a variety of rebelling of trying to work out where you fit in or did you just exist to not fit in was that your modus operandi? No, I actually think it was to do with family Dynamics. So My mother is quite severely bipolar and so it first arrived in our family or raise my family when I was eight and immediately that marked me as different in my communities in my school. So I went to private all-girls school for junior school, you know, it was a very sort of affluent community and at that time, you know, which was 20 or 30 years ago more than 20 years ago. The idea of mental illness was scary to people and they still had this image in their head and Phoenix. It's and white padded cells and so for me to go back into that school environment and also there with my school friends finding out about their parents as well immediately marked me as other and so I was kind of excluded a lot. I guess when I was younger sort of 9 10 11 and people just thought I was a bit weird and it Untouchable and that came from basically having that black mark against me because of, you know, family Dynamic issues, and I think that kind of made me angry and so I separated myself and then went down that sort of rebellious root of a cable if you Accept me, but I'll deliberately be unacceptable. How did that decision work out for you and got a lot of fun. So I think I put myself in situations which a lot of people wouldn't and I think I was a little bit lonely at times because I felt sometimes that I wanted to be normal. I wanted to have that normal track of, you know going to a good University and then getting a good job and all that kind of stuff as well. And I think I bounced around a lot when I was younger because I just didn't have that stability and I deliberately I'm kicking myself off that linear train. You think it made me much more sort of multicolored internally and I think that that has been really helpful for me later in life. But it took me a while to realize what I was doing or what I was creating just to follow through on that thought that if you weren't to be accepted that you wouldn't make yourself acceptable did you ever apply that at yourself that you wanted to make yourself an acceptable to you? Oh God. Yeah, so I think when I was quite young probably sort of 1415. I got quite heavily into drugs. And I was in self-destruct mode. So I went through a period of just doing a lot of things which were a little bit, you know, fuck you. But also, you know, I was damaging myself. So yeah, I just took a lot of drugs. I got my first tattoo when I was 14, which probably wasn't the best idea looking back on it. I got it right in the middle of my stomach and I just kind of pushed myself constantly just sort of saying you know, how far can I go before I'm arrested or end up in a heap in the street or something like that. It was just constant. Ian in terms of against my parents against my school girls against myself, I guess as well and with was your family around when all this was happening. Yeah, they were but I think that they got to a point where they just kind of gave up and sort of hung their heads in Despair and said what the hell are we going to do? My mom likes to refer to them as the Lost Years. So she said from the age of 12 probably up until 22. I was just a bit of a nightmare and she just kind of wrung her hands in despair most of the time. You know, what did you learn about the bipolar? Through your mom a lot. My sister was actually also diagnosed with severe bipolar when I was 20 and I think it's it's an interesting one because they think it really shifts the dynamic from a parent child's perspective. So when you have a parent who's severely mentally ill so she's not if they're all the time bipolar comes in waves it comes and she could totally fine for a year or two years. Even if she's actually been fine for a number of years now and then you would go into an episode and episode could be deep too. Oppression or it could be Mania and it has work majority mainly ER and so I think it's interesting because it flips the dynamic and you become the parents and you've got to sort it all out. So you've got to get them sections and I used to have a laminated piece of paper which I've written down all of the details on how to go about it. So, you know who I needed to call the three people headed to have in the room. So social worker a GP and a psychologist and then sometimes I have to call the police and then I'd have to make sure she went to the right hospital. So you have to go through that process each time and again, Become the parent and you've got to take them close because obviously it will happen quite suddenly and it's you know that they've got to have stuff to stay away overnight and then you've got to try and pick up the pieces when they're back again. So going through that on a regular basis. I think it was pretty much once a year from the age of 8 to 17 18 actually longer than that probably 21 until my sister got diagnosed and that will change things a lot. So yeah, it's definitely an interesting one. I think it helps you to see your parents as fallible which often a lot of people don't get. And also to see them as unstable and that's not to say it was a bad thing and I wouldn't change any of it for the world. I think it's taught me a lot and I wouldn't have her any other way nor my sister, but I think it makes you feel like you haven't got as much stability or foundation in the world when your parent isn't as reliable as you would wish them to be and are your parents married they were and then they got divorced when I was quite young and then they got remarried funnily enough when I