I MADE MY BUSINESS STUPIDLY SIMPLE. THE HARD PART WAS KEEPING IT THAT WAY.
We all say we want things to be simpler.
A simpler business. Fewer things to focus on. Less noise. Less overwhelm.
So why, when something actually becomes simple, do so many of us immediately start fucking with it?
That became one of the things I found most fascinating during this conversation with Lauren.
Lauren has built an incredibly successful business, but underneath that success is an approach that is almost aggressively simple.
One signature offer. A small number of things that actually matter. A constant willingness to strip away everything that doesn't need to be there.
But she didn't initially learn to work like this because of some clever business strategy.
She learnt it because life forced her to.
When Lauren was in her early twenties, her grandad was diagnosed with cancer and told he had just weeks to live.
At the time, Lauren was beginning to build her business and, while helping care for him, there were days when she had literally one hour to work while he slept.
One hour meant there was no time for busywork.
She had to ask:
What actually matters right now?
What is going to move the needle?
What deserves my attention?
And what could have looked like an enormous disadvantage ended up teaching Lauren something that would become one of her greatest advantages:
how to make things stupidly simple.
But what I loved about this conversation is that we didn't just talk about how to simplify.
We talked about why simplicity can be so bloody uncomfortable in the first place.
Why doing three strategic things can somehow feel scarier than doing twenty.
Why one offer can require more self-trust than five.
Why we can find safety in numbers, activity and doing more.
And why, even when we've found something that works, we have an almost irresistible urge to start adding things back in.
We talk about:
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The experience with Lauren's grandad that completely changed the way she looked at life and business
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Building a business in tiny pockets of time
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How constraint taught her to identify what actually mattered
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Why "How can I make this stupidly simple?" became such an important question
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Why simplicity can feel more uncomfortable than complexity
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The safety we can find in being busy
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Why three strategic pieces of work can feel scarier than doing twenty
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Building one signature offer and refining it over years
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Why we complicate things again once they start working
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The difference between doing more and doing what actually matters
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The question Lauren asks herself when she's overwhelmed
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Learning to ignore other people's limitations
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Where Lauren's drive to play full-out really comes from
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Thinking about what you want to be known for ten years from now
I've kept thinking about something since we recorded this:
Maybe overcomplication is sometimes just self-doubt dressed up as hard work.
Because perhaps the difficult part isn't figuring out how to make things simpler.
Perhaps the difficult part is trusting that simple is enough.
And then having the discipline to leave it the fuck alone.
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Hot Seat is my filmed interview experience for people with a story, a body of work, a public image or simply far more to them than the version people already know.
Because there's a difference between telling your story and being properly interviewed about it.
I research. I listen. I notice the detail you almost skipped over. I follow the answer you weren't expecting to give. And together, we find the stories, contradictions and parts of you that people can't simply Google.
The result is a beautifully produced filmed conversation that lets people meet the person behind the image, the work and the version of your story they've heard before.
If you've ever thought:
There's more to my story than people know.
Come and sit with me.
HOT SEAT with Emma Gibbs-Ng DM me HOT SEAT on Instagram at @emmagibbsng to start the conversation.
