Dr Julie Smith: The Reason You’re Not Doing the Thing You Know You Should

By Chris Cook | August 27, 2026

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Why do you know exactly what you should be doing, and still not do it? Dr Julie Smith breaks down the psychology of procrastination, fear and self-sabotage, and reveals how she went from an NHS psychologist to building a mental health platform with millions of followers and a Sunday Times #1 bestseller.

Dr Julie Smith is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist who spent a decade in the NHS before building one of the world’s largest mental health education platforms, reaching an audience of over 10 million people across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. She is the Sunday Times #1 bestselling author of Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?, which has sold nearly 2 million copies and was the UK’s top-selling nonfiction book of 2022.

She explains:

Why the fear you feel before doing something new is just your brain’s stress response, and how to work with it instead of against it
Why she’s never once used a call to action, and how giving everything away for free built a following of millions
The real psychological reason behind procrastination, and the simple weekly framework she uses to beat it

Chapters

00:00:00 Intro
00:02:06 Leaving The NHS To Build A Private Practice
00:05:07 The First Viral TikTok Video
00:06:34 Fear Of What Colleagues Would Think
00:09:29 Overcoming Fear Of Being On Camera
00:11:25 Understanding The Stress Response
00:12:38 Building A Healthy Relationship With Failure
00:14:22 How Lockdown Accelerated Her Content Growth
00:16:27 Getting A Book Deal
00:18:29 Becoming The UK’s Top-Selling Nonfiction Author Of 2022
00:21:52 Handling Fame And Millions Of Followers
00:24:11 Her Content Creation Process With Husband Matt
00:29:04 When A Video Goes Viral For The Wrong Reasons
00:31:19 You Don’t Have To Go Viral To Build A Business
00:32:42 The Unsustainable Early Years Of Content Creation
00:34:35 Raising Entrepreneurial Kids
00:39:19 Making An Unsexy Topic Engaging
00:40:05 The Power Of A Visual Hook
00:45:06 Why Content Creation Is Harder Than It Looks
00:47:09 Why She Never Uses A Call To Action
00:51:37 Using A Teleprompter Without Losing Personality
00:54:23 Overcoming Fear When Starting A Business
00:56:37 Why Word Of Mouth Still Works
00:57:31 A Step-By-Step Framework For Facing Fear
00:59:57 Handling Unsupportive Family And Friends
01:03:36 Beating Procrastination
01:07:03 Closing Thoughts

The following is a verbatim copy of the episode transcript and as such may contain minor grammatical errors.

Have you ever felt like you’ve got lots and lots of value to give, and you’ve wanted to put yourself out there, but for whatever reason, you’ve just not been able to.

You know, that book has sold nearly 2 million copies, and I have never asked anyone to buy the

Well, today’s guest on business growth secrets is Doctor Julie Smith.

because when you’ve got 60s, every word has to earn its place. And the, you know, probably on long form every minute counts, but in short form every second counts. And if you lose someone, they’re gone.

She’s someone I came to admire from afar by seeing her social media.

She was posting on Instagram and Facebook in lockdown and achieving massive success. She went from being completely unknown to having millions and millions of followers on social media and

became massively respected in psychology and in business, on social media for everything she was doing.

I think she’s one of the best people I’ve seen at social media. And in today’s interview, she literally breaks down.

how do you gain millions of followers from a standing start? If you’re a business owner that wants to get out there, wants to get known, I think you’re going to find a tremendous amount of value in today’s episode.

Let’s jump into today’s episode of Business Growth Secrets.

Well, welcome. Welcome. Thank you. How are you doing? That was. That was worse than walking down the aisle. Your own wedding. Crikey. Well, as I said, you backstage, I’ve been really excited wanting to bring you here for for quite some time. Because I think everything you do really resonates with with some of the things that we do, obviously, in a, in a different way, helping people to, to, to grow.

And I’m really excited. And I wanted to kind of get you to share some of your journey, because there’s a lot of people here today in the audience that have quit jobs, quit working for someone else to start their own business and come on this incredible journey. So why don’t we talk about and go back to the beginning where this all started for you?

Yeah. So I was in the NHS for about ten years, and once I had two of my now three children, I realized, oh my gosh, I can’t do all of this. Not well anyway. And so I left the NHS mostly so that I could control my own time and be a mom and that kind of thing. And and I did.

I had this, you know, a very small private practice. It was just me I was working at around school and things like that. And it was during that time I realized lots of kind of not only young people, but lots of young people coming along for therapy, and they didn’t really need long term, in-depth therapy. Lots of people don’t realize that when you go to therapy, you you do lots of talking, but you also learn a fair bit about how your brain works, how to impact on your relationships, that kind of thing.

And I found that a lot of people, once they had that information, they were raring to go and they were like, I think I can do this. And, and and I realized it was not rocket science. It was really helpful information that was fairly simple to put into your life. And, and when these people were learning it. And that’s where the the first book title came from is, people were saying, why is nobody told me this before?

This isn’t rocket science, but it’s making a big difference. And and so I would harp on to my poor husband and say this should be more available. Why? You know, why do people have to pay to come see someone like me to find out how their own mind works and being the problem solver that he is, he said, well, go on then, make it available.

And great. I just wanted to moan for a bit longer. But yeah. So we made a couple of really terrible YouTube videos and how bad were they? Oh pretty bad, I don’t know. I think they’re not on. I hope they’re not on there anymore. Matt does all that kind of stuff. But yeah, it was just kind of, you know, you got to sort of break it in.

Haven’t you kind of learn how to just talk to a camera and stuff like that. And so we did a bit of that and then it didn’t, it felt like a side project. It felt like something to do because it was a nice thing to do, to put it out there for free. And it felt like a bad business decision at the time to give it all away.

But yeah, it felt like a bad it didn’t feel like a business as it at all. It was a project because I had all these, you know, 20 somethings coming in feeling terrible about their lives and feeling that they couldn’t cope with the future. And yet when they had all this kind of information, they felt differently and they felt that they didn’t need me anymore.

And so I was kind of putting it out there partly for old clients that I’d had that I knew were out there and, and would often ask themselves, what would you say in this situation? What would you say? And I thought if there was that kind of pocket of information, they could go back to it and, and recap or refresh and stuff.

And, and then one evening, I still remember I was saying to you earlier, we were in the office about to go to bed, and Matt was kind of scrolling and he said, oh, look at this app. It’s called TikTok. He said, you should make some, like, bite sized videos. And we had a little look for a while and it was all kids dancing, comedy, loads of fun.

I said, absolutely not. Not a chance, you know? Can you imagine what my professional peers would say? And anyway, long story short, he convinced me to just have a go and we thought, we’ll do some videos. And then if we get trolled out of there or nobody listens, we’ll just switch it off and pretend that never happened. And so I would get home from the school, run complete mess, put my phone on the dining room table, and I would say something that I thought was useful, or I’d come up in therapy and within like two weeks, it was it was just going like this.

