The Ideas Lab Podcast

Srabani Sen has had an impressive leadership career in the not for profit sector. She has been the CEO of three organisations: Alcohol Concern, Contact a Family and the British Association for Adoption and Fostering. She has more than 25 years board experiences and is currently Chair of two not for profits, including the campaigning organisation 38 degrees.

Srabani joined my pioneer program in 2019 to launch Full Colour, which helps leaders learn how to lead inclusively, drive inclusion in their organisations, and create the conditions for diversity to thrive. Now, this topic can become waylaid with corporate-speak and is a very sensitive topic. So I wanted to make sure that we cut through all of that and have a very frank and straightforward conversation.

So what you're going to hear is why diversity matters in business terms, what gets in the way, do we need it even, and how you go about solving the diversity and inclusion problems in a way that actually makes a difference and changes the organisation for good.

Srabani also describes how she managed to get her first customers and how she succeeded in differentiating herself in a crowded market, using all the things that we work together on in the Pioneer programme.

Now, aside from all this, Srabani is an actor and a playwright, and she's had her plays performed in some prestigious London theatres. Finally, I just had to ask what it was like meeting the queen in order to receive her OBE.

Best wishes,

John

For full links and notes please visit: https://theideaslab.org/srabanisen-diversity

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Most people spend far too long with their business ideas on hold before they launch something. This special episode of The Ideas Lab podcast will tell you how you can launch a business idea in 5 days.

And if you want to make it happen for yourself, you can join our free 5-Day Business Startup Challenge. The next one starts Monday 11 May. Register your free place at:

sign up at: https://theideaslab.org/5dc

Well, this week's interview guest is me. And I'm being interviewed by Simon Williams, who is a serial entrepreneur, author, speaker, lecturer, and successful business owner and he's now the founder of Expert Velocity.

Simon asked me to be on his podcast, to talk about finding the right idea at the beginning of getting your business started, how to test it out, and then how to get it going.

Along the way, I also tell a few stories about my own work life in order to illustrate my points. So there might be some interesting things there from my history in technology and consultancy, and novel work about how I got to where I am now with The Ideas Lab.

Thanks very much to Simon for a great interview, and for allowing us to share this recording as part of the ideas lab podcast.

Best wishes,

John

For full links and notes please visit: https://theideaslab.org/simonwilliams-interview

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Music provided by Argofox: TheDiabolicalWaffle – My Wish https://youtu.be/sRWEMjYR6e4

When Kat Williams started planning her own wedding she found the standard offers of the wedding industry uninspiring so she started exploring alternatives to the standard wedding in order to find something that she really loved.

In 2007 Kat started sharing these ideas and inspirations on a blog and on social media, and this turned into RockNRollBride, one of the biggest wedding blogs in the world!

When Kat launched her bi-monthly RockNRollBride magazine in 2015 it was reported as being the fastest debut selling issue of a magazine…ever. It sold out within 72 hours and sold over 1,000 copies within the first day alone.

In 2019 Kat published her book, Rock N Roll Bride: The Ultimate Guide For Rock N Roll Brides, which instantly went to #1 in Amazon's wedding category.

With now over 100k followers on Instagram, Kat is turning some of her attentions to focus on more broader areas of life.

We cover all of this and more in this fascinating interview. I do hope you enjoy it and get inspired from Kat.

Best wishes,

John

For full links and notes please visit: https://theideaslab.org/katwilliams-rocknrollbride

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Music provided by Argofox: TheDiabolicalWaffle – My Wish https://youtu.be/sRWEMjYR6e4

Just imagine that you never had to look at your email inbox, read or reply to any emails ever again. How much free time would you have? What could you use that time for in your business or in your personal life? That is a question I explored with Claire Giovino in today's episode of the ideas lab podcast, because she has set up a business to do exactly this for her clients.

She launched Inboxdone in 2017, and has grown the business to multiple six figures in just 11 months with zero startup capital. She currently manages a growing team of remote inbox managers and upwards of 3000 plus emails a day, all while travelling the world or at least until recently.

