Welcome along to season ten of the Makelife Work podcast with me sidejobbling. I'm an engineering manager by day and a family man, and I still try to find time for some side projects. I also invite others along to share how they find that balance around work and life. This week, we are joined by Ian Lurey, former CEO of a marketing agency in the States, now individual contributor. After selling the business, Ian reached out through a mastodon exchange and when he told me about his personal situation, I was hooked. So let's get into it. This is make life work with Ian Murray.

So what? Come along, Ian. How are you doing?

I'm good, I'm good. How about you?

Say, I'm pretty good. It's Friday. I don't know about you, if you've got the Friday feels.

Yeah, yeah, Friday is always good.

It. Yeah from rest easy this evening. That's good. Thanks for joining me, mate. Really lovely for you to reach out, actually, on Master Don, I think I put a call out and you're like, I'm up for this. It sounds cool. And when you started telling me your back story and your set up, I was fascinated. You got me gripped straight away. But, yeah, welcome along and I think for the benefit of the listeners, it would be wonderful to hear your story or sort of high level bio, what you are and what you do, and we'll go from there, if that's all right.

Yeah. So the two sentence, probably ten sentence version, I actually went to law school and graduated 1993. And I hated law school. I mean, despised it. It's not law school's fault, it was just a bad choice. So I actually went into marketing almost the day I graduated. And within a couple of years, this is around 1995, I was running a marketing agency that was a one person shop for about six months and then a two person shop and so on, and ended up running a digital agency called Portent here in Seattle for about 25 years. Sold the agency in 2017 and then a couple of years later went out on my own. And I've been an individual consultant ever since.

Fantastic. 25 years with your own agency, that's a long run, actually, isn't it?

25 years as a CEO, I should say. I am still in marketing, just not advertising, just so people know what I'm doing for a living. Yeah, it was a long stretch and a big part of the reason I went out on my own is because the only job I've ever really had was as a CEO and really felt like I wanted to try something different at the age of 54. So here I am.

There we go. So you were CEO, I guess, from the start of that agency life, and you ran the whole agency with how many did you get to, did you say?

When I left, we were 50 people.

That's a quite large agency then, isn't it?

Yeah, it's pretty large. It's a lot of people.

Yeah. And you were constantly in those C suite level conversations, imagine, rather than in the depths of what's actually happening, I think, in that role.

Yeah. I mean, there was a lot to learn along the way. I think I was sort of just becoming a solid CEO when I left, but I had a really good leadership team at that point and was finally getting, I think, into the swing of being a true CEO. So at Portent, that meant I spent a lot of time teaching. It's kind of my core love as a professional, so a lot of time teaching the team. I'm pretty far into the kind of tactics of marketing, so I spend a lot of time with the team on that and then sort of much higher level. Right. Agency direction, values, objectives. OKRs. Objectives and key results. What we were trying to do over a one year period, just kind of our overall vision. Those are the two places I lived. I cannot do a spreadsheet, I am still a financial idiot. I cannot do anything revolving around accounting or anything else. So that was something I always gave to other people. So in that sense, I wasn't necessarily, I guess, the classic CEO.

But you'd seen the growth of the organization. You were driving the ship, as it were. Driving the ship. You were piloting the ship. Yeah. And yeah. And statistics, by the sanity, wasn't like to last that long. It must have gone pretty well.

Yeah, I mean, we had ups and downs. Like any company, we went through two, three major recessions, but, yeah, I like to think we did pretty well. The agency is still doing well, it's still out there running, so I'm pretty proud of that, I have to say.

Wonderful. And then, so come 2017, 2019, that period, you made a decision that you wanted to move on and what kind.

Of got motivated that, well, 2017, I had sort of always said I would never sell. I actually sold the agency in 2000 and it did not go well, so I bought it back in 2000. But a friend and colleague called me up and he was working at this much larger company called Clearlink and said, hey, do you know any agencies that are looking to be acquired? And I said, Are you asking me that as a joke or are you calling and asking me if I'd like to be acquired? And the conversation went from there. I met the people there. Clearlink is not an agency. So I knew that if we required, it was not going to become kind of a bloodbath of redundancy reductions and layoffs and it just felt like a good fit. So we did the deal there and kind of Portent stayed as Portent. We had a lot more resources behind us and we became kind of the consulting arm of clearlink.

