The Way I See It

Same World, Different Glasses

Mum, Hear Me Out…

An Inner Workings bonus on money, mindset and seeing opportunities where others see expenses.

A lighthearted discussion with a parent turned into an episode around perspective; opportunities and seeing things through a different lens.

We're talking about the environments we put ourselves in, why opportunity is often about proximity, and how easy it is to confuse ambition with justifying an expensive lifestyle.

Five quick takeaways on shifting your perspective, recognising opportunity and knowing when you're investing in yourself versus simply spending money.

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

Follow The Way I See It  for short, practical insights on hiring, leadership, and performance.
New episodes frequently. 

After a three-week break, I’m back with a question that came up while I was away

Do I work more now than I did before - and am I always switched on?

The answer is probably yes.

But I also waste considerably less time pretending to work, or conforming to someone else's idea of value and productivity. 

In this episode, I talk about the difference between being genuinely productive and simply looking busy - from staying online on Teams for the sake of visibility, to pointless calls, unnecessary updates and filling your calendar with activity that doesn’t actually move anything forward.

We also get into why responsiveness can feel productive, why being efficient can sometimes be punished with more work, and why the loudest thing demanding your attention is rarely the most important.

Five things to take away

1. Ask what actually moved forward.
At the end of the week, don’t just ask what you worked on. Ask what genuinely changed because of your work.

2. Separate productivity from performance.
Look at what you do because it creates value versus what you do because it is visible, measurable or makes you look busy.

3. Stop treating responsiveness as productivity.
Replying quickly, attending every meeting and answering every notification can keep you occupied all day without moving anything important forward.

4. Identify the work that doesn’t need you.
Look for tasks that can be delegated, automated, simplified or stopped completely so your time goes towards the work that actually requires your judgement.

5. Protect time for the quieter, important things.
Strategy, health, relationships, learning and long-term planning rarely shout the loudest — but they are often the things capable of changing your life the most.

The goal isn’t necessarily to do less work.

It’s to do considerably less work that doesn’t matter.

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

Follow The Way I See It  for short, practical insights on hiring, leadership, and performance.
New episodes frequently. 

When Did Wanting More Become Something to Apologise For?  

The Scarcity Trap: How a Lack Mentality Keeps You Playing Small 

How much is a lack mentality costing you—and would you recognise it if you called it “being sensible”?  

The opportunity you keep putting off. The support you won’t pay for. The success you struggle to enjoy because you’re already worried about losing it. 

Scarcity can influence your decisions long after your circumstances have improved. You earn more, build some security and create options, yet somehow, it still never feels like enough. 

In this episode of The Way I See It, I explore how a lack mentality can shape your relationship with money, ambition and other people’s success.

I share lessons we have learned personally: investing in our business before the revenue arrived, giving our money different jobs, and making sure our survival reserve doesn’t become an excuse to stop growing. 

We also explore why a good accountant or wealth planner can be a personal trainer for your money, and how refusing to pay for expertise can leave you working harder without getting further.

And when someone else gets the promotion, builds the business or shares a win—what’s your first reaction? 

That brings us to Tall Poppy Syndrome: why people sometimes cut others down for doing well, and how the belief that there isn’t enough success to go around can affect the people we become.

This is an honest conversation about recognising when fear has started making decisions you have the freedom to make differently. 

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

Follow The Way I See It  for short, practical insights on hiring, leadership, and performance.
New episodes frequently. 

Listen to This Before You Have the Conversation You’ve Been Avoiding

How to say what needs to be said, before silence turns into resentment. 

You know the conversation.

The one you rehearse in your head, rewrite in your notes and keep pushing into next week.

It is not going away. And in most cases, silence is not keeping the peace, it is giving frustration time to become resentment.

Following The Art of Negotiation, Michael explores a different challenge: how to be honest when the truth may create tension.

From disagreeing with his business partner and challenging C-suite leaders of billion-dollar companies, to navigating life-changing international moves and letting one of his closest friends go from a role, this episode explores what difficult conversations look like when the relationship genuinely matters.

You do not need to sound fearless.

You need to be clear.

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

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New episodes frequently. 

A half-million-pound year would have looked like immense success to me two years ago. Half of that number would have put me in the top percentile in my market and industry. 

Now, it is the scale of the reality we are building, in only year 2.

But the biggest difference is not the number. It is ownership.

Nobody tells us our percentage. Nobody caps our return. Nobody decides what our contribution is worth. The whole pie is being built inside a business we own.

That realisation forced me to question something much bigger:

Can you become too loyal to your own happiness?

The salary, title, recognition and security may once have represented everything you wanted. But what happens when you outgrow them? When does the dream you worked towards become the very thing preventing you from discovering what else you are capable of?

This is not an episode telling you to quit your job. It is about recognising when your definition of success no longer matches the person you have become.

Maybe the thing holding you back is not failure.

Maybe it is loyalty to a version of success you have already outgrown.

Freedom in business is not the absence of pressure. It is pressure that belongs to you.

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

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New episodes frequently. 

Most people do not lose a negotiation because they asked for too little. They lose because they entered the conversation without knowing what they actually needed from it. 

In the first practical episode of Season 2, Michael breaks down the four things you should decide before negotiating anything: 

• Your ideal outcome
• Your acceptable outcome
• Your genuine walk-away point
• What you are prepared to trade

From buying a car, house or watch to negotiating salaries, childcare arrangements and commercial contracts, the setting may change-but the framework remains the same. 