So the first one was a mistake, right? The first viral video was a mistake because I was filming in app at this point on TikTok and someone said, oh, you can add music. So I added music. I didn’t realize you could adjust the volume, so I’d put the volume of the background music too high and all these people in the comments saying, I can’t hear what you were saying because the music, two lads, I had to watch it three times to work out what you said.

Anyway, that pushed the video up. So that helped. But then we just had this sort of this flood of messages and emails of people saying, that’s really useful. What’s the next step? Or this is, this is really helpful. I’m using it with my partner. Can we have more information or can you do a video on this? Can you do a video on that?

And it was just sort of, oh my goodness. We’re reaching real people with real problems. And they’re finding it helpful enough that they’re then bothering to find my email and getting contact and stuff. And so we kind of thought.

So you had this fear where you were worried that you didn’t. You just mentioned it casually. You were perhaps a little bit worried in your back of your mind what your work colleagues might say. So that was probably my biggest fear all the way along was, you know, in the world of psychology as well, in mental health, you know, most of those people are even on social media, let alone using it for work at that point anyway.

And and so it felt as though it would just ruin my, you know, sort of credibility in the with my professional peers and things like that. And so nowadays, it’s just the biggest sort of reassurance for me. And the biggest compliments that I hold on to are from people that I know, either in the medical world or in the mental health.

Did any colleagues say anything to you when you started to do it? A lot, but none of the things that I anticipate. So I anticipated, you know, mockery and kind of criticism and and none of that came really. I get lots of messages from GP’s psychiatrist, mental health workers that I used to work with, or it’s all saying, I keep people in my office and I recommend it to people, or I refer, you know, refer to your videos or really.

Yeah, mind support groups, sort of mental health charities. And many of you disagree with you go I don’t agree with that concept or anything like that. Did you receive anything like that? Not really. No. I’ve always been very careful that what I’m talking about, I can defend because, like so me and my husband do it together and he’s super creative and and normally I will come up with, okay, there’s this idea or this concept and he’ll go, right, let’s set it a light or let’s put water on it and let’s make it really visually exciting.

So he’s the sort of creative person and but sometimes he’ll go, oh, I’ve heard this thing, why don’t we do video on that? And then I’m like, oh, I can’t, I can’t. If someone asks me about that, I can’t send it. Yeah. So always you know, I know it’s sort of hard to build your trust and credibility and really easy to lose it.

So that’s been my sort of thing. I’ve held on to all the way along really. And you mentioned trolls as well. So there was probably a little the reason I’m saying is there’ll be so many people here that, like yourself, are really talented. They’ve got this huge talent within within them. Yeah. But they’ve also got this fear that they battle against and these things that they might say to themselves that might stop them from taking the action.

So what I’m really trying to, you know, ask these questions. I know that this is probably exactly what they’ve experienced. So when the trolling part, what did you what you imagined there did did that happen? What happened next. No. And it didn’t. And I think partly.

Touching wood here because you never know. But I think it’s a, you know, it’s a scary thing to do to put yourself out there and I am.

People I’ve sort of knew as a child would not believe I’m doing what I do today. I was the quiet one. I’m a massive introvert. I’m really you know, I was always been very shy and I hated making the videos. And at one point I said, let’s try and make some videos and use some, like B-roll, and I’ll just talk over the top of it so that I don’t have to film myself.

And and it just didn’t work. And I think partly that’s because people like to look someone in the eye and they’re like a human. And I think that’s one of the positives about people have kind of scared about AI and things like that is human interaction then will become a premium because people want another human being to talk to, to trust, to listen to.

And and so yeah, yeah, I hated the idea of being in front of the camera or I loved 1 to 1 therapy in the room. That was what I did best and where I felt most comfortable. But starting to do it wasn’t that I sort of was very extra and wanted to be right out there. It was the opposite, really.

So and a lot of these things that I’ve then gone on to do, so I, I do kind of some TV said sort of this morning and things like that maybe once a month. And live TV is just just terror in your head. If you’re way shy or introverted. And how do you find doing something like this? Do you know, I haven’t done it for a while and so I felt the nurse today, but that’s how it goes, right?

So same with this morning. Live TV is horrific. The first time you do it, you’re just like, oh my God, I’m going to fall on stage, flash on my underwear to the nation. Oh, it’s all going around. And all of those stories go in your head, right. And and yet the second time you do it, those thoughts are a little bit less.

And the third time you do it this a little bit less again. And if I’m doing it on a regular basis, I can walk in and enjoy the whole thing and feel excited about it. But if I, if I leave it for six months and then return to it, you will feel that. And that is just your stress response, right?

So that’s your your brain is set up to give you a stress response when something feels novel or different or new or out of the ordinary. And that’s because your brain can’t fully predict how it’s all going to go. And so it will give you this kind of increase in your alert level. And it just says, right, be alert because we don’t know what exactly what’s going to happen.

And as long as you can kind of acknowledge that stress response as being that, then you can carry it with you and it doesn’t need to be a reason to hold back. So that’s a really interesting concept, right? Because everyone here is building businesses. And last month I asked them all to build a funnel, and I’m sure who had a bit of a stress response to that.

So yours is next month, right? So because you’re doing something new right. And I’m always trying to help somebody to step through that fear. Right. So how did how does somebody manage that stress response. How how do they manage that self-talk? I think a big part of it is being really intentional about your relationship with failure, so that those catastrophizing thoughts about going on live TV, they could happen.

Right? And and I cannot guarantee that mistakes won’t be made or that I won’t feel embarrassed or humiliated at some point from making a mistake or whatever. The only way I was then able to go on and do that kind of thing, that was so far out of my comfort zone, was to make a commitment to myself that whether it goes right or it goes wrong, I will have my own back.

So if if the worst happens, I make a mistake and I fail at something and it goes really wrong, I’m not going to kick myself all I’m down. So I’m not going to tear myself apart verbally. I’m not going to think that that failure or mistake says anything fundamental about who I am as a person, or my worth as a psychologist or a business person or any of that.

I’m going to say what I need to say to myself. That helps me to scoot myself back up and move forward again and try again and and always keeping in mind why I’m doing it. So, you know, the thing is, when I had the opportunity to do stuff like that, the the instinct is like, oh no, thank you.

But then I think, well, actually, I’ve been preaching to all these people on the internet about facing their fears, doing what’s uncomfortable, you know, stretching out of that comfort zone to learn new skills. And so it really was a whole, you know, all of this stuff is an exercise in kind of practicing what I preach. Really. Yeah. That’s that’s awesome.

And so you go on this, this journey, if you’re getting these videos out there and you start to get some traction at this stage, were you doing 1 to 1 essentially therapy with people at that stage? That’s what that look like. Yeah. Well it sort of coincide. We started November 2019 just before, you know, we all got locked away in our homes.

And so when lockdown first happened, all of my therapy was in person 1 to 1. And, and so no one was really used to doing video calls back then, weirdly, because it feels like, you know, we’ve been doing that for ever. But and so the, you know, offering people sort of virtual therapy sessions felt quite alien to a lot of people.