So I wanted to ask her what are we all getting wrong about email and if we want to move away from our own inbox and stop it dominating our working day, how do you really outsource something that is so fundamental to what we do day in and day out?

And I also wanted to find out how Claire has made such a success of I Inboxdone and how she's made that work in a partnership with Yaro Starak, who is one of the founders, one of the pioneers of internet marketing and blogging. So it's going to be a great episode. Let's dive in.

Best wishes,

John

For full links and notes please visit: https://theideaslab.org/clairegiovino

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Music provided by Argofox: TheDiabolicalWaffle – My Wish https://youtu.be/sRWEMjYR6e4

Lots of us are feeling a considerable amount of stress right now, thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, the lockdown and the economic uncertainty. And I know for some people that's impacting their sleep as well. So I was pleased to be able to have award-winning hypnotherapist, Dr. Liz Bonet on the podcast to give us some really practical tips about how to manage our stress right now or at any time and some counterintuitive actions we can take straight away that will start to improve the quality of our sleep.

Best wishes,

John

For full links and notes please visit: https://theideaslab.org/lizbonet

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Music provided by Argofox: TheDiabolicalWaffle – My Wish https://youtu.be/sRWEMjYR6e4

Are you a perfectionist? Do you find that everything you take on, you want to do absolutely perfectly, to be better than everybody else, and to make sure that you don't get a single thing wrong in the process?

Now this might sound like a positive quality and it does have some advantages, but it also has some great costs to our health, and to our relationships.

Chris Ward is the author of the new book 'Less Perfect, More Happy. And here we have an in depth conversation about what perfectionism is, why it develops, what you can do about it, and the enormous cost it can have if you don't get a handle on it.

Chris's own perfectionism has driven him to be very successful. He was creative director of comic relief, he's raised over 500 million pounds for charities all over the world has been involved along with Richard Curtis, the famous film director, with the launch of the United Nations global goals. For that campaign, he managed to arrange the sending of over 3 billion text messages in order to spread the word.

Chris is also a record breaking cyclist, a best selling author, and a successful entrepreneur whose perfectionism at times has nearly destroyed his life.

Best wishes,

John

For full links and notes please visit: https://theideaslab.org/chrisward

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Music provided by Argofox: TheDiabolicalWaffle – My Wish https://youtu.be/sRWEMjYR6e4

If you send emails out to a list of people, in order to market yourself or your work or your business, you will have seen that often the open rates on those emails is very low, perhaps as few as 20% are actually opening your emails and reading them.

So when a new form of digital marketing arrives that offers something like 90% open rates, it's something all of us who are involved in marketing ourselves should take very seriously.

What we're talking about here is messenger bot marketing and in particular, sending automated messages and running automated chat bots inside Facebook Messenger.

Kelly Noble Mirabella is an expert in this subject. And I was really glad to be able to have her on the ideas Live podcast and explain to us what is a messenger bot? Why are they so valuable, and how we can start to implement a messenger bot in our marketing using a tool that is actually completely free to get started with.

Best wishes

John

For full links and notes please visit: https://theideaslab.org/kellynoblemirabella

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Music provided by Argofox: TheDiabolicalWaffle – My Wish https://youtu.be/sRWEMjYR6e4

Right now the coronavirus has brought about a massive shift in the way we work for millions and millions of people all around the world. That's because many companies have sent their employees home to continue doing their jobs. We're seeing a rather remarkable social experiment taking place.

My client, Nicole Carter, is the U.K expert on Smart Working i.e everything that's involved in remote working, flexible working, and the technological processes and procedures that allow people to work productively from home while staying connected to the company that they work for.

Whether you are a manager who's now found themselves with a team who's working remotely, or whether you yourself are working from home and dealing with some of those challenges, I think you're going to find this really interesting.

For full show links please go to: https://theideaslab.org/nicolecarter

Music provided by Argofox: TheDiabolicalWaffle – My Wish https://youtu.be/sRWEMjYR6e4

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