Cool. And you kind of felt comfortable letting go of it, I guess, at that point.

Yeah. So I had someone who had been coming along as a vice president for some time and in some ways was better positioned to be a CEO than I was. So when I left, I was very comfortable with him and with the rest of the team there. They could absolutely run things without me.

Perfect. And yeah, like you say, you could rest easy knowing that you kind of imparted all your wisdom and knowledge to make sure they were doing it the right way.

And to be honest, I was starting to feel a little redundant. I was the guy sort of in the corner office kind of trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. That's not really true, but it was definitely at a point where if I was gone for a week, things ran just fine.

Oh, that's perfect.

I know that's the goal of a CEO, but at the same time, as a CEO, it's kind of a hard place to be, and it was time to try something else nice.

So at that point, you'd kind of grow this organization. You felt success from that, and you were like, what's next? And this is when you jump into the next role.

Yeah. And honestly, I'm still figuring out what I want to do when I grow up, but that was true when I was a CEO too. So this is a very good place for me to have landed.

That's cool. So that was 2019 then. You're kind of taking a plunge into the new role that you're in now, and it's still marketing, but not quite the same, as you were saying.

It's much more I'm doing the work now, right?

Hands on.

Yeah, I'm hands on. I am called in a lot because of the gray hairs, so I do help internal teams, but I am called in a lot just to sort of be the person who's been in a lot of situations before. I help some clients get their teams up and running and deal with internal issues, and then I do a lot of the nuts and bolts marketing stuff, SEO and content and all the things that everybody's out there peddling as hard as they can.

Totally. Do you enjoy being back into the weeds and hands on with everything?

Yeah, I do. It's a different set of challenges, obviously, but it is really fun doing the work. I mean, I've always been a practitioner, I think, at heart.

Sure. And now you're three years into doing that, I guess, give or take four, maybe.

Yeah. With, obviously two very unusual years right.

In the middle, which was my wonderful segue into the pandemic and how we all adjusted other ways or ways of working. So could you tell us a bit about some of those challenges you maybe have faced during that period?

So my wife and I were supposed to become empty nesters in 2020. That was the year. And instead, obviously, everything locked down. We ended up with both of our kids still at home at the time. They were both college aged. We get along extremely well with our children, so that was not a problem. In fact, there were certain benefits to all of us hanging out together, but it meant that we were a little bit more crowded than we had planned. At one point, I was on a consulting call on Zoom with a client, and my son went walking by behind me wrapped in a blanket, carrying a big box of cheeses. Things like that happened a lot. I set up a spare office out in the garage. I was using that quite a bit, and we were all kind of on top of each other. Everybody went through this, and we were very fortunate that we were all adults, because people with smaller children, I think I cannot even imagine how challenging it was, because there was no real respite, and we couldn't go anywhere. We tried to really adhere to the rules as carefully as we could. So, yeah, we were all kind of on top of each other.

I can completely relate to that because I remember at the height of the lockdown mode in the UK, my wife was teaching from the dining room, and I was working with her in the dining room. So trying to facilitate classrooms in the same room as someone on Zoom calls, doing other things was extremely entertaining at times, but, yeah, quite difficult as well.

Our house is pretty big. I mean, we have an upstairs and the downstairs, so I'd be upstairs. My kids are up here too. So sometimes I'd be having a conversation with a client. After I get off the call, one of my kids would come in and say, is everything okay? Because I would be really direct to the client. And we're in Seattle, where we're in the most passive aggressive city in the United States of America. If I just say to a client, that's not right. You don't want to do it that way, then to my kids, sometimes that was like me raising my voice and throwing things around the room, I think. So it's always kind of interesting.