was in my early 20s, and now they live together and then as far as bipolar Have you ever suspected that you had it? Is it something that plays on your mind that it might be coming for you at some time? Yes. I know. So the more time I spent with the doctors obviously looking at my mom my sister the most time they've sort of said it probably won't manifest in me. But at the same time I wouldn't be that bother if it did part of me really wants to experience Mania just once I think to be honest, that's probably why I went to clean the drugs because I thought maybe I could recreate it and some plastic. It doesn't like it's a lot of fun and the other part of Of me just feels like it would be absolutely fine. And I could cope with it. So I feel like I'm almost a professional from that perspective at this stage. I'm not scared of it if it does come but it is it is interesting hearing you talk through your history because when you are bouncing around a lot like you were from a moral or rebellious point of view is going to be difficult to fit in because you don't like structure to fit in with so you don't like the idea of fitting in at all either. Yeah exactly that yes. And yeah, I was gonna say that when I was sitting naked actually they used to refer to me as the problem child. So they said, you know, you're great at what you do but your bloody nightmare because every single time we try and pain you into anything you try and escape and yet hopefully through the company that you've set up recently you're creating some kind of structure that you will adhere to is that part of what's going on. I don't know if I describe it as structure so much as a way of doing what it is that I do whatever that may be on my own terms, but I think the idea of actually Stirring it in any capacity scares me. So I spoke to someone last year. He's actually in the ad industry in Australia and he's had his own company for years and years and he said don't do it. And I said why not and he goes because you'll be awful. You know, it almost destroyed my marriage and I kind of went. Oh, that's interesting. He said, but if you are going to do it, you need to come up with some sort of proprietary thing that you sell proprietary framework or a process or something that you can trade mark and then you Trot out to different people and immediately that thought of creating a framework or a proprietary thing. Maybe nauseous because I just thought I don't want a thing. I want to be able to evolve and shift and change and make things bespoke from scratch every single time and pick different bits. And I think are relevant for that particular project. I don't want to be tied to a framework that then becomes a representation of me and what I do and how I do think yeah, I've always regarded against those kind of trademarked Frameworks. I have ways of working and framework works that are used but I've always been very suspicious of people who like here's the way exactly and then it's what Mackenzie do. We two years and then they roll it out to all of their massive Blue Chip companies and then obviously it's going to break within two years. Otherwise, they wouldn't have a business. They do that deliberately and more come out with you know, the new four C's or the new 3DS or something like that and I just think it's it's a very kind of broken way of doing things when actually every business is different but it for someone who's maybe a bit new to the industry who is nervous that they don't fit in either to the company or to the industry and then they may be they move jobs in 6 months 12 months Whatever It Is What kind of In sight. Do you have what kind of wisdom can you give to them based on your own experience about that time? Because sometimes you jump around so much and we feel that we don't fit in and that can lead to some really really dark places. Yeah, I think you can feel like you're failing at life and everyone else's, you know, situated comfortably and whatever job or relationship or something like that that they saw that they sit comfortably into and I think a lot of the time I was called unreliable. I remember going to an interview of you once it's not actually that long ago. I think it was about four years ago and it was quite a well-known business consultancy in the UK and a managing director had my CD printed out in front of her and she didn't even look at me when I walked in and she was looking at my CV and she was tapping it with a Biro and she said six months 18 months 12 months 10 months and she went through the whole thing. And then she looked up to me and she said you're not very reliable. Are you and that really struck me and I think it was because she had equated my CV with being unreliable. Balam me with being fly see but I've never seen myself that way. I'd always seen myself as chasing something that I was deeply passionate and interested about or just of trying something new and throwing myself into that and all the risks that that entails but I felt like what I was doing was kind of gathering a ream of different experiences as opposed to following a particular path and I never really was interested in specialization in any particular area always wanted to sort of gather as I said that range of different pieces and then pull it all together. Together to create this kind of portfolio of what I was capable of and that's probably the advice that I would give to people. I think it's shifting from a cultural and societal level as well. I don't think that people expect you now to go into a job and stay there at least two to three years to prove that you are reliable, but you'll see, you know, you're ambitious and