So when lockdown happened, I lost a lot of my clients all in one go, which kind of opened up this window of time to be able to make content and do things and, and yeah, so it sort of lots of things came together to enable that to happen. So as you’ve got your content out there, presumably the demand really grew.

And for you to be able to do therapy with people. Right, because this content then listening to it is it’s a concept that we call demo power is if you can demonstrate your value to someone before they even buy from you. They’re a lot more likely to want to buy from you. So you’re going out there demoing how good you are, and obviously then you’re getting an influx of people that want to do business with you.

How how did you handle that and what did that demand look like? You know? Yeah, it it quickly got out of control. And and the thing is for me, with the type of work, if I was selling, I don’t know, handbags or something, it would have been like, great, that’s keep going with what we’re doing. But when you when you’re offering therapy to people and your therapy rooms in your back garden and you’ve got three kids, it all felt very kind of difficult to maintain.

And I just saw on my way in, I saw an old friend of mine back there who’s a clinical psychologist. We met when just before we started clinical training, and he was that, and I literally haven’t seen her since. At the back. Claire, an amazing psychologist who. So when lots of these people were coming through saying, please, can I have therapy?

I was I was sending them Claire’s way because she’s brilliant. But yeah. So it felt like I needed to kind of shift my expectation for actually the service I was providing, because I couldn’t see all of these people and be I didn’t know how I was going to do that safely because I didn’t know who was coming through and for what reasons and things.

So, yeah. And then the thing is, once you develop a big audience, publishers all come and knock on the door and, and say, do you want to write a book? And, and I thought, I really do. So it felt like the next step because lots of people were saying, you know, we’re making 62nd videos at this point. So a lot of people are saying, I love this, but can I have more information?

And so a book felt like the next kind of service to say, yes, here’s all that extra info in the detail that you can then use. And, and that just just took on a life of its own. It. When did you know that this was going to be what it was going to be? Was there a tipping point where you just went, oh my God, this is this is going to be really big.

Was there a moment or did it, you know, in terms of the build up. So was there one video that dropped and he was like, wow, this is actually we were helping a lot of people here. Was there something like that, that a trigger point for you? Yeah, I think when the first video that got sort of over a million views like, whoa, that feels big and but I think every time something happens, you think, oh my goodness, how have I.

How have I managed to get here? Because even even signing a book deal, I was. So I’m such a book and nerd and generally kind of psychology geek. I was so grateful to have the opportunity to write one that I thought, right, I don’t want to know anything about numbers and what would be a success in the book world.

I had no idea, and I didn’t want to know. And I just had this idea of, you know, I don’t know anyone’s Alan Partridge fan of. I had this idea of me standing in sort of local shopping center, trying to flog books that were left over that would not not get please buy them before they get pulped kind of thing.

And and me and Matt just had this thought of, you know, we just don’t want Penguin to regret giving us a deal. And so we just got our heads down. We did what we at that point knew what to do, which was make good content, give it all for free, and then just give people the option. So we’re not pushing anyone.

We’re not trying to sell anything. We’re not saying, please buy this. We’re saying, here’s some really useful information if that’s for you and you want more. There is a book just did that over and over and over again. And why his name, Thomas Before was the top selling book of 2022 in the UK.

The top selling book, top selling nonfiction. How did that feel? Insane. You know, we had it got to number one of the Sunday Times in the first week. And my husband, sort of, as a little surprise, invited a few of our friends over and we all had some dinner together and stuff, and they said, oh, this had been so much fun to get together.

Should we do it every week that the books in the Sunday Times would do it again? But we had to quickly change that because of the book. It stayed in the Sunday Times for over 100 weeks. So after a while I said, let’s get together when it drops out. And then, which is just wild and these things kind of snowball.

And so but I think that was never the plan. What do people say about the book? What sort of messages do you get back from people? Oh, that will get me emotional. I think the thing is, I never imagined, you know, when you do something like that and you put it so far out into the world, it’s very different.

When you’re in therapy with someone, they can tell you the impact that it’s having on their life. And I never thought I would kind of get that same incredible feeling again because you don’t know. Right. And but when I do sort of events or I go to a literary festival or something and people come and get their book signed and, and it gets emotional.

You know, people come and say, you know, there’s this part in the book and it changed my life this way because this was happening and they’ve all got a story. And, and you realize people live really tough lives and they don’t really take much encouragement to, to make a shift that’s really positive for them and all the people around them.

And so the thing I thought I would miss from therapy is that kind of being a part of someone’s life changing, it kind of happens, but in a slightly different way. So yeah, it’s good. And is there a pattern? Is there is there one bit that you think in the book that people mention over and over again? No, no, because that book is quite general.

So it covers different areas. It covers all the things that I think all of us struggle with at some point. But you don’t get a manual for. So things like, you know, having low days of low mood and when you’re kind of struggling with drive, motivation, stress, anxiety, finding meaning in life, those kind of things. So all of those things that we all kind of struggle with at certain points, but therapy has some really useful gems that could do with sharing is all about those kind of things.

So often people will kind of dip in and dip out of it, and it all kind of comes together at some point. Yeah, which I think a lot of the videos do that, don’t they? They’re almost like like a mini handbook for, for saying change your behavior almost. Is that how you would see it. It’s almost like behavioral changes and things.

Yeah. It’s all about kind of taking responsibility for yourself. Quite radical responsibility really. And and saying, you know, it’s not your fault that you’re here, but it is your responsibility to do something with it now and, and giving people that sort of encouragement to, to go forward with it. Brilliant. So, so when go on this journey and you’ve got these videos out there and it’s growing and things are happening, you got the book deal and you’re being asked me on TV.

Obviously that comes with a degree of fame. Right? So you’ve got now millions of people following you. I think 4 million people on TikTok. Right. And when I looked earlier and YouTube million. So you’ve got all of these people that you’re impacting. Did was there some pressure that that put on. How did you handle that pressure yourself? Did you feel pressure with that?

Yeah. Because again, it’s not something I wanted. So for me, all of that stuff really uncomfortable and weird and, but across all the different platforms is about sort of 10 million of us in that community, but that’s really spread out across the world. And so it’s not like I can’t walk down the street, you know, it’s and the people that do know of me know of me because they find the stuff interesting.

So it’s it’s very different type of public space. You know, it’s people if they come up, want to, you know, someone came up in the supermarket the other day, which never really happens to me. And I said, oh, I love your work. This thing, you know, and sort of telling me a specific story about how it’s been helpful, which is very different to what some people probably have to deal with.

So it is nice and really positive, but it’s kind of private enough. I live in a small town. No one gives a monkey’s what I do and so is yeah, I can I still, you know, do the school run the no makeup on and, you know, still living a very normal life, but occasionally someone might go.

Like that to me and I think, oh, God.

So I think the, the business owners that we’ve got in the room, they’re all going on a journey. I think obviously a lot of people quite content in here and I’d love to get into some of you said, obviously you mentioned your your husband. So a lot of the content grabs attention, solves one problem. You don’t ramble. You’re very to the point, aren’t you?