And no one knows you better than your children and your wife, unfortunately.

Well, especially now. Yes, that's very true. When I was an EO in an office, I was there more than I was here, that we flipped from one to the other very abruptly and more completely, I think, than has happened in a long, long time.

Totally. You mentioned that you set up the office upstairs, or was it in the garage? Sorry.

So I ended up setting up two. Okay. Yeah. Same equipment in each place. So my garage I had remodeled as a gym, so it was air conditioned and heated and all that. So I put in all the stuff I needed, including this boom and things like that out there. So when I was I taught a class at the University of Washington, things like that. So whenever I was doing something virtual, where I was on Zoom or Zencaster or whatever, I would go out there. And then when I was doing more day to day client work, I'd be inside. And if I was doing a call with a client, I would generally be inside, not out there. The clients, obviously, especially at that point, were very everyone was very flexible.

Yes. And you mentioned, like, your son walking back in the background. That was quite a common occurrence at that point, I think, for everyone.

Yes, absolutely.

Do you have any fond memories of that period, actually, rather than just the challenging points?

Well, I mean, honestly, it was kind of fun having the kids around, I have to say. Obviously it has its ups and downs. But I think you said your kids are ten and 16, is that right? So you're at a point now where you were probably the least intelligent person in the world up until about a year ago. Now you become more intelligent from one of them. We had gone through all that and our kids were just adults and we had some pleasant times hanging out together and we would have dinners together and obviously we got on each other's nerves sometimes, but it was just cool. It was family time that I think a lot of families don't get because your kids do go off to college, and that's a healthy thing. But it had its better moments, definitely.

Totally. I remember them, the same sort of memories. It's like, actually, I wouldn't normally get this quality time with my children. And yes, it's not great, especially trying to home school a young child who really doesn't want to be home schooled by their parents.

Yeah, that's a very different ages. All my kids wanted to do was get out and go do something else. So that was our challenge. And they were home schooling themselves, which was also a challenge. It was very hard for them to go to college, particularly my daughter who was starting college. She was a freshman when the pandemic hit. So she went from potentially living in a dorm to living from home and doing her first college coursework remotely.

I do feel really sorry for that generation that were meant to go off to university, college, live life as it's meant to be at that point of your life. But they were literally stuck on calls like we are doing now, and that was their new norm.

Yeah, that's right.

But then, I guess, fast forward three years. Are they back into college now or are they sort of completing it now?

My son has graduated. He lives in New York.

Brilliant.

Right now. And my daughter is a junior, so she's got a couple more years to go.

Cool. So bring it back to the house times and those challenging points. What was the actual arrangement? Did you have any specific schedules around how you'd work with your wife in the same space? How did you get that working?

So it's very similar to the way it is now. The only difference is I now have an office. This room used to be my son's bedroom.

Okay.

And when he's home, I moved back out and it's his bedroom again. So I have a door and things like that I didn't have at the time. And like I said, we're very fortunate in that we have an upstairs and a downstairs and kind of the upstairs in the house is really mine. The downstairs is my wife's. Okay. All family stuff generally happens downstairs and then work stuff and really nerdy stuff happen up here. So the hardest part for me actually working from home, and this is true now and during the pandemic, was not becoming a hermit, not just hiding upstairs all the time, because I'm constantly afraid I'm going to be underfoot. Or my wife's used to kind of running the household and having all that stuff to herself, and all of a sudden, I'm downstairs rooting through the refrigerator for snacks three times a day and whatever. So we had to set up some routines, I think. Little things like we take the dog for a walk together every morning. Yes, we're that couple. Just things like that. We have dinner together every single night no matter what. Those are all different things that we had to do to kind of make sure that I wouldn't just isolate up here and that I'm not constantly downstairs rooting through the refrigerator and doing all these other things.

Yeah, I completely sympathize with that, actually. I think my job is similar. I generally sit and work from home 99% of the time. But I do have the luxury of actually getting to an office now because of the hybrid ways of working. But I do find when I'm at home, I fall into that trap of like well, actually, I've not left this room for 7 hours. Literally just been a screen to talk through to someone through that. That's not cool. That's not good for our health.