you're following a particular trajectory. I think it's becoming more and more commonplace for people to jump in and jump out of different things depending on what they're interested in at that particular point in time, but also not have an end goal and just kind of go Not over there interest me. So I'm going to go and learn about it for a bit. And now that I've learned that and I've absorbed it. I'm going to go over to this other area completely different from what I've done previously and absorb a bit of that as well. So I think when I was doing it, it was seen as flighty and I think now it's becoming much more acceptable and I would just see it as following your interests and just running with that for the time being and knowing that you'll get clarity at some stage. Yeah, and it's also just an extension of your own personality traits, so if you look at the Big Five personality traits of Ocea and openness conscientiousness extraversion agreeableness and neuroticism what we are describing, which I relate to in quite a few ways is people who are high in openness with pretty active and maybe strong brains where they're interested in novelty and variety and that's right now with your story coinciding with neuroticism, which is instability and bouncing around and if you had a few kind of relate to what we're talking about, here's the thing there's nothing wrong with It's just that the world's not currently built for you. And the world is built built on the poems on structure and religions done that societies have done that Village cultures have done that. So I think that that's for that was for me. One of the things that it just took a little bit of time to appreciate and pretty recent actually that it's not necessarily that something's wrong with me. It's just that I'm not built for the way the world currently exist and due to the internet in some respects being able to create a life. That's true to those. As of traits that you have has never been more possible. It's kind of it's quite exciting to get a thrill out of that. I think so. Yeah, I definitely get a thrill out of variety and throwing myself into do projects that even now I don't know entirely what I'm doing. I don't enjoy safety or repetition and I think to be honest that's one of the biggest reasons that the agency well didn't work for me in many ways because it felt repetitive after a period of time and it felt like I was kind of bashing my head against the wall. I wasn't necessarily learning anything new You and so I threw myself into completely different areas and that variety and having something completely different that I can learn and I can absorb and I can delve into and get really excited about for a period of time. That's what turns me on and I think that's why I kind of had to do my own thing because there is no jobs that I can understand from anyone tell me what's available now that I could do that would allow me to Encompass all of those things. But if you're interested in novelty new things and interested in learning, why do you think you're got to the point where you didn't feel you were learning something new and some of these roles where every project could be a way to learn something new. I think I did. I think that's why I went to the places that I went to because I didn't know what I was doing to a certain extent. So, you know when I was when I first moved to Sydney, so I think I was 22 when I first moved to Sydney and I went to your Mediacom and I was a group digital manager, which basically meant that I ran a digital team. I was way too young to do. I had no emotional maturity and I was just a managing people but I learned a lot in that process and I learned all about, you know digital media, which was still relatively new back then it was a 13 years ago and I just didn't really enjoy the people management side of things and then luckily there was a new CEO at the time from Mediacom guy called Toby Jenna who's now the global CEO of group em, and he kind of approached me after we worked together on a pitch and he said I think you're a strategist and I still have absolutely no idea what that is. But as long as I get to keep my Visa you can do whatever you want. So I became a kind of strategist and I said of shadowed a guy called Steph Burford who's now the CSO of ipg media Brands and he was wonderful and I kind of went God. This is a new well, this is really interesting. So I started getting into it. I was learning a lot then and then I got offered a role at Australia's very first social media agency, which was the population which you're probably familiar with because Julian Cole was there Nikki stammers Jessica Brooks Etc Tony Thomas, and I was so interested with what that was potentially going to be and what that potential could be. That I left the world of media common moves and everybody told me I was mad because they said, you know, you're still learning. You're very Junior, you know, you're still on this trajectory and I'm going to throw it all the way to go and work in a social media agency that has no particular business plan and is probably too early for the market. I said, yeah, that's exactly what I'm going to go and do and I didn't feel like I'd finished learning strategy, but I felt like there was a bigger opportunity for me within that social media agency to pick up new skills that I had not done before and then obviously from there that went bankrupt. After eight or nine months and I bash down the door of naked. I think I had about six interviews and I wouldn't stop calling them until they let me in and I didn't feel like I'd finish learning about social media. But now I was wanting