The Fink Tank

This is not a story about grit or perseverance.

It’s about how the tiniest, dumbest mistake can unravel our best-laid plans.

Col trained for ten years to master Frisbee.

Then forgot to bring water.

You’re a seasoned speaker with a dazzling slide deck. 

But forgot your clicker.

I’m mid-zoom with 150 people, nailing my presentation.

Then my hard drive ran out of space.

Col reckons The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is a blog post dressed in a trenchcoat. If it inspires a simple checklist that saves my blushes, it can dress however it wants.

Sometimes, the thing that stops you isn’t the big challenge you prepared for.

It’s the basic thing you forgot.

In the mid 00s our mate Bails designed himself a coat of arms. The ornate slogan underneath has lived  in my head rent free ever since.

Insufficiency is Not Enough.

Here’s how a $32 second-hand unicycle changed Col’s life.


For 15 years, Col did what so many of us do:

* Sat at the desk.

* Felt guilty for not being productive.

* Refused to leave the desk until “enough work” was done.

* Got… nothing done.

One day, he bought a $32 unicycle on eBay.


The rule: when the work stalled, he was allowed to get up and ride it for as along as he wanted.

If he came back to the desk and was STILL unproductive, he was allowed to immediately go ride it again.

It broke the loop. Moved his body. Shifted his brain.


Over the next decade, his work rhythm and his life changed completely.

These days, it’s disc golf outside his shipping container office. Different toy, same principle.

On this episode of the Fink Tank, we talk about how the best productivity “hack” might be the thing that looks least like work.

What’s your unicycle?

Do you go to high school reunions?

My recent Eltham College reunion surprised me in the best way.

I LOVED it.

I wasn’t popular at school. I had a couple of decent friends, but never belonged to the "main" groups. When I got to Uni there was no looking back. My flimsy high school connections dissolved instantly as I smeared myself in the Melbourne Uni social life smorgasbord. Those Uni mates remain my core group.

So why, two years ago, did I LOVE my thirty‑year reunion so much?

Half our year level turned up. When dinner finished, nobody went home. We stayed out laughing and swapping stories until the bar kicked us out. It was so good Olivia Wenholz planned another catch‑up for our “collective 50th birthday” because ten years felt way too long to wait. Thanks Liv!

That second reunion was last week. And it was magic all over again.

In this episode of The Fink Tank, Col and I chat about why these moments still matter, and why I made absolutely certain I’d be there.

P.S. Massive shout‑out to Kathie van Vugt, who’s working on an Aussie project to LAND A ROVER ON THE MOON. How wild is that?

How nervous would you feel if you had to spin the webcam around and show us the rest of your house? And your life?

If you’re hiding the mess, the quirks, the chaos, this episode is for you.

Most of us are hiding things we deem unprofessional.

Col Fink’s Zoom background is neat and tidy, complete with a colour-coded bookshelf. Beyond the curated frame? Some friendly sheep, an untouched woodpile from 2022, and a rogue step balanced on a tree stump.

But here’s the thing:

Col’s best clients already know he’s allergic to email, works part-time hours, and lives in the middle of a messy paddock. He's open about it.

None of this “unprofessionalism” gets in the way. If anything, it builds stronger more human connections. If you do great work AND show your real life, you’ll likely attract more of the right people.

Sure, you need a baseline of credibility and conviction before you invite people into the circus. But once you’ve got it?

You don’t need to fake the full 360° to be taken seriously.

You can admit your chaos, your niche interests, your foibles.

You can build a business that fits around your actual life, not the other way around.

There might only be two fish in the sea.

This is good news if you’re one of the fish.

Leadership coach Belinda Thomas told me she felt like she was swimming in a huge ocean of competitors. Her confidence was down.

I said “Sure, there’s a million videographers too. How many do you know?”

And she said… “Two.”

If Belinda needs a videographer, she’s not choosing from a teeming ocean. She’s fishing in a pond with two fish. And I’m one of them.

Pretty good odds!

Yes, I know more than two videographers. But that’s not relevant. SHE doesn’t.

Comparison is the thief of joy. But possibly not the thief of your market. 

Col has some great thoughts on how to refocus a fear of competition in this episode of The Fink Tank.

KP’s been to SEVEN OLYMPIC GAMES as a performance psychologist. I had no idea until yesterday.

That is RIDICULOUS.