No, it's easy to roll out of bed, roll into your desk, get to work, and then all of a sudden you look up and it's 05:00. And there's so many reasons that's so bad for you. Totally. Standing desks are great. It does help, but it's not necessarily enough.

Totally. But at least you started setting those rituals of actually going out with your wife for a walk with the dog. That's fresh air, that's exercise. It's all the good things that we need in our lives.

Yeah, and just remember to open the windows. Seriously.

I mean, that's a fair point. Especially when it's warmer. It makes such a difference is there anything else that you've kind of introduced as part of your daily routine and rituals or your weekly rituals, however you kind of organize your time.

So I've always been not a fitness nut, but I've always exercised very consistently. And like I said, my garage is set up partly as a gym, which was just really good timing when the pandemic did hit, but it's particularly good timing now. The downside is, of course, I'm not getting the depressurization time of driving to and from work, but on the other hand, I do have more time to work out. So a big part of my routine is four or five days a week I'm doing some kind of exercise in the gym in the winter and then in the summer, obviously, even in Seattle, the weather is nice enough and I'm getting out for I'm a cyclist, so I get out for a bike ride or do something out towards very regularly. Fitness is kind of my bellwether or my benchmark. I guess if I am in a place where I am no longer working out, I know that something in my routine has to change. Something is going wrong. I love to play Dungeons and Dragons. I have all these other things I love to do, but exercise is the thing that still requires a little bit of effort. I enjoy it, but it's not, obviously, pure joy all the time. So if I'm not taking the time to go and do it, something's off, and I know that my routine has to change.

Yes, I felt that recently, actually. Like you, I do like to do the exercise, and I set myself, like, a daily goal of doing something, even if it's a little bit of a workout, a bit of a walk, anything. So I do have a habit tracker on my phone and my laptop just to make that tick. That's a goal. But like you, it's an easy trap to fall into where you don't want to, or you can't be bothered, oh, I can go and do a Dungeons and Dragons game instead, or I can go and doom scroll through some social media instead. We have to force ourselves to do these things sometimes. And that's the problem. I think many people find.

Well, even if you hate working out, which I don't, but even if you totally hate it, you should still have the mental and physical resources left to do something in the course of a normal day. Even if it's just going for a walk. If you're finding you're at a place where you don't even want to do that. Like I said something. Probably. At least for me, I shouldn't project that under the people. For me, that is a very important measure of physical and mental fitness at any point in time. Right. Is am I breaking that routine?

Yeah. And do you have any triggers that you recognize from your personality or your behaviors that kind of go, yeah, I've definitely neglected it for too long now.

Doom scrolling is definitely one just jumping to things that may make people uncomfortable. I am bipolar, so if I start going into some major episode, up or down, exercise is kind of my warning sign. If I'm not doing it or if I suddenly am off doing nine hour workout sessions, something's probably wrong. But you know, just the signs that I'll usually see, the the indicators are that I am, instead of working out, I'm curling up on the couch, going through my phone, looking at Instagram videos, or more importantly, pride doom scrolling, watching videos of kittens. We all do that. If instead of working out, I'm just kind of puttering about and sort of aimlessly doing things. Or if I'm just working more and more and more and that's probably the biggest one because it's easy to say, oh, I'm working, I'm doing something right, so that's good, I'm accomplishing something. The more work you do, the less you're accomplishing for each moment of work you put in. So that's another important indicator is if I'm swapping out healthy things for things that in moderation are healthy but become unhealthy and work is definitely the one for me, that's a definite sign. And that's where exercise is so kind of helpful for me. And I'm not trying to preach the religion of exercise, okay, not everybody wants to work out multiple days a week. That's perfectly okay. I just mean if there's something you do in your life that starts to get swallowed up by work, by other things, for me at least, that's a sign that I'm getting out of balance.