to learn about communication planning and strategy because I haven't done a Godly previously and I felt that that was probably the best place to be to pick up at that craft. So I think I've always seen every move that I've made and every jump as a massive learning opportunity, but there comes a time when something more shiny more interesting takes my attention. Does that or I feel like I've absorbed enough and now I can move on try something else or I can go with my skill set in a different direction. Yeah, it's funny because when you hear psychologist talking about the newness and the novelty the shadow side of that is addiction and Drug sits and what not that you were addicted but you know, you've told this story it's a it's really interesting to hear it. I mean I grew up right that's an underground rap scene and Raves will be in Sydney and you know, there was a lot of stuff going on in our lives as well. So I do relate to this a lot and divorced families bouncing between homes on. Buses for an hour or two each way like a different family groups. If it's a different friend groups are totally relate you mentioned. There's two things that I want to ask you about what you just said, then there are people listening to this who would love to have a strategy role and they would really really love someone just to lean over to them tap them on the shoulder and go you're a strategist. What does that phrase mean to you now? What do you think? What were the traits that that person was identifying a new? I think that Probably three things that they noticed in me, which I think are Universal for really good strategist. I think the first one is that you are a problem solver. So when you look at something you want to figure out how to get from point A to point B, and you focus on what is the best way for me to solve that particular issue and I think problem solving is probably the number one thing that we need to think about as strategists and it's also problem-solving way outside of and advertising is problem solving from a business perspective or an organizational design perspective or a cultural perspective. It's is looking at something and thinking how do I make this better or how do I make it even more awesome than it already is so I think that's the probably the first thing the second thing I think is pattern recognition. So I think sort of seeing a number of different plates that are spinning either from a cultural Trend perspective or a new product development perspective or a competitive perspective and seeing the kind of pattern. As if of where things might be going next or what's actually happening in the market this particular point in time. And then I think the third is just the ability to connect the dots and actually turn it into a narrative and turn it into a story which simplifies everything and then gives you that map from how to get four two point from point A to point B. So, I think those are probably the three things so yes, I think the problem solving pattern recognition and connecting the dots. Okay. Yeah. There's something is two things that I would say to someone who's actually trying to Get into a strategy role be careful about telling somebody that those are your three traits often find people who tell people that that's what they are repeatedly. Like. I just want to see that you've done it and there's definitely this is definitely this kind of rebellious intellectual look of some people who do strategy work where it looks like they're looking through everybody in the room and part of that is just trying to get to the deeper root cause of something and part of it is trying to connect things that don't seem very relevant to what's happening in the room at the time. So there's this There was this kind of look I wouldn't I wouldn't want to think it too much or trademark what that look is but you can kind of feel it in people a little bit. I mean, I hadn't recently with Laura book bound back from mr. President with her son in India where I was we just had a few conversations. We went on a long walk around in the area. He was in these sessions and then he asked questions in front of a few hundred people on these questions were immediately ruled it. I was like, okay, okay, and now I might be making it up, but I kind of had that Vibe now you also mentioned And the phrase finished learning. I don't know if that's an English tick, but did you think when you were younger that you would be finished learning? Oh God. Yeah. I was a cocky little shit. When I was younger, even when I was working, you know in the industry. I think that I had a it was a weird one. I had a huge amount of self-belief coupled with a massive amount of self-doubt and I think that turned me into a wannabe know-it-all and I almost tried Cover my own insecurities by being extra arrogant. So I think that I had assumed many times that I just knew what I was talking about and I had finished learning and it's probably taken me up until I think sort of late 20s to realize that you never finish learning and there's always something more that you can do and even if you're really good at what you do, you can always refine it and you can always learn new practices and new ways of developing your skills, whether that be sort of people based or whether that be Different Frameworks, for example, you've never seen before or just different ways of thinking from different cultures that kind of stuff and I think I hadn't realized that I thought that I was just shit-hot to be honest, but I also had this crippling self-doubt in the background and I think that made me a worse person as a result of it. I was almost as a