In what you do when you you actually give these different guidance and these devices. What does that kind of content creation look like? What’s your process like to to building that out? It’s kind of interesting because a lot of people get the impression that you’ve you’ve just kind of thought something and said it and then, you know, it maybe took us long to film as it did for them to watch.

And, and I’ve actually been in meetings before where people have got, oh, if you want, you can just make the video now while we’re on the call. And I’m like, no, it doesn’t really have like that. We’re often will often spend days scripting something. So my husband still my team is me and my husband. And I was going to ask, who’s the team?

Content creators. The editing. It’s just me and my husband. He I look to the camera, he does everything else. So yeah, he should be here. Really.

So love him next time. Yeah, I think he still runs his own business full time. What does he do? He has a very different business. Nothing to do with psychology. He deals with like plant machinery and eating and things like that. So he does anything and and then when we put the kids to bed at night, then we go into the office and start thinking of videos.

And so there’ll be a process of scripting. And sometimes that’s long, sometimes it’s short. We have a whole we use notion if you’re familiar. Yeah. So we put all our scripts into notion so that we can both work on them in real time. So we’ll be sitting in the office on different laptops and I’ll be tight something, then he’ll delete it and then and we’ll do all that.

And so yeah,

That’s it. So, yeah, we’ll spend a lot more time. It’ll take much longer. Learn that. Did you? Was that something that you learned just through doing it, or did you.

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s where I would say as well, don’t, you know, don’t try and be a sort of a great content creator before you’ve made any content. Just learn as you go. And it’s okay if a video doesn’t do as well as the last one, if you like, you say a bit, a bit like with the the TV thing.

If a if a video does. Terrible. That’s such an amazing learning experience, isn’t it? What did it lack that the one that did really well didn’t lack? Or how were they different. And and I think that’s also psychologically how I managed being out there online is knowing that if a video was bad, that’s not me, that’s bad. It’s that that video wasn’t great.

And so we could kind of, you know, you judge every video on its own merit. It’s not necessarily, you know, what should we kind of like? Do you get really geared up? I’m going to I’m going to skip this. So both of you scripts in it. Yeah. Getting excited about it. And you get really excited. You build it out, then you go and do it.

It flops. What do you say to yourself then? Sometimes I won’t even really know because I don’t post it and I don’t. That’s the way. Right. So that’s really and that, again, is how I’ve dealt with being the face of it. Is, is so, so actually I think that’s really key. Oh my goodness. And you know what?

You know I started this thing in my mid 30s. You know I felt like I was a pretty confident person. I knew all the stuff in the books about how to look after yourself. I had a lovely, you know, family, marriage, a career that I loved. And yet there’s something about putting your face in a camera that just brings out all of those kind of natural insecurities and, and so, yeah, one of the ways that I’ve dealt with that and kept myself saying is, is by just not focusing on on numbers, on comments on any of it, really, my main parameter is okay if we’re making a video, the only criteria for that is that

it could be helpful to someone. Okay, so I’ll make a video and I’ll know that there’s a there’s a seed in there that if the right person watches that at the right time, they’ll find that useful. Because I know somebody else has found that. Is that your motivation then? Yeah. Yeah. And Matt thinks more about the other stuff.

Completely selfless. Just is there any. Yeah. Well, I think now that it’s become because that’s how it started. Right. And now it’s become a thing like if we’re making a video for a brand, for example. So I’m an ambassador for Samsung. They do lots of kind of work around monitoring your sleep and stuff like that. And so I’ve been working with them on sort of wellbeing and stuff.

So if we’re making a video with them or for them, obviously there’s a, you know, pressure, different pressure and you think much more about, you know, sort of are people going to keep watching and stuff like that. And but yeah, generally I will kind of step back. We’ll make a video if I’m if we’re both pleased with it, we’ll watch it back.

Then I will leave it and just let it, you know, let him post it here, there and everywhere. And then when it’s gone wild, the flip side of that is have you then gone and read the comment that happened to us? We were on holiday. We’d made a video. I don’t know if anyone seen it. It’s not up here.

But we had a fish tank and I had a little bath toy. It’s a little, little plastic fish and when you put it in water it starts to kind of swim around. And we used that as a bit of a metaphor with like a clean tank being clean environment and then, you know, and moving these tanks around. And we posted it while we were on holiday.

And Matt just like, oh my God, oh my, oh my God. It’s it just keeps going up and up and up and on YouTube. It just just I don’t know I don’t know. I’m so terrible on it. I don’t know how many it’s on, but it’s like tens of millions. And and again, mostly because people are in the comments going, I can’t believe you’re being so cruel to that fish.

No way, no way. There was debates in the comments about whether the fish was real, so Matt didn’t reply to any of the earlier. It was pretty obvious that that yes, yes, and the one with the frog as well. We do one. I did the metaphor of the the frog and boiling water at one point, and there was a lot of, I can’t believe you used the real frog on that, whether it was real.

Yeah. And one of the people that commented you were being really cruel here was a vet. No. Right. But it’s all fun and games, isn’t it? And, you know, if you know that what you’re doing is, is right and true and fair, then it’s all fine. And so yeah, it’s kind of exciting. And I think that’s something as well to keep hold of is that these platforms are made to be addictive to the consumer, but they’re also made to be addictive to content creators.

Right. So every now and then you will get a little blow up and you’re like, oh yes. And then you’ll feel so much drive to kind of try, you know, make another video or go again. And so it’s kind of keeping that in mind that you don’t get lost in this idea that likes mean that you’re liked or that you know, it has any degree of measure of your worth as a company or as an individual.

It’s just, you know, it’s just a way of of connecting with people and putting your message out there. And so if you’re doing that, then, you know, severe and also you don’t have to go viral if you’ve got a small company. So my sister is a wedding florist and she puts stuff online, but there’s only limited content she can make really, because she has a wedding like a couple of times a month.

And so it’s very, you know, she’s got a, I don’t know, like 4000 followers on there or something. That’s okay. She’s making a good living out of that. And that’s okay. So you don’t have to, you know, embarrass yourself online like me. And and you don’t have to do that unless you want to do something like, you know, speaking events or writing or something like that.

There’s no need if you if you can reach enough people in your local area to run a decent business and make a decent living, that’s a win. If you had to start again tomorrow. So it was taken all the way from you. Oh God. And you literally had to start again tomorrow from scratch. First of all, would you do it?

Yes yes yes. Okay. And what what might you do differently? Oh, God, that’s really hard, isn’t it? Because, you know, when it all started and I had this thought of this could just switch off at any minute, you know, we didn’t really know. Nobody knew, did we? This whole kind of short form craze was happening, and nobody knew at what point it would all switch off.

And so we worked in such an unsustainable fashion. And I think that’s the thing that a lot of people don’t realize that I’ve had people rate comments and stuff where my, my sister or someone will say, oh, you know, my sister’s doing this. And I say, oh yeah, I should just make a few videos and then my life will change.

And I think, oh, man, alive. I at one point I was I didn’t want it to affect the children. So I was getting up at 5 a.m. to make videos before they got up. And then we were staying up late to work to film, because I would say when I was writing the book, I had to write all day to get my word count in, and then we had to still had to nurture the audience that had got us this deal in the first place.