Holder totally. I think the key there is like the well being aspect actually. Like you say, you're happy place your good places, having some fitness, having a good balance with work, with all the other luxuries in life and your family because they are critical to what we do. But yeah, the warning signs of something's got to give, it's difficult to I don't know about you, but I find it difficult to recognize it sometimes. If I'm completely into something and no one's told me I'm into something, I don't even know some doing it sometimes. But occasionally you do need that external factor to go. Something's got to give. You're not in a good place right now. We need to help.

Yeah, that's right. Cats come in handy too.

Totally. So what cats have you got?

I have one cat and one dog.

Okay.

And they don't get along. So the cat lives upstairs, dog lives downstairs. Yeah. No, they really don't get along. But at one point we had two cats, a dog, a guinea pig and a hamster. I didn't have pets when I was a kid. So basically if anyone in the house said, hey, can we get the answer was always yes. A cat and a dog is a good parent right now.

Well, the dog keeps you occupied outdoors, and I guess the cat keeps you occupied indoors. So it's a nice balance, actually.

Yeah, exactly. And when the two are together, it's really entertaining. They're chasing each other around the house, barking and hissing and swatting at each other, literally a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

It literally sounds like that if you had a guinea pig or a mouse that had been completely set shortly. Brilliant.

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So, okay, you you talked a lot about your, you know, like your family arrangements, your working arrangements. What else is I mean, you mentioned Dungeons and Dragons. How do you find time for that if you're working full time with family and all the other commitments?

Well, working full time is 8 hours a day, and if things are really intense, maybe it gets to nine or 10 hours a day. But not always. Everybody has some hobby, and Dungeons and Dragons is a few hours a week. And it's something fun where I get together with friends. And during the pandemic, in fact, it was interesting because my gaming group I don't know how many people on listening to this episode are familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, but it is a group activity usually traditionally done in person. But as the pandemic progressed, people got better and better at doing it using zoom and other tools. So the group of people I game with has expanded, and now I have a pretty dedicated group of people who are also in the marketing industry who I play with every other week. And then I have my gaming group of 30 years who I play with every other week. So you're talking about one night a week of getting together and some dice and doing something fun.

How long do you only spend a couple of hours playing that game twice a couple of times a week?

Yeah, a really long game can be three or 4 hours. There are people who will play for 8 hours at a stretch. And when I was younger, I'll put that my attention wanders. Now I can't necessarily do that. It's three or 4 hours a week. And then, without getting into the details of how the game works, if you are running the game, quote, unquote, if you're the one kind of setting the stage, then you have a few other hours of work to do during the week, which, if it wasn't that I'd be playing video games or watching TV. So it's all kind of the same kind of spare time that I think most people should have in a pretty good routine.

Yeah. And having the time and the capacity to fit that in as well. I think a lot of people struggle to find that, and especially post pandemic when the restrictions were lifted and you could actually go out and be on holiday, as we've just talked about, trying to readjust into those awkward moments is an art.

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people want to live the hustle and do feel like all waking hours should be swallowed up with work. That just doesn't work for me. So having a couple of other things that I do is very necessary. And it is interesting you talk about the pandemic and how things change. I have not gone back to in person gaming as much post pandemic because I have this group of people all over the country and in fact, all over the world now that I came with. So it's kind of an interesting sort of evolution, I guess, that the pandemic touched on. I don't know if it's better if it's good or bad. I know it's a much larger group of people in a way.

That's probably better then, because you've got a wider community to engage with and enjoy and a lot more diverse group, I imagine, if they're not localized to your region.

Yeah, that's right.

That's cool. I mean, I don't have any hobbies like that that actually give me that opportunity to go out there, but this is why I live for social media, in a way. It just connects us all from across the globe with random connections and hobbies.

Yeah, that's right. And you have smaller children. And when I had a ten year old, I was not doing as much of this either.

This is true. Yeah. You have to factor that into it as well because they postponed it. We can get out and do stuff. So I am now and we try to make sure weekends are kids time, not me time.