overcompensating just by being a bit of a dickhead. How did you reach that Epiphany? I don't know if I had an epiphany so much as its maturity. So I think it's realizing that you are. always the smartest person in the room nor should you be I think it's learning to not have to fill every silence and I think it's also knowing that you have one voice in a number of worry in a room full of a number of different voices and they're all equally as valid and should be listened to and you're not always there to always give the solution and that you can sort of put your hand up and say, I'm sorry, I don't know but I'll go and check but I don't know right now and I think that just came with with a kind of softening that Comes with getting a bit older and getting a bit more seasoned interesting. I get a little panic attacks when I go to museums libraries art galleries or even if I look at what movies to watch online. I'm like, oh my God, there's so much to learn. I'm never going to be finished. I love it. It's exhilarating. I'm glad you should see my pocket collections, you know pocket the app where you can check save articles. I think I've got about six thousand articles in there and I've calculated that it would take me probably about 20 odd years to read everything and that scares me cause I'm just thinking what Prioritize what should I be listening to and I think it's also that you know, I've had this guilt for example, and I'm walking down the street listening to music thinking God. I should be listening to a podcast. I'm absorbing more information. But I also think there comes a point where you just need to not be absorbing all that information. I remember and I still get actually what I'm teaching younger strategists who are reading about strategy and listings to strategy and practicing strategy in their free time and they become such one-dimensional thinkers. Has as a result of that. I think there's dangerous. I think you need to go out there and not always be conscious of the fact that you need to be learning more for your job. I think you just need to be absorbing staff but also having quiet time and not feeling guilty about that and not feeling like you have to be productive every second of every day sort of learning just to sit. I think that's incredibly difficult to do and I'm still learning about doing that as well. But I think it's really really important. I don't know if you've heard the phrase get in where you fit in but where do you think that you fit in right now? I think That I have found a kind of mini tribe that works for me which is from a work perspective anyway, which is a bunch of people who are mostly doing their own thing and who like to be challenged in different ways. So for example, one of my partners at the moment is a guy called Toto Alice who used to be the head of strategy for drogar Europe and we work together on and off for about five or six years and he left Drogo last year to set up his own thing. And he will say works part-time as a CSO for a PR agency and we've been partnering on a bunch of different stuff and it's just been really good fun because we can pick and choose the projects that we desperately want to get involved in and we're also finding ourselves in conversations on projects that we never thought. We would even imagine being a part of if we were in a traditional Ad Agency and I think that that tribe has been really interesting because what we've also learned all of us together and there's a couple of different people in that is that it's also okay, you need to go and have Lunch on a Friday and not work and just chat about life and still see that as you know productive time because we're spending time on our mental health and just kind of being happy to be friends as well as colleagues. So I think it has been an interesting one because we've got into positions where we've kind of worked ourselves into the ground and then the following week would just so naturally we can't think straight and it's a it's an interesting one in terms of being in your thirties or sort of mid to late thirties and still figuring out that you don't know how to parent yourself. So yeah, it's of mixture of really interesting senior thinkers who have struck out on their own and also realizing that we don't really know what we're doing when you say pick and choose that's that's something that a lot of people who are setting up their own things or thinking about setting up their own things. They wish they could have that problem. Yeah. How do you have that problem? Like what has put you in this situation where there are multiple things to choose from over some period of time I think I've been really lucky just in terms of networking, but I also think I've worked really hard and the That I've worked on the clients to been really happy because I'm I'm definitely a perfectionist. I never do a project. That's good enough. I will always be tweaking and making sure that it's the best it can possibly be and our partner with that client to try to take them through the process. I never just kind of do projects go right down that wash my hands of it and off onto the next day. So I think I kind of build those relationships and those relationships then turn into repeat business or they turn into referrals or that client ups and goes to another client. Business instead and goes up a position and then they get invited back in again. So I think it's it's a combination of all of those different things and I also think when you do start your own thing, you've gotten the nervousness of scarcity. So you don't know where your next projects coming from. You don't know if you're gonna be able