Michael also shares a recent negotiation from inside his own business, where protecting candidate ownership mattered more than defending every percentage point of margin. It is a real example of knowing which principle must be protected and which variable can be used to reach an agreement. 

Because good negotiation is not about being aggressive or winning every point. It is about knowing what matters, understanding what the other person values and refusing to concede without purpose. 

If you do not know what you want from the conversation, you are not negotiating. You are just reacting. 

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

Follow The Way I See It  for short, practical insights on hiring, leadership, and performance.
New episodes frequently. 

After a short break, The Way I See It returns with the same voice - but this time it’s more practical, more personal and more scenario-led, and shaped by you, the listener.

Season 2: The Operating Manual – The Way We Build It

From Perspective to Practice

Season 1 established the perspective. Season 2 is about putting that perspective into practice, and occasionally under pressure.

In this opening episode, I look back at the themes that shaped the first season: standards, patience, emotional control, alignment, leverage, visibility, relationships, rejection and continuing when nothing appears to be working yet.

But once you understand the principle, the next question is:

What do you actually do with it?

Season 2 will sit in that gap, the messy, real-life moment where the principle meets the pressure.

The same voice, but more practical, more personal and more scenario-led. Still short, still direct and still around 12–15 minutes—but with more focus on how I would approach the situations we all face in business, work and life.

What to look out for this season

• Negotiation—and why it begins with understanding what you actually want
• Conflict management, difficult conversations and removing ego from tense situations
• The difference between being ruthless and being strategic
• What the first £100,000 teaches you about running a business
• How we use financial “money pots” to balance security, growth, personal reward and existing obligations
• What I would prioritise, and completely ignore, if we had to start the business again tomorrow
• Recognising when the bigger opportunity may exist in another country
• How changing your environment can change your ambition, confidence and perspective
• The qualities and actions that cannot always be expressed through a CV
• Why the version of you that got you here may not be the version capable of taking you where you want to go next

Season 2 will also become far more listener-led.

If you are dealing with a difficult situation, avoiding an important conversation or struggling to make a decision, send it to me. Let’s unpack it.

The Operating Manual is not being written from the finish line. It is being written while life, business and careers are still moving—through what has worked, what has not, what I would repeat and what I would change.

Send me the question.

Send me the situation.

Send me the conversation you know you need to have but have not had yet.

Welcome to Season 2 of The Way I See It—and ultimately, The Way We Build It.

Let’s get into it.

Michael Way

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

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New episodes frequently. 

A personal Season 1 finale on ambition, risk, business, and building while the outcome is still uncertain. 

Most people tell the story once they have made it. 

Still Being Built is the Season 1 finale - and the most personal episode so far.

Where I came from.

Why I started the podcast.

Why I built the business.

What the first year really took.

What keeps me hungry.

And why I think the early parts of the story matters just as much as the ending.

Season 1 ends here. 

What to look forward to in Season 2 - returning in August.

Listen if you are building something, questioning yourself, or trying to work out what is actually keeping you going. 

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

Follow The Way I See It  for short, practical insights on hiring, leadership, and performance.
New episodes frequently. 

Business development is not just sales.

It is the ability to create opportunity.

To start conversations.

Read people.

Build trust.

Negotiate.

Handle rejection.

Stay composed when things go quiet.

And move first when everyone else is waiting.

This episode brings together many of the themes from the first season. 

• Visibility.
• Confidence.
• Patience.
• Standards.
• Leverage.
• Emotional control.
• Relationships.
• Timing.

Because business development teaches you all of them.

It teaches you that the best communicators are not always the loudest.

They are the people who understand who they are speaking to.

It teaches you that silence is not always rejection.

That a no is not always permanent.

That confidence is built through action.

And that opportunities rarely arrive fully formed.

Most people wait to be noticed.

Wait to be promoted.

Wait for permission.

Wait until they feel ready.

Business development teaches you to stop waiting.

Start the conversation.

Create the opening.

Put yourself in the room.

This is not just an episode for people in sales.

It is for anyone trying to build a business, career, network, reputation, or better life.

Because once you learn how to create opportunity in business, you stop waiting for it everywhere else. 

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

Follow The Way I See It  for short, practical insights on hiring, leadership, and performance.
New episodes frequently. 

The Story You’re Telling Yourself Might Be Wrong

Not every delay is disrespect. Not every silence is rejection. Not every changed priority is betrayal. Sometimes, it is just business.

Sometimes, it is just business.

In this episode, I’m talking about emotional control, ego, expectation and one of the hardest disciplines in business and life: learning how to separate emotion from outcome.

When you care about your work, your reputation, your relationships and your standards, it is easy to take things personally. A slow reply feels like disrespect. A stalled opportunity feels like rejection. A changed priority feels like betrayal.

But often, you are not dealing with the facts anymore.
You are dealing with the story you have created around the facts.

This episode is about staying composed when things do not go your way, following up professionally before reacting emotionally, and knowing when to walk away without making a scene.

Because people remember how you behave when the answer is no, the deal goes cold, or the reply never comes.

The real discipline is not pretending it does not affect you.
The real discipline is feeling it - and still responding with control.

Get in touch for further insights, or ideas for future topics of interest.

Follow The Way I See It  for short, practical insights on hiring, leadership, and performance.
New episodes frequently.