So I was then filming late into the night, getting up early with a kid like The Sleep was, you know, it was not fun for a lot of your children during this period now. Oh, at that point I had one in nappies, I think. Yeah, 2019. Leon was a toddler. They’re all they’re all still my, my eldest daughter has just turned 13, but we started five years ago.

What does she think of all this? I think they we’ve tried to teach them that social media with held back from allowing any of them on there, but we’ve tried to teach them about what we’re doing that social media is a marketplace, and everybody on there is trying to sell you something and things like that. So we that in itself is a good message because, you know, a lot of people don’t treat it that way.

They treat it as a consumer rather than a creator, you know for sure. And yeah, that’s yeah, I mean, my my daughter’s really good at editing. She helps her. She loves to help us film sometimes. And you know, if we’re doing it on a weekend or something, she loves that kind of side to it. And they love coming along on like the book tour and things like that where they get to meet cool people.

My daughter is really entrepreneurial, and she started a little bath bomb business when she was making bath bombs and selling them to any sucker that would come round to our house, she’d be like, oh, hello, and who’s not going to buy a bath bomb from a ten year old girl? Right? And and I was here, know Stephen Bartlett, and we were going to speak at the same event.

And so I took her along and she got to tell him all about her business and stuff like that. And so she, you know, she’s got some some great experiences out of it that really inspired her. But all the way a lot. You know, the reason I left the NHS in the first place was to get some family life balance and all that seemed to be going out the window when in a positive way, in some ways, because it was all great opportunities that we felt we couldn’t say no to.

But I was very clear on my values. I wanted to be present as a parent and things like that. And so I think some people probably think I’m nuts. The things I’ve said no to, because if it doesn’t fit with our family life, then it’s a no. And, you know, I think that’s another thing about being entrepreneurial or running a business.

Your own business is people imagine that the only goal must be, you know, well, this will I find it really interesting because you you didn’t actually do it to build your business. You just did it to add value. Right? Initially. Yeah, yeah. And it’s and it’s been wonderful in the opportunities. It’s gonna have anyone to clients anymore. No I had but at the moment I’ve taken a break because I’ve got book three to write.

And so yeah, it’s another thing where you’re like, I can’t do it all, not well. So I need to take a break to be able to write a decent book and then and then return. You miss the 1 to 1 stuff sometimes. Yeah, yeah. There’s something quite unique about the therapeutic relationship, and it’s really hard to describe someone who’s not experienced that.

But yeah, it’s the job that I loved. And so yeah, all this is kind of very exciting. But I also that’s probably another thing that’s helped me is I know that if tomorrow it does all switch off and nobody wants to watch the videos, I would happily return to what I was doing. So that helps. Can be my therapist.

Yeah. That sound good? Yeah, yeah. Friends and family. There we go.

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So do you have like a framework now for creating content? Is there like you said you use a notion doc for example. All this experience. Now is there some kind of secret sauce that you have for your, your content creation because it’s so clever. How many of you watched some of these apart from raise your hands if you have.

Yeah, lots of people in the room have and it’s so clever what you do. So metaphors being a part of that for sure. Yeah. So certain therapies use a lot of metaphor work. So we’ve pulled a lot out of that kind of stuff. Annoyingly, we noticed that if we do a video that’s on, okay, the signs of something or, you know, you know, signs of social anxiety or whatever, those things get lots of hits and people will be in the comments saying, but what shall I do then if, if but you do a video on tips to help you with social anxiety and hardly anybody watches it.

So it’s really tricky. But I think in some ways that’s short form. Short form is draw you in. I know something about this. And then if this is for you, I do have a book or something to kind of or a cause or whatever it is to then offer to you, knowing that you can’t sort of put everything useful into 62nd video.

That’s also because the thing is with the short form is nobody has typed that in to get to you. So you go on YouTube and you’re looking for a long form video, you’re typing in what you want, and when you get there, you’ve chosen it and you’re in for five, ten, 15 minutes, whatever. But when you’re scrolling on short form, you’re just looking for something interesting.

And so it’s much, much harder to. That’s where all the visual stuff came in for us is that when you’re talking about something as unsexy as psychology and mental health, and all the concepts are very abstract and imaginary, do you consider the topic to be unsexy, then? Yeah, for sure. I mean, it’s funny, isn’t it? Because I actually think it’s a pretty cool topic, but I think I’m a proper nerd, so.

But whatever, anybody’s in someone in here in proper, it’d be like no one cares about properly or, you know, like no one cares about this or every, every thinks that their topic isn’t. But I actually think it’s a really cool topic. Yeah. That’s true. I don’t know. I think maybe partly because it’s abstract as well that we needed to add the visuals in the props and things like that to, to give someone an easier way to remember what you’re talking about.

And, and so yeah, sometimes they sort of the idea or the concept comes first. And sometimes I’ll just see a prop or be in a shot. I think it’s not fair. But one of the things I used was a sort of multi-colored Jenga set. Yeah. Saw that in a shop, I thought, I can you got a big kind of idea for that as well.

Where did that come from? Big blue one, that’s just one of those big garden ones. Oh, we did a video with Bupa and we, we sprayed it blue because people all blue and and stuff like that. So even something like that is everyone uses a Jenga set. But you sprayed it blue. Yeah. Does grab your attention. It’s that little bit little pieces of creativity that I think make a difference.

Right? Yeah. Because sometimes people aren’t listening to you anymore, but they’re watching. And so, you know, it’s good to have a visual hook as well as a sort of verbal one. And, and so, yeah, all the visual stuff really helps. And so you consider it. That’s really interesting concept. Like I find this fascinating because I think it’s such an interesting, even the concept of a visual hook, because obviously we as a professional speaker, we’re, we’re dealing with hooks all the time in all of our ads and everything we do, and really thought as much of it as a visual hook.

That’s actually a really cool concept. I saw a set of videos recently I didn’t create. I remember her name, but she was doing She’s Talking to You about something that’s quite an abstract set of ideas, but it’s essentially a cooking video. She’s making a meal and the photography is brilliant and the lighting is fantastic, and you’re watching even if you’ve kind of lost track of what she’s saying for a moment, you want to see that pasta finish come out of a machine because you’re in on it, you know?

And so you’re in on it on different levels and maybe the music as well. If you attach a certain track and people are into that track, they will listen out for the, you know, the rest of that verse or whatever it is. And so, you know, it’s using all of those senses to just keep people engaged for a minute.

And so we’re all about that sort of engagement and then slipping in a little bit of education along the way. So you consider a visual hook. So if you’re going to make a video, if we were going to make a video like right now, obviously we’re not. But you’d say Adam, what’s the visual hook. Yeah. And then you’d say presumably you then go to the spoken hook, would you?

I would start with the spoken. Actually, we start with the idea we want to make a video on this, blah, blah, blah. And then sometimes we go to film and we haven’t really got a visual hook in this one. Should I just make a coffee or, you know, sometimes I’ve got all these, like, teapots and stuff at home.