to pay your bills in three or four months time numbers, you need to have savings really to be able to do it. But you also have to do what you think is really right for you and drives you so there's been a couple of times where I've had projects that have been offered. Should not really what I want to be doing and I just think God should I just take it for the money and on occasion? I have done that and I've been miserable for you know, six to eight weeks. And now what I'm trying to do is to say no thank you are afraid somebody else. You would be much better suited to that project. It's not really my thing and to trust that another project which will be more suitable will come along. So I think eventually you have to be able to trust that you can cherry pick the right things but also say no to the stuff that isn't going to really get you excited or add to your skill set. Anyway, and as far as that criteria go have you written that down or is it something that you apply intuitively in the moment? It's intuitively in the moment. I haven't necessarily been anything down, but I think it's stuff that stuff that interests me of things that I think I'm not a tea complex problems. And I also think it's stuff that I haven't necessarily done previously. So if I haven't done something previously and it's a bit complicated I'll jump at the chance, but it's also people releases. So do I want to work with these people, you know, do I want to go and sit in their office? To be with this entire time do I think they've got the right culture in order that they're actually going to embrace change or am I going to be for want of a better phrase trying to push us up a hill? And is it going to be really painful to do so and if I get that intuitively in a meeting with them, I probably would walk away from it. And then other ways that you work now that you're really focusing in on in a way that maybe you didn't realize that you loved until you had to be responsible. For every single scope that you were signing off on and for me, for example, the way that I love to work is through phone interviews one or one I prefer that I type them all up at don't record them and I record type up everything verbatim. Then I write this little strategy stories and I might do a workshop but what I don't usually like doing is a workshop where the thinking has to come out of that half day or one day. I find that a very artificial way of working and I over the years I've had to do that and I often Frustrated with the output because you're still your brain still needs a day or two to kind of kick things around are there certain kind of Keystone ways of working that you focus on that. I think I'm still learning in times of what really ticks the box for me and I think one of the things is for example when I'm writing I never write in keynote or PowerPoint or anything like that will Google Slides because I think you can get confuse quite quickly and lost in the stories of I tend to always use Word documents. So when I'm writing strategy and alright, As of headlines of the story in the narrative and then I'll worry about how I'm actually going to prove that and validate that a little bit later but I always have some sort of instinct in terms of where things are going to go. So I'll write the first draft of what I think instinctually the answer is and how I would go about building that narrative and then I guess I kind of use it as a way of proving or disproving a hypothesis that I have but at least I have a starting point and workshop wise completely agree. I think having the thinking coming out the workshop is a disaster. Back when I was working on Kellogg's years and years ago. I was running their digital business globally and they had a planning process, which I think they might still have actually called the K way, which they paid millions of pounds to a consultancy to come up with and it's bloody awful and essentially their annual planning was all done in a workshop over the course of one day. So for example with crunching up corn flakes which are a bit of a sort of you know, basically the crack of cereal in the UK their entire annual planning calendar. ER and all of the ideas came out of one Workshop one day that the client ran not us and they would invite a bunch of agencies to you know, and as you know in a workshop, it's a sort of creative mass and you cannot have proper wealth or sound strategic thinking in a day like that and that's how they used to run it and it used to drive me insane there. Now from a workshop perspective. Are you I tend to use it as a way just to move the conversation forward or I look at it and go right in this Workshop. I need to get consensus or by in. These three things and so I'll go to the workshop with things that would feed into it. But then I'll also make sure that I'll take a lot of the stuff out of it and then continuing and planning process afterwards. I think it's always looking at a workshop to think you know, what are the decisions that need to be made in the room? Not necessarily. How can we come up with a big creative idea or a business strategy or something like that in a room together because trying to do that with a bunch of different people is a disaster. Yeah it is it is and even consensus in a room as a challenge. I think you need most like majority consensus outside of a room and then if it's about coming up with ideas, I've liked the past decade. I'm like, you know what I've if this doesn't go. Well, first of all, I'll get blamed even though I've got no responsibility for some reason the 20 people or the 30 people that are in the room. Like I don't know who like their life