Happy MBA

How do we have to be to create a new world that sidesteps the mistakes of the old?What do we need to learn about relating differently and more compassionately with ourselves, and others, in order to create a different social and cultural reality?And what does a new world business designed to help people practise this look and feel like, and how do we learn to lead such a thing?

Gaylene creates space for the new, the imaginative and the transformative. Through The Space to Come she and her team create experiences that sensitively centre art, conversation, feeling and care.

From interactive events and live installations to leadership programmes, our spaces help you better connect to yourselves and each other and prepare for an emerging, more compassionate world.

• The Space to Come
• Gaylene’s talk at Summercamp 2022
• Join the conversation live
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort

Kindness, compassion, and playfulness can create positive ripples in the world. This episode’s guest, Bernadette Russell, has a daily intentional practice of kindness that not only brings her a sense of hope and joy, but has also opened doors to new opportunities and experiences.

By embracing our childlike wonder and bringing it into our adult lives, we can redefine what it means to be a grown-up, take responsibility for our actions, and make a difference in the world.

Through intentional acts of kindness, we can rediscover hope.

• Bernadette’s website
• Follow @bernadetterussell on Instagram
• How to Be Hopeful: Your Toolkit to Rediscover Hope and Help Create a Kinder World – Bernadette’s latest book
• Join the conversation live
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort

There’s never enough time, and the work is never done. On this episode, author and journalist Oliver Burkeman shares his insights on how we can better manage our time, but not get bogged down in productivity.

If you’re felt overwhelmed, stressed or unfulfilled, Oliver’s book, Four Thousand Weeks, offers a valuable reframe: pushing against the endless need for productivity, and towards a Zen-like surrender to the fact that we can’t – we won’t – get it all done.

• Join the conversation live
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort
• Four Thousand Weeks – Oliver’s book

To cultivate creativity and authenticity, we have to be be willing to take risks and face the fear of rejection.

James Victore is a designer and author whose podcast and course help people cultivate creativity and courage. He believes in authenticity, self-awareness, and the importance of understanding one's creative voice in order to put meaningful work out into the world.

He encourages people to find their own voice and to not let self-doubt or negative opinions hold them back. He joins Laurence and Carlos on the Friday Fireside to discuss how being true to oneself and following through on creative ideas leads to success and fulfilment.

• Join the conversation live
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort
• Feck Perfuction: Dangerous Ideas on the Business of Life – James’ book
• The Right Questions – James’ podcast
• James’ Born Creative course

One of the things Laurence and Carlos are really passionate about at the Happy Startup School is helping entrepreneurs build businesses that are aligned to who they really are.

Most people they work with are experienced professionals or seasoned business owners who are looking for a different work path: a path that feels less effortful and alive.

Up until now the path they’ve followed seemed like the right one as they felt like they were achieving and succeeding. However, they were eventually left feeling drained and even burnt out.

According to Gaiai Pollini, one of the causes for this is that they weren’t being true to themselves. They had made decisions and taken actions that weren’t actually theirs. They were based on behaviours that were learned at a young age in order to meet their needs and which have stayed with them into adulthood.

If you start a business to make a fundamental change in your life but base your decisions on your adaptive behaviours, there’s a good chance you won’t make the change you wanted.

To make this change you need to identify the source you. Your source is true and fresh in the moment while your layers of adaptive behaviours can constrict and constrain.

In this episode, Gaia shares the five different styles of adaptation she uses in her work:

• The outsider
• The helper
• The super person
• The people pleaser
• The perfectionist

This conversation will help you explore yourself with curiosity and self-kindness and invite you to do some self-reflection so that when you come to creating something new in your life, it will be relevant to your truth, and who you really are.

• The F**k it Life
• Say F**k it and Feel the Fear – the Happy Entrepreneur podcast, with John Parkin
• Join the conversation live
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort

For those of us born in the West today, living to 100 will be the norm, not the exception. Living longer is clearly a gift, but the simple truth is these extra 25-30 years of life did not exist before.

This new horizon is as important and exciting as the invention of motion pictures, cars or even space travel.When a change this big happens, innovation follows.