So sometimes I’ll just pour tea, but I’ll have two cups, I’ll pour one for me and one for the viewer, and I’ll hand it to the viewer, so I’ll put it by the camera. So we’re kind of, you know, there’s a lot of talking to that camera as if it’s a person and a lot of that kind of stuff gets added in, or we’ll put it on a loop.

So I’ll, I’ll come in and take my jacket off. And then as I get up, I’ll get up and go and take my jacket and walk out again. And then we’ve kind of looped it or, you know, all these little things that as you go, every time you’re filming or making a video, you’re just asking yourself, do you need to add something or is it enough?

Or how could we spice it up and make people go, oh, wow. And, you know, and I think you do that as you go, you know, you just how many times might you do for say, we watched two, didn’t we watch the balloon? One. How many times did you get covered in water of doing that. Yeah. So so those ones kind of.

There’s a lot of prep. There’s one where I’m sat on an exercise ball and we explode the exercise ball and I fall on my ass. And we knew we and had one take for that. That was with Gymshark. And we we didn’t film that until we started at sort of 8 or 9 at night. We didn’t actually film that take until four in the morning because there was so much prep.

We had to make sure it was exactly right before we did it, but people see it in its 62nd video. Done. That’s why I asked the question, because I think there’s so much underneath the layer of success that that people don’t always recognize because, well, I made a 62nd video and mum was clever. Why didn’t it quite work?

Do you know what I mean? But it’s that intricate details. I think sometimes when people hate the idea of being in front of camera, they hate the creative process of or scripting over and over again or thinking of something new to say, or oh, filming is so annoying and then we get the lighting wrong and and that is the that’s the slog.

That’s the bread and butter of that kind of content world. It’s hard work. We never feel like doing it, especially because we film at night. After interest in put the kids to bed, I’m ready to go to bed myself. And yet I’m putting makeup on because we want to make a video. And in between, I’m glad that Matt does the editing, because often in between takes is me going, oh God, can we just get a better?

It makes me feel a lot better because like every week I go to the studio, Abby comes studio, the team come straight on like, I’m

fucking want to do this. Yeah, I want to do it. And he’s like, oh, come on, come on, Adam. It’s going to be really good. I’m like, no, it’s not. It’s, you know, and sometimes it gets worse.

So the later we film into the night, the more I get it wrong. And then I’m like, oh, I’ve got it right. And I think that’s the thing is, people imagine because they don’t only see the polished, you know, final product and they think, oh, just look so easy. And it’s and then people, when they’re trying to make their own content, when it’s actually really hard, really embarrassing or really, you know, it makes you feel insecure or it’s just boring, people then think, this isn’t for me or I’m getting it wrong.

It doesn’t mean you’re not going to produce something good at the end of it, and much you need to lean on these psychology skills to get through this. Oh, all the time. It’s probably been, you know, psychologically the biggest apart from parenting, probably the biggest challenge, you know, psychological challenge for me because it wasn’t in the plans. And every step of the way, it’s gone against my natural urges.

As you know, the quiet one, the academic, the you know, when I got to write the book, I was like, oh, yes, I get to sit on my own in my office with all my books and just write all day. That was brilliant. But actually the day to day of of all this other stuff, it has definitely been, you know, an experience of growth because I’ve been stepping outside of that comfort zone and everything.

But yeah, not not easy by any stretch. Is there any way that you can get yourself excited for it? Is there? What do you say? Do you have a pattern that you say things to get yourself excited to do it? Yeah, and I guess it helps not asking for myself just to see where. Well, I think it helps to have a partner in crime, doesn’t it?

Because Matt and I are doing it together. There will be times when he’s tired and doesn’t feel like. And there’ll be times when I’m tired or I’m just. Yeah. Not into it. And, and and so we have to kind of pull each other along and lift each other up with it. So, you know, and sometimes that involves thinking about look where we are.

Look at these incredible opportunities that are being thrown our way. And, and at the moment, you know, YouTube seem to really like us. And every time we can be bothered to put a video out, it just goes. And I’m like, what are we doing if we’re, you know, not making a video here. And and so we never really even though it’s hard, we never regret having, you know, skipped Netflix to make a video.

Yeah. That’s you know that’s the thing isn’t it. Yeah. Because that is I think it’s a lovely thing to do as a couple if you’re both interested in business. Obviously not everyone’s got that, you know, in the life, but I think for sure that’s a really nice thing, isn’t it. Yeah. So I’ve got to get the remainder of this framework.

And then I’ve got to ask you a couple of questions to help people. So basically we go, what’s the idea of the video? What’s the what’s the actual. Can we get a visual hook to spice it up? What about like the body of content and the call to action? Do you consider those aspects in it or do you not see it like that?

You just say, I want to get this point across. This is my educational piece that I want to transfer to the audience. Is that the way you see it? Yeah. So I don’t often have a call to action. I’m just giving it out for free and building that way. And I think that builds trust. I think you end the video without a call to action.

I just I don’t know if I could do that. Maybe you’ve got to learn, but you have to like, hold it in. I’m not asking. And that’s the thing with the book.

You know, that book has sold nearly 2 million copies, and I have never asked anyone to buy the

book. That’s incredible. It. Right. Maybe don’t ask them.

Right. Yeah. Stop asking. No. And I think that’s it is that. Give it all. Be willing to give it all for free. And I say this to my sister when she’s saying, oh, I want to make the floristry content. I’m like, why don’t you just teach people how to do their own floristry? And it sounds bizarre because then you’re like, well, how will I have any customers?

And, and often, you know, in my videos I’m talking about things that are in the book, you know, and but then it builds that relationship and that trust. That’s. Oh, actually, this is useful. Oh, I would like a bit more of this, please. And and I love when we were sort of learning how to do all the tech side of things and the filming and the lighting.

We were following this guy on YouTube. I can’t remember his name. And he would say, he would give you lots of information about your lighting, and he’d say, and I’ve got this course. You don’t have to buy it. You can, but you don’t have to. I’ve got it all on my YouTube channel. And how how brilliant is that, that at no point was he trying to push the course.

He was letting us know that there was one, but also letting us know that he doesn’t really mind if you take it or you don’t. And so you liked his reverse. He felt that we wanted to. Yeah. We felt that we wanted to do that, to support him for the fact that he was given all this for free and that we were getting so, you know, gaining so much from his input.

And, and, you know, that kind of relationship with, with content creators is brilliant. Did you buy the course? I think we did, yeah. Mats the techie one. So he probably did. But as soon as someone feels like especially with short form, if you’re making short form, the second someone feels like they’ve got an ad on their hands, they’re gone.

That’s it. And so when we’re working with brands like Samsung, for example, we’re kind of talking to them a lot about this kind of stuff that that you don’t make an ad, don’t make an ad, and I won’t make an ad for them. So I, I will make an information video. And I’m talking about something like sleep and, and the watch is part of that or whatever.