their life experience how capable their own everything and it's not to judge any of that. And then also if it doesn't go well, I'll be there late at night. I'll be working all weekend. So in recent years I make if it's about coming up with ideas. Here's the deal. It's my room. You serve my brain. And they'll be a small group of us whose brains you're also serving but I don't like getting caught up in all the consensus in the politics of stuff and most senior people talking talking over everyone. I'm like if we spent half a day together and we get 10 ideas. That's what this is about and then we're going to go away and do more thinking and more writing and I've become a bit not militaristic but a bit more forceful about it because otherwise you there all weekend for months. Sometimes just like I could now get to work with these words like that don't think we're going to empower confidence. That's what this cereal is going to do. Like know who ooh, and I completely agree and I actually think it's been an interesting Journey For Me understanding individual deep work time versus collaboration. I think everybody's been touting, you know, this kind of golden chalice of collaboration in recent years kind of going away. That's how the best ideas happen having multidisciplinary thinkers in a room or working things out together, you know, one from creative one from strategy wonderful product. Once in retail, you know, that's how we're going to Hash things out but in reality that's incredible. To go to do and I think that we need to get to a space where we kind of reclaim the process and sort of say do you know what from an idea perspective we need somebody to at least come up with the basis of an idea and then everyone else can add some of the bells and whistles and then we'll refine it further but I think looking at collaboration as a way to solve every problem is categorically wrong. I just don't think it works. So is the idea of if I won't be accepted I won't make myself acceptable. Is it still in you? How do you wrestle with that now, especially as you you literally need to be accepted to sell in a scope or a project. How do you wrestle with I still struggle with it? Honestly, I think I think it's definitely I'm still maturing on that front. I've still got a bit of a, you know, fuck the system Vibe about me and that can get me into a bit of trouble with certain clients having said that there are also clients that love it, you know, and they're almost threw me into a room. Like a bomb and kind of go right you're quite forceful and you know opinionated you go and sort this out and they I think they sometimes just kind of sit back and get the popcorn out and just sort of watch it, but I don't feel the need so much to do that as much anymore, although interestingly. So I was in Hong Kong two weeks ago for a client over there and I have never worked in Hong Kong before and I was fascinated / horrified by some of the sort of hierarchical working. Practices in terms of you know, who's able to make certain decisions and who speaks before someone else and does this person have a special seat, you know in the conference room that nobody else is allowed to sit on and I was flabbergasted by it and I was kind of angry to be honest. I was a bit pissed off because I just thought actually this should be around, you know the work and what's best for the business and what's best for the brand. It shouldn't be about individual egos in the room and I kind of walked out there day one just a bit riled by the whole thing and then I kind of As you know what I'm just not quite big enough to take on an entire culture at this stage and I'm just going to have to roll with it and understand that this is the way that it's done and I'm gonna have to chart my own course through this in a way that it doesn't massively frustrate me and I've just got to sort of say I'll find a way to sort of politically tiptoe around the more sensitive areas in order to get the job done. And in order to get the right kind of outcome that I think is the best thing for the business or the brand but I definitely still think that I walk into organizations and also, So, you know cultures such as Wei Hong Kong can do business and I get really really frustrated and I've got to give myself a bit of a pep talk and say, you know, you're not here to solve the entire cultural issue of your organization. You're here to do, you know this particular job which involves XYZ age and that's what you've got to concentrate your energy, but it does sometimes take effort for me to bite my tongue on a lot of that stuff. And also I've got terrible resting bitch face, so when I'm in a room and I don't agree with something you can see it immediately on my face. I've had a couple of people look at me. Say your face is showing as a shit. Okay, I need to practice my poker expression. How did you find out? Did you find those Dynamics working in New York? I only had a couple of different interactions in New York. So I don't think I would necessarily be able to judge the entire place, but I think I found it quite competitive and obviously people think London is capacitive. I thought New York was more so and I also thought that it was very defined by what you do as a way to talk about who You are as a person and I found that I think you can be a little bit more multi-dimensional in the UK. Then I found I could be in New York and I might be totally wrong. This is just my individual experience of it, but I found it a bit more as they competitive a bit more Cutthroat and also a bit more kind of I don't know how to describe it. But I think a bit more sort of people would