Ayse Birsel is the author of Design the Life You Love, a step-by-step guide to building a meaningful future. As well as being on the Thinkers 50 shortlist for talent, she is the co-founder and Creative Director of Birsel + Seck, a studio where Ayse designs award-winning products for companies including Herman Miller, GE, IKEA, Philips, Staples and Toyota.

On this Fireside, Ayse shares more about her research for her new book Design the Long Life You Love. Conducted with people 65 and over, she explains how the lessons from these pioneers of life can serve us all — designers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders — in our work, our lives, and the lives of others, regardless of age.

• Connect with Ayse via LinkedIn
• Design the Long Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Love, Purpose, Well-Being, and Friendship – Ayse’s new book
• Join the conversation live
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort

We believe that money is a law of nature and is as real as the metal or paper it’s made of. We give it power and even say it makes the world go round. And this is where we can get unstuck.

We give money more power than we need to. But money is really neutral screen on which we project our fantasies, desires, and insecurities.

In this episode, Carlos speaks with Nadjeschda Taranczewski, CEO of Conscious-U, and coach to CEOs and founders who want to reinvent their organisations. They talk about the three different types of projections we can have on money and how they affect our behaviour. And they explore how we can shift our relationship to it by dealing with these projections more playfully.

• Connect with Nadjeschda via LinkedIn
• ConsciousU
• Join the conversation live
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort

For the last 7 years Joshua Coombes has been a man on a mission. In 2015, while working at a London hair salon and feeling a little disillusioned, he took to the streets with his scissors to build relationships and offer haircuts to men and women experiencing homelessness in the capital.

He began posting transformative images on social media to amplify the voices of those he met. The stories that accompanied these photos resonated, and others began to get involved in their own way.

Do Something for Nothing was born – a movement that encourages people to connect their skills and time to those who need them.

Joshua didn't want to set up a big charity, or focus on making a “huge impact” or “changing the world”. Instead he wanted to focus on helping the person right in front of him; the person many of us walk past every day.

Joshua felt his energy was better spent getting to know a few people better, telling their stories and letting that ripple out. Nick Cave called it “a simple, big-hearted and world-shaking idea”.

What can each of us give that we have in abundance that can change people's lives, even in a small way. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most profound.

Listen to hear Joshua's story and better understand what impact means for you.

• Connect with Joshua via LinkedIn
• Do Something for Nothing: Seeing Beneath the Surface of Homelessness, Through the Simple Act of a Haircut – Joshua’s book
• The Wisdom of Trauma
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the conversation live

Laurence has been a big fan of Tim Frenneaux's work since he first discovered Gather Outdoors, a blog and online store he launched back in 2015. He's still got a couple of their sweatshirts.

Tim launched Gather shortly after he turned 40. Around this time he lost his dad and realised he wasn't living the adventurous life he dreamt of as a kid. More recently Gather has evolved to become Adventurous Ink, a book club for people who love the great outdoors. His blog is a wonderful source of ideas, resources and inspiration for anyone that wants to bring more nature connection to their lives.

Like Laurence and Carlos, Tim believes that seeking the sublime and awe in nature can be the antidote to many of the problems we face as a society. From disconnection to ourselves, but also to each other and the planet.

Tim talks about how nature can allow us to open up, and how Adventurous Ink grew from the Do Lectures.

Are you starting something new? Are you on the hunt for customers? If so, stop thinking of your customers as just buyers, and start thinking of them as potential partners and co-creators.

From the Happy Startup School’s experience, what you think people want isn't always what they actually want. And the more you talk to them the more likely you'll find out what really floats their boat and discover how your energy to create can best meet their hunger for a solution.

In this episode, Carlos speaks with Adam Forbes, founder of Familiarize. Adam left his corporate job after 20 years to start his new business, and he has principles for co-creating with your customers to share:

• Start with pain What are people finding difficult and challenging?
• Understand your customer What are they really trying to do and what outcomes are they looking for?
• Build hypotheses How do you frame what you think is happening as assumptions you can test?
• Get out of your head How do you engage and talk to people so you can learn from real world situations
• Think collaborators not customers How do you nurture relationships even when you haven't built anything yet?

• Join the conversation live
• Become a member of the Happy Startup School
• Join the next Vision 20/20 cohort