But at no point do I say, here’s the price and here’s where to get your watch. No, not at all. You know, if you want to monitor your sleep, you can write down on pen and paper the next morning how you feel if you want to, but if you want to go techie, there’s other option as well done.

And and I think that’s the key with the biggest mistake people make. Or a friend of ours is trying to do like a PT thing and exercise stuff, and she’ll often call Matt for sort of advice and stuff and never follow it. And, and so she’s made ad after ad after ad of a of a course and, and it doesn’t work.

But the minute you say, I’m just going to give you all the information I know about how to be healthy, then people are there time. And because they might have to consume 50 pieces of your content before they’ll eventually buy something. And I say for the execution often, right. So the information they want, it’s actually the execution or the accountability or whatever it might be.

And I find it, you know, it’s fascinating that concept of of giving it all away for free. And I think a lot of people struggle to get there. I mean, myself included at times I’ve been like, you know, struggle to to do that, but definitely do that more now and definitely find that that builds better relationships for sure.

Yeah, a lot less afraid. I wanted to ask about how incisive you are as well in the videos, because you are very incisive. You said every word counts. I would like to try to use a teleprompter. Or do you just or are you just you? You’re very intentional with the used to write on a A4 bit of paper.

My thoughts and I would like seller tape it to the top of a ring light, and I would try not to look at it too much while I was filming and stuff like try and I would go over and over again, get it really wrong. And then over the sort of few years that we built up a bit of tech and everything went and bought more smoothly as soon as we had a teleprompter.

Oh my gosh, I can film in five minutes flat, you know, I can read so I and I can read as if I’m just saying it for the first time. How do you feel about using certainly prompts you don’t mind. You know, it’s fine. You know, sometimes, do you feel like sometimes when I’ve used the teleprompter in the past, I feel like it.

It almost curbs the the impulse of the personality. Do you understand what I mean? I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like that. I think that that is dependent on the quality of the script, I think. And your ability to read it as if you’re just saying it for the first time. And, and so, yeah, sometimes I’ll read something and I’ll go, oh, no, start again, I sound awful, I sound like I’m reading it.

You feel like it’s not you? Yeah. So you’ve got a you’ve got to read it as if you are. And we actually do this with our kids for their reading. Slightly off subject, but we set the kids down in front of the camera and we put something on the teleprompter. We get ChatGPT to come up with like a little script for them little funny kids script, and they pretend they’re TV presenters and they, as they’re reading, practice.

There’s some there’s a real quality, you know, in being able to read as if you’re not reading, as if you’re just saying it and, and you know, so it’s a bit of a skill that kind of needs practice and stuff. But oh my goodness, I can film several in a night if all the scripts are done. That’s why all of our time really is spent scripting, scripting, scripting.

So I’ll write something that’s way too long, really repetitive, terrible, and we will just hack away at it until it’s, you know, under 60s and then we’ll hack away at it again if there’s any repetition or, you know, we’ll really work on that because when a script is ready, I can film it in ten minutes. That’s fine. So that will probably be a really good tip for people in here, if especially if they’re not super confident at first.

Would you like do you wish you’d done that in the beginning? Yeah, but it’s a learning process, isn’t it? And we’ve kind of learned as we you know, if you go right to the bottom of any of my Instagrams or whatever the early video is, are terrible. And that’s because we’ve learned as we’ve got, you know, terrible lighting, you know, all those kind of things too close to the camera, whatever, all these mistakes.

But I see that now as a sign of, of development. And if, if my videos were the same now as they were five years ago, then I wouldn’t have improved. So it’s okay to improve while you’re doing it, I think. And I think, you know, for everyone here, there’s some some amazing guidance there on content creation. I would love to sort of change the text slightly and get into some of the attributes of building a business.

And what’s really interesting is you’ve done that right. You were working in the NHS, you stepped out of the NHS, which is very solid. And and when you did that, more than likely there’s going to be some fear there. Is there some coping mechanisms for fear or some practical frameworks that that you could give that you could say to a business owner that they could perhaps adopt into their the way they think when it comes around fear.

What would you say to some that’s like, I know I need to do this, but I’m afraid, yeah, I would say it’s okay to be afraid. I was definitely afraid when I left the NHS and and now I see people on sort of little forums and, and Facebook groups and stuff saying, oh, should I take the leap or should I?

And often, whether it’s a corporate job or NHS, it creates often this this I think it’s a bit of an illusion really, but a sense of a comfort blanket or this kind of safety of knowing where the salary is coming from every month and things like that, and this sense of idea that if you make a mistake in some way, that you’ll be protected by the organization, which often I think isn’t true.

That’s an interesting concept because I never, ever, you know, thought of thought of that. But perhaps that is something that goes through people’s minds for sure. Right. Yeah, I think so. And, and and yet I have never looked back. And I imagined as well that I would have to become this, like, super marketer when I left and sort of advertise and learn.

All of those have become that now I know and I and I that was my fear is that how am I going to advertise a job? And actually therapy is one of those private things when you’re going through it. Right? Because when you’re in it, it’s really, you know, uncomfortable. And people don’t talk about it as soon as they have found it helpful and they’ve come out the other side, they get better.

Then the next time they hear someone who’s not doing so well, they can’t wait to tell them, go and see that person. I found that so helpful. Go. And I never advertise my private practice. And and so word of mouth is still a huge that if you’re doing something and you make it your sole purpose to do it as well as you possibly can and make that customer experience something extraordinary, they will talk about you and and say that, you know, and that’s the thing with content creation as well.

It’s not the be all and end all. And there are massive opportunities that come from it. And potential is wild, but there are many people who run a business that don’t create content and they’re earning decent living. So often it depends on the business and what you want to achieve. So I think if you’re going to make content, it’s about why am I doing it and what is it that I want to happen from it?

And therefore, what do I need to be well known for if that thing is going to happen and that then will dictate what content you make. Even outside of the content, though, someone was afraid to invest in their business or, you know, grow them, or to quit the job or to bring the person on is their kind of like, if you were in therapy, would you have a rationale or like a step by step process for helping them to like, make decisions that empowered them?

Is this something that you do with? Yeah. So the key thing about, you know, addressing any kind of phobia or fear is that you have to voluntarily choose to face that fear in a way that is sustainable for you. So in small steps, so, you know, people talk about comfort zones and things like that. If you have your comfort zone, you step just outside of it and you stay there for as long as you can.

And when you stay there, what happens is your comfort zone grows a bit to encompass that. The thing that you do every day becomes your comfort zone. So you do a bit and then you think, that wasn’t as bad as I thought. And then you get less. So the more you repeat something, the more your stress response in doing it comes down because your brain goes, I’ve seen this before.

We can we can automate this. I know what I’m doing. And so you don’t get as much as a stress response. And so you do it very gradually. And so you don’t need to kind of suddenly go, right, I’ve quit my job and I’ve started this business. Are you do you know, I, I did private work before I left the NHS and so I sort of I went part time and I built it up.