front up and sort of put on a Big Show and not necessarily say, I don't know the answer and put their hand up and say I'm not really sure what I'm doing. I'd like some help so I found that a bit frustrating and then a word like competitive having worked in different places. And also obviously, you know, a lot of people who've worked in different places. How would you describe the type of competitiveness that exist in London? How do people compete what's implicit? What's explicit? I don't know if I knew the answer to that. I think people I think different people are competitive in different ways different agencies are competitive in different ways. I think there is a Fair at the moment in the London industry, which I think is probably replicated around the world just at the pie is getting smaller. And therefore there's more competition for the same piece and people are killing themselves. I think from especially from a pitch perspective to try and get a clients in and they're working all these weekends and the working for 6 weeks straight on a pitch they get the client in the client goes right I'll have one TV ad and then there's no retainer and they bugger off and I think that new way of being from a client perspective is forcing agencies to kind of scrap where they wouldn't necessarily of scrap so much before so I think the competition is shifted when I used to be a lot of mutual respect amongst the big agencies and I think that's changed in recent years and it's just become a lot more. He said she said a lot more we're going to get that client. They're not going to get it and I just I find that quite draining to be honest. Okay last question. Why did you call your company bodacious? It popped into my head randomly one day when I was out walking and I just thought that's quite a cool word. And then I thought God does it sound a bit sort of surfer? Because I'm not a surfer her kind of going to pick up a surfboard and then sort of start will was me and it wouldn't go away and I kept thinking note that's not going to work. It's not going to work and I just kept pushing it away and thinking I need he's something more sensible and actually the more I started repeating it to myself in my head the more I just felt really comfortable with it. And then I I started pulling it apart and thought you know, what does it mean and I immediately thought you know, it's kind of bold and audacious and I think that those are things that I would ascribe to myself. So I think I've always been bold in terms of I've never taken the easy route. I've always gone right? I was going to jump into the next fire and just see what happens and I think audacious because I've always just sort of pushed. Father and father and just sort of seeing how far I can push people how far I can push myself how far I can push any ideas and then it just suddenly felt like it was sort of natural reflection of me. So that's sort of the story of is optically interesting I guess, but I think it's just a good fit. Well, I'm glad we use that word because I was about to type back into the topic we were talking about which is fitting in because it's it is interesting. When you when you do have to choose some structure as in a name and a company structure and you have to register that company so that it is structured for other people. Yeah, and you have to think about hmm. Do I fit into that name? And it sounds like you do so you maybe you found a short-term home in this name. Is that as I was saying? So yes, I think so. I really hope that's the case. Yeah. I don't know. I might speak to you again in six months time go all It's about up and clearly. I'm not as big data such as I originally thought I was but I think for the time being it's kind of giving me something to live up to but also something to grow into as well because I don't really know what it's going to be or where it's going to take me. I think that's half the fun of it. They love it. Where can people find you on the internet where you most active. I am most active on LinkedIn and also Twitter as well and I will be launching my new Bodacious website in the next three weeks. So I will definitely be sharing that as well. Awesome. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining me on sweet head today best wishes with Bodacious. Thank you for sharing your growing up story. I hope I wasn't too weird with my questions about it. I just I could talk about this stuff hours and not everyone else can but I have a feeling you can appreciate you sharing that with me today. Thank you. Alright. Thanks so much these.
Zoe Scaman runs Bodacious, a strategy consultancy in London. After a good run through Droga5, Undercurrent, Naked, and Adidas (yeah yeah, this is your dream list), Zoe isn't exactly settling down because maybe that's not how she's made. In fact, after growing up bouncing around, getting expelled twice, living in America, West Sussex, and Sydney, and constantly seeking new experiences and new ideas, maybe she came to the realization she didn't fit in anywhere and then she had to work out how to create the thing in which she fitted. But now that this is written here, she'll probably defy it. So, whatever. We discuss: - How Zoe grew up - What makes a good strategist - The consulting life We touch on mental health, self-perception, self-worth, and a bunch of other ideas that I think a lot of people will relate to, and I appreciate Zoe's openness. You can find Zoe here https://twitter.com/zoescaman and Bodacious here http://www.bodacious.be/  For more strategy talk: 1. Strategy drawings: www.instagram.com/markpollard  3. Strategy Twitter: www.twitter.com/markpollard 4. 