Yeah. They are your hobby for a long time. That might be terrible. Everybody out there I'm not saying child rearing is a hobby. That's not what I meant. You know what? Never mind. Never mind.

It's an interest.

Yeah. Everyone now is going to say, oh, you favor working hobbies over your children. I don't. They're okay.

I don't. Some of us do. You mentioned briefly there actually the fact that you don't typically work a nine to five. Or do you find that you have that regular cadence or can you shift it around with your current role?

So that is a struggle, and I find what I finally settled into is more of a seven to three because I have clients all over the world and Pacific time tends to be the earlier time or the. Previous day for most of my clients so I do a lot of work reaching out to folks earlier in the morning the three things that I try to do really hard are I am at my desk working by seven right? I do all my calls and meetings either early or later so at seven or at two doesn't always work. Often I'm on calls all day, but I try to do that really hard. I use time blocking as my task management technique, and people can go look that up if they want to. It doesn't work for everybody, but it does for me, because it does mean I set this block from seven to three. And outside of that, I am trying very hard not to work. At least not on Billable work. Right. There's something else I'm doing there are still days when I'm working more than that, definitely and there are days when I work less which is nice sometimes I'm a pretty ambitious person but you can definitely burn yourself out what sort.

Of ambitions do you have right now?

That's an interesting one. Part of it is I am trying to get more into teaching so I'm starting to teach some courses at a university near here. Part of it is I do have actually a book that's pretty much done and I'm just doing final work on it that my daughter actually illustrated and she's a good artist, so it worked about building and running an agency. So that'll be look for that on your local bookshelves. Not because I'm self publishing. I hope to sell at least twelve copies because that's how many relatives I have so hopefully they'll each buy. But I would say those are my two big ambitions right now. I love writing, obviously I want to do great work for my clients but to me an ambition is you're seeking to change or do something very new. So when I say ambitious, I mean I'm trying to launch new things now and again.

That's pretty cool though, I mean having a book out there that you've made and your daughters contribute towards as well what a wonderful sort of final product to own or co own yeah, it'll.

Be interesting to see how it does when it gets out there. Yeah, I've written a few books and it's always kind of nice to see it completed in your hands or digital hands I guess it's always kind of refreshing to do that so you mentioned.

It'S about running an agency?

Yeah, it's about building and running an agency and kind of a big part of it is just the idea that you really have no plan you think you have a plan, you don't have a plan. Growing portent was not a planned thing I mean it was and it wasn't it's not like I went in saying oh, I'm going to build and sell an agency it's not like right now I'm sitting here saying I'm going to make a million dollars as a consultant or $100,000 as a consultant or whatever. You do what you want to do and you have some loose goals, but the idea that you're going to go in with this really set plan and hustle your way to completing it, I have just found it doesn't work that way, no matter what your intentions are. And that's a lot of what the book is about.

Sounds cool. And you mentioned the teaching as well. So have you got a local university that you're already connecting with or is it the Aspiration that you want to get into there?

No, I have already taught a course at the University of Washington and now I have a few more coming up in spring and fall.

Fantastic. Some lovely outcomes though. It's giving back in many ways, right?

It's a big part of what when I was running the agency too. And maybe this is another relevant thing because I don't know how helpful this has been for your audience, but it's a really helpful thing for me when I moved from CEO to consultant is understanding the thing that I got a charge out of as a CEO. One of the biggest ones being teaching my team and watching the light bulb go on and making sure that I moved some of that to what I do now. So teaching is obviously formal. Teaching is a big part of that. And then a lot of the consulting I do is also teaching. I'm dragging clients into trainings that I do all the time and I'm sure hopefully they aren't listening to this, but I'm sure they think it's for them and it's partly for me just because I get a charge out of it. So transferring some of those things was really important.

Are you doing online workshops through your consulting education, through that format for clients?

I don't have anything formal that I do. There's not like a training curriculum out there or anything. But for clients, yes, I run workshops and webinars for them all the time.