For the first couple of years I knew Dr Kirsten Peterson, she never mentioned she’d been to the Olympics SEVEN TIMES. She was an engaged participant in my Be Less Shit on Camera course during that time, creating videos talking about her work. I still didn’t know!

It felt like she actively hid it from me.

And she’s not alone.

To get paid to do the thing you do, people need to know you do it.

Most people fall down at two main hurdles:

1. Saying it at all

2. Saying it enough

These comically simple barriers affect nearly everyone running a small business.

Fear of rejection. Imposter syndrome. Tall poppy. Take your pick.

Over several months as KP’s business coach, Col lovingly hounded her into owning it. Her LinkedIn bio now leads with “7x Olympic Games Performance Psychologist”.

She’s talked about it on radio and TV.

She (apparently) references it often, yet I STILL DIDN’T KNOW.

That’s how much noise is out there. Even people who know and like you might miss the message.

So say it.

Then say it again.

Then keep going.

One 2003 ski trip. 50 mates.

Plenty of dickheadery.

And a warning about forming strong opinions from weak evidence.

In this episode of The Fink Tank, Col and I talk about the beautiful human habit of overthinking the anecdote and underthinking the maths.

About how we love to build worldviews from tiny, noisy data points, and then swear they’re true. Humans are notoriously poor at assessing probability, sample size, and causation. Where your business is concerned, this is probably costing you.

What can we do about it?

I loved revisiting this old footage which is somehow TWENTY TWO YEARS OLD. This episode is actually two years old itself! A 9 minute version was sitting unused in the folder for season 1. So I gave it a trim and added the ski trip footage.

We haven’t changed a bit.

People are weird. Our lives of abundance have meant we often feel compelled to satisfy ourselves in illogical ways with our hobbies. 

Col is three sheds deep into a scientific enquiry into how humans often love buying stuff more than they like having it or using it.

This episode is a sprawling ode to that deeply relatable, slightly unhinged truth. Humans have strange and dumb ways of finding joy and distraction in our post-capitalist hellscape of privilege.

Also, is anyone out there willing to admit they spent $500 on a pair of running shoes?

Some childhood beliefs leave quietly. Others wait until you’re an adult to slap you in the face.

The moments of realisation tend to stick in the mind, too.

I turned beetroot red during my turn for roll-call in grade 2. It’s pronounced Penelope, not Penny-lope. (Mispronouncing words you learned reading is a whole sub-genre here. Good luck, Siobhan)

Col’s primary school mate Tim thought bands played their hit songs live at the radio station for every broadcast.

I genuinely slapped my forehead when I realised pipe-cleaners aren’t just for craft. They also… clean pipes.

The beauty of these childish realisations is they continue into adulthood. Hopefully at reduced frequency. There’s a great xkcd comic about treating these moments with reverence. If you laugh at someone’s embarrassing adult discovery you’re training them not to tell you next time. And you miss out on the fun.

I first saw a pineapple plant with Ed in Thailand in my mid 30s. It blew my mind. I thought they grew like bananas! (Please comment if you’re just now finding out they grow on the central stalk of a spiky bush. See also: cashew nuts.)

There’s a right way and a wrong way to tie your shoelaces (I’m going to make a video about this). Blake’s shoelaces kept coming undone on our New Zealand hiking trip. I gently enquired about his technique. “I’ve been tying my own shoelaces for TWENTY FIVE years Cam!! I know how to do it!!”. He did not.

On a camping holiday in the mid ‘10s, we discovered TWO people in our group independently thought molasses was a type of sea creature. They were both from the UK. Coincidence??

Also, the frozen bananas in The Simpsons are sold AT THE AQUARIUM.

Embarrassing adult realisations are a source of immense joy. Once the shame dissipates.

We’d love to hear your best “Wait…. WHAT??” moments.

Your workshop isn’t a suitcase. Stop overpacking it.

You’re trying to provide value. So you cram in every model, every framework, every brain nugget you’ve ever loved.

The result? A learning day that’s chokkas.

No space to breathe. No time to reflect. No energy left by 2pm.

In this episode of The Fink Tank, recorded during the lunch break on the second day of Col's 2 day summit, we talk about the urge to overstuff, why it comes from a good place, and how to fight it.

Shoutout to the random guy who got in the lift with us at 45s. And Deb Bailey.

The amazing satirical commentators H.G. and Roy host a long running radio program called This Sporting Life.

Their tagline is “Too much sport is barely enough”

With facilitation and training it’s sometimes the opposite:

“Barely enough stuff is too much.”