And then I thought, okay, I’m doing this. Okay, let’s go for it. And, and so, you know, you do it a way that means you don’t have to be terrorizing yourself with, oh my gosh, how am I going to pay the mortgage this month. Yeah. So you don’t. Yeah. Because some people just dive in and you’re almost saying handle that stress response by step by step is that that would be more of a recommendation.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. To kind of do it in a way that’s sustainable. But also that’s really hard work isn’t it. So you know, is friend of ours that wanted to kind of, you know, quit, quit her job and start doing the PT thing. And it’s like, well, because, you know, you don’t want to do the late nights and things, but okay, but there is a cost to that decision, which is it’s really scary because you don’t know where your first client is coming from.

Whereas if you put in six months of really hard work and late nights and things like that, then then that overlap can help to kind of ease the transition. Yeah. Another thing that I think that many people here will have experienced is negative voices outside of as well. Sometimes internally. Yeah, sometimes externally as well. You know, having a goal or dream or ambition and having a friend, a brother or sister, wife, mum or dad, husband whatever having his.

Grace, it sounds like you had really supportive, a lot of support in the household. So for your journey. But a lot of times sometimes people don’t. Is there a is how, how how do you advise people in in the therapist capacity to be able to navigate that kind of situation? This is interesting actually, because while my husband is very entrepreneurial and very much less go for it.

Why not? We, you know, we can recover from whatever happens. And but my my family, like my parents, not like that at all. And, and so we probably had about 100,000 followers on TikTok before I told anyone that we were doing it. And, and, and even when it was Christmas time. And Matt said to my dad, oh, look, look what we’ve been doing.

And, and just had no idea of what that meant or whether that was good or decent, and started talking about PowerPoint presentations and stuff and, and, and so it’s kind of and even then I think my mum was saying, why are you. Why are you wasting your time with this? Where could it lead to? What are you doing?

And and so, you know, she’s much more on that kind of negative side of things. Why not to do something rather than why to do it? And which is probably why I didn’t say anything before. And I think it’s really key to be clear on why you’re doing something and your values set around it so that it’s much easier to not take naysayers personally or or criticisms personally, because you’re clear that you’re not doing it for their approval, you’re doing it for your own.

And if your ambition is to run X business and get to a certain level with that business, and that’s to to create financial security for your family, then absolutely go for it. And, and there will be people along the way that the either want to bring that down or so seeds of doubt along the way. And if you’re really clear on who’s approval you’re seeking, then it’s easier to kind of take some opinions with a pinch of salt and recognize that they’re coming from a different place.

And that’s is that what you did with your mum initially in the beginning? You just. Yeah, yeah, because I realized that I’d got to a point in my life where I didn’t need their approval that we were going for this thing, this project and and seeing where it took us. Did you explain to your mum why you were doing it then?

Did you say, hey, we’re doing this for. No, no, not at all. No, I just didn’t say anything. And then even once, you know, Matt sort of kind of tell them a bit and they had no idea. But it was at that point where no one really knew what this social media thing was about or what the potential was.

And, and, and I didn’t really have anything to draw upon to say, look, this is what other people do. Because at that point when we started, I couldn’t find any other psychologists on there offering kind of mental health education or anything like that. So there wasn’t even really a path that I could say that’s where we want to head, because we didn’t really know we were just doing this thing and kind of all the opportunities were coming in and we were kind of going, okay, let’s, let’s roll with it.

She’s super proud now. Yeah. I think from being there, I think from being there, what are you going to get for this? You know, what is the point of this. She’ll now happily, you know, steer people towards the book in Waterstones and stuff on the job. So what about procrastination then? I’ve heard you talk about procrastination once before.

I think that was the thing that resonated because I said to you backstage at Sasha was the person who was watching your videos, loved your stuff, and sent it to me. And I vaguely remember there being one around procrastination, because that was something that she had suffered with. I think that for whatever reason, I don’t have that gene.

I don’t know why, but I don’t. But I know that a lot of people do that. They want to do something. They have an ambition to do it, but, well, I don’t know what. Having said that, when when it comes to going to the gym, I definitely have that dream. Yeah, but when it comes to building a business, not so much.

So what is it that. What do you advise people when it comes to actually being able to grab something by the scruff of the neck and. Yeah, and go and actually take action on it. What do you say? Often it’s understanding that procrastination is is a response to stress. And so it’s acknowledging that, you know, if you’re going to procrastinate something like, oh well, procrastinate.

You know, like car insurance and things like that. Oh my God. You know, sitting on telephone lines or trying to look up and it feels stressful. It feels like a waste of your time. And but it’s got to happen and it’s boring. And and all of those feelings is part of that stress response. So I don’t want to be stressed out about this.

And, and and so I’m going to put it off for a bit. And what you get when you, when you mentally kind of make that decision to not do it right now. I’ll do it tomorrow. Phew. And then you get this instant relief. That’s very addictive. Says I’m not going to face that today. I’ll face it tomorrow. And anything that’s short term gain like that maybe.

Yeah, yeah. So you immediately just feel less anxious or less stressed or less bored because you’re going to go on YouTube or something instead. And, and so I think when you recognize that cycle in yourself, then you get to see it in the moment when it’s happening. And then you can go, no, I’m going to I can go with this cycle or I can go in a different direction, do something different.

And, and so I’ll often when there’s a lot going on. I’ll make a kind of list of, okay, what’s, what’s the three major priorities that need to happen this week in order for me to end this week feeling? Yes, we nailed it. Everything else is kind of noise and and so I will focus on those other things. And if I notice myself trickling off to do noisy stuff, that’s not really going to help us nail the week then and then I can trip myself back.

But without that awareness, it just won’t happen. You can spend hours doing something else before you’ve even realized it’s not really what is going to help you move forward. And I suppose as you like making your videos in the evening that you were saying you had the option to procrastinate or the option to do it because you just feel like the bigger goal pulled you through, that was that.

Would you say it was that or the accountability of doing it with Matt or. Yeah, accountability helps, isn’t it? If you got someone else to say, oh, we should do this, because when you might, you know, there are some evenings where we’re almost judging each other. Are you willing to suck this off? Because I am. And then and then one of us a joint.

That’s a joint procrastination. But it’s less likely to happen, isn’t it? Like if you have a gym buddy and they turn up at your house with their trainers on and you’re like, oh God, no, I need to go. So sometimes someone else can just help to pull you through something. And and so yeah, having someone else that you perhaps share that weekly goal with, whether you have a business partner or whatever is so valuable, I think.

Yeah.

Wow! Well, I hope you really, really enjoyed listening to Doctor Judy Smith’s interview today. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I myself picked up a ton from that interview, and I’m excited to see what you can implement from this one in your business. And while we’re speaking about this, I love hearing your feedback about the podcast. Go and follow me at Adams Coach on the social channels.

Feel free to send me a message and tell me what you liked about this episode, or any of the upper episodes. I always personally answer my DMs on Instagram and LinkedIn. So go and connect with us and let us know your favorite podcast episodes so far. Thanks again for listening and I look forward to seeing you in person very soon.

Posted in Podcast and tagged 2026, Adam Stott, big business entrepreneurs, Big Business Events, business growth secrets, dr julie smith