Obviously you were in person back in the CEO agency days and did you do it in person then, but now you've had to adjust to providing it online, which is a completely different process.

Yeah, we did a lot of webinars at Porten as well, so this wasn't a major adjustment for me.

So you would have paid a foundation to it anyway.

Yeah, we actually had a media room and as far back as like the second or third office we ever had. And Portent was very much based on teaching and a lot of our marketing was through teaching. So we spent a lot of time online doing webinars and things like that. The video aspect obviously is something that has required a lot of getting used.

To being on camera.

Being on camera. But it's very similar and it was part of the challenge of making that move from CEO to individual that even before the Pandemic, an increasing amount of the training I was doing was virtual. Clients are not going to necessarily because most of the teaching when I was at Portent was my team. Most of the teaching now is with clients. The clients aren't going to pay to fly me somewhere to do a, you know, a 1 hour training, nor do I want to fly somewhere to do a 1 hour training. So a lot of that was virtual, having a good mic, you know, investing in a quality camera, which does not mean a $1,000, but just a decent camera, learning a little bit about lighting, things like that. Those are all things that I had.

To pick up, I would say. Now, I know it's an audio format, your video looks perfect and obviously the audio sounds fantastic, so it definitely helps. You've invested a lot of time into that, obviously.

Thanks. Thanks. It's interesting that you can get 90% of what you need with maybe it's the 80 20 rule, right? Get 80% of what you need with 20% of the effort. I haven't put a ton of time into it just enough and went around asking a lot of people the right way to do this.

It's cool. And I guess as a profession, you don't want to look too amateur anyway. You want it to be a high quality service that you're providing to your consultants and your clients. So it's paid off by look of it. Anyway.

Thanks. Yeah. You don't want it to become a barrier, you don't want it to become a distraction when you're on a call.

Not really, as we found out on the start, this call, but when it's not working and you called me out straight away, thankfully you recognize that.

Well, that's part of it, too. I was going to say that's part of it too is the more you know about it, the more you can pick up on stuff that may not be working right.

Yeah. And like I say, it's not necessarily your profession, technical, audio, video equipment, but it's part of what you provide. So you need to make sure you do it properly and you can, again, educate others in how to do it properly.

Yeah.

And again, part of your book is.

There an opportunity there potentially to do.

Some training off the back of that because obviously, if it's about running a note or building an agency, there's potential training opportunity there.

It came out of a talk I gave at a virtual conference.

Okay.

So, yes, I mean, it was born out of training and teaching and the whole idea is that it will be a set of tips on what to do as the person running an agency when certain things happen. One section of it is called every shit Shows different meaning, things always go wrong and no amount of previous planning will prepare you for the next one. So you have to be ready for that. It's just one example.

I'm going to have to get a copy of this book. It sounds brilliant.

I did not come on here to plug the book. I just want to point that no.

But we will obviously put it in the show notes for when you go live, how to get hold of this. But no, it just sounds fantastic stuff. So let's bring it back to that work life balance. Have you got any sort of advice or tips for anyone that you've kind of learnt yourself that you can share with the audience on this?

Have some kind of bellwether in place and be very mindful of how you're sticking to whatever it is that is that bellwether benchmark. So, like I said before, for me it's exercise. Am I taking the 1 hour a day and write it down on a piece of paper on your desk and it says, Am I taking the 1 hour a day? And if you're not, it's not a negotiable. Well, I didn't today, but something is not quite right. And you may make the conscious decision that for a few days, that will be how things are. What you cannot afford to do is be in a situation where you have removed that benchmark for a long period of time. The benchmark could be a quiet dinner with your family, it could be driving to and from work. Seriously, I mean, if you like driving and you have a decent drive, that could be it. As soon as that benchmark, as soon as you're no longer meeting it, something is not right. Maybe you need to adjust what you're doing for work. Maybe you need to adjust what you're doing for that benchmark, but you need to tweak something. That's my first biggest advice. Then the second one is some form of time blocking. Something where you have a pretty disciplined approach to your calendar. For me, that has been a difference maker. I know people who kind of thrive on the chaos a little more than me, but you need something to keep you grounded in what you're supposed to be doing every day. And those two things together have helped me at least manage my schedule and workload and not let it just sort of steadily expand to fill my entire house.

Sure. And not only your schedule, but your well being. It sounds like you're talking about your health and fitness as well as your profession. You feel more balanced in that sense.

And that's the other thing I would say, is it can feel like there are people who say they thrive off of work and I do too. But there's still a point at which you're impacting your own health and well being at a point where, to an extent that it's limiting your ability just to do the work, never mind fitness for fitness sake, at some point you're impacting your ability to do the work. And that's where that discipline around calendar and just doing things you really desire to do outside of work, those are things that you really have to aim for and you really have to be I don't want to say you have to be disciplined about how you relax. You need to have marked out some time. Does that make sense? You need to have a routine of some kind that you're sticking to.

No, I agree with you there, because I feel like what I tend to do, I would typical nine to five. But my hour lunch break is always reserved as part of that time blocking. And I will then inject fitness into some of those lunch breaks so I can actually use that hour rather than just kind of going off my bum eating food again. I'm looking at the screen. That's really good for me.

And it's possible that sitting on your bum eating food, but not looking at your computer and not doing email might also be a decent thing, but some kind of time away from it all, I think is really valuable. And even if that means you're chasing your kids around the house and trying to prevent them from burning the place down, that's still time away from work, and then work is still time away from chasing your kids around the house, trying to prevent them from burning the place down. It's that kind of variety that you really need.

Yeah, I think the key there is a variety. If you fall into the ruts of the same thing I think you mentioned earlier, you do a seven hour stint on your laptop without realizing what you've done. That's the trigger for me. You need to probably reflect and work out a better way.

Yeah, that's right.

Sound advice in. I like that. I'm going to take that one away. And I think the time blocking thing again, we can get some details in the show notes as to what that looks like for some people, but I feel like I've been through that and I've found a better pattern to my schedule that works for me.

Yeah. Even just setting some time every day to do the time blocking, like, I have a half an hour every morning. That's for admin time and that's all just figuring out what I'm doing that day.

Yeah. And I think you mentioned earlier the chaos. Some people thrive on it, and you need to be ready for any unexpected chaos that's going to hit you in the day. But then having a system to support that is also key how we survive in these chaos at times.

That's right.

That's cool, man. Thank you very much for that advice. It's been great chatting to you. I feel like we've come to a natural point now, though. Have you got any contact details we can put out for people to reach out to you and find out more about what you do and even to get a hold of the book.

You can find me on Twitter at ian lourie. You can find me on LinkedIn by just searching for Ian Lurie and on Mastodon, you can just put a link in the Show notes because that's a really long string of letters and I'm always happy to answer questions. I'd love to chat with people online, I'd love to reach out and I really like it when I can help folks settle into some kind of routine or if you're running an agency, just give some advice. I give a lot of advice. Usually what you want to do is the opposite of whatever I recommend. But yes, folks can reach out to me anytime they need to.

That's brilliant and I'm sure you will get a few people reach out. I'll be coming back to you, that's for sure, just to get a few more tips on how you do these things. Bin. Lovely to chat to you, Ian, though, thanks for your time and as I say, don't be a stranger. We'll keep in touch.

Sounds great. Thanks.

So huge thanks to Ian for joining us this week. Amazing to hear how he's found that balance through some challenging times. And I love his idea of time blocking to organize daily routines, especially that bit blocking out the first half hour to plan your day. Reach out to Ian on LinkedIn, Masterdon or Twitter. All his details will be in the Show Notes. If you are enjoying the podcast or you have any thoughts or comments, please leave your review and ratings in the popular podcast apps or reach out to me individually on Masterdon, LinkedIn or email [email protected]. All the details are on the website makelockworkpodcast.com and I'll be back in a few weeks time with another episode of the Make Life Work Podcast.