The confidence trick | From tall poppy to OBE with Lauren Currie, UPFRONT

Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best business podcast for curious entrepreneurs featured in the UK's Top 20 charts for business shows.

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In this week's episode, Stephanie Melodia interviews Lauren Currie, the 6X serial entrepreneur now founder of UPFRONT, upskilling 10 million women to be more confident and visible.

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Lauren's work has been featured in The Guardian, Design Week, and Creative Review, She was also awarded an OBE for services to design and diversity. Last but not least, Lauren Currie is now a newly-published children’s book author, Taylor Meets The Trick (BUY HERE).

Watch the full interview on YouTube via the link below or keep reading for the transcript, where Steph and Lauren discuss:

• The systemic confidence problem and Lauren's mission to upskill 10M women

• "Micro reps" for building confidence and the Taylor Swift confidence strategy

• Bias towards action over perfection in entrepreneurship

• The problem with tall poppy syndrome

• Lauren's new children's book, 'Taylor Meets The Trick'

SM: Lauren, what is one tragedy that's taught you an unforgettable lesson?

LC: There is a tragedy that almost I feel like it follows me around every day that motivates me to do the work that I do. And when I think about the world that I want to live in, the world that I want my son and his children to live in, I think we're on page there's a lot of change that needs to happen, particularly in terms of equity and equality. And the tragedy that breaks my heart every day is I believe that part of how we create that world is through art and business and creativity. It's through people having an idea and putting that idea into the world, whether that is a business idea, a product line, a fashion brand, an invention, a piece of technology, a song, a novel. And tragedy is that the women who are having those ideas are so consumed with the belief that their ideas are not good enough. That those ideas never see the light of day. And so all of the creativity and the economic power that we need to create the change that we need to see in the world doesn't happen because women are so convinced that ideas aren't good enough. And to me, that is a tragedy that breaks my heart and why I'm motivated to do and keep showing up in the world every day to build products and services that show women and teach women that their ideas are good enough exactly as they are, and these are the steps you need to take to execute upon those ideas.

SM: Yeah. What's that saying? To have the confidence of mediocre white man. Right? So lovely segue into upfront. But before we talk about your current business, business number six, I wanna stick with this for a second.

Does this tragedy have its roots in anything more personal to you? Like, why this in particular? Did something happen that's broken your heart around this? Why this one in particular?

LC: Well, I think when I look back on the businesses that I've built and the work that I've done, all of my work has always been in and around social change and trying to make the world a better place.

I've worked my first business with was a service design consultancy. We were one of the very first in the UK to be offering service design consultancy for public sector. So how do we make the NHS be more human centred? How do we make education services be more human centred?

I built a product to make it easier for local communities to talk to the local police force before we had social media.

I've worked in the health space, maternity rights space, and the red thread that goes through it all is women's lack of confidence hindering their growth, their community's growth, and ultimately, growth that benefits everybody.

Because confidence is a catalyst for change.

It's a catalyst for leadership. It's a catalyst for difficult conversations. It's a catalyst for business building. The spark that creates all of these things that have consequences of monumental impact.

And so that is why I decided to focus on confidence because it is the red thread that I see that runs through all those spaces.

SM: So it's more of a macro observation across all of these different points in in the pattern as opposed to, like, one specific event.

LC: And it's also a pattern that I see in my own life and in my mom's life, my girlfriend's, you know, the women that I'm close to, my peers. I am still very much on a confidence journey. I always will be.

You know, I always have to caveat things when I deliver keynotes and give lectures to say, please don't put me on a pedestal as I've solved the confidence conundrum because it can't be solved. You can't "graduate confidence." It's not a thing that you're ever finished with. And that can be frustrating and, I think, a bit exhausting to think about, but I think it's also quite liberating to understand this long journey.

And as you grow, your confidence challenges just change shape. It's like you don't ever get to a place where there aren't any, but you do get to a place where you are really well equipped with tools and strategies and mindset principles that make it you can keep going and keep growing.

SM: It's interesting you mentioned about being put on a pedestal because even for me, without even fully realising it, I'm like, Lauren is queen of confidence. Even on the way here, I wasn't even listening to the song. But I was on my way to come and interview you, Lauren.

he song that I just had going around in my head, do you wanna guess? Yeah. Demi Lovato, Congrats. There. What's wrong? And it's still going around in my head. I wasn't even listening to it, but just with you in my mind. And so with that expectation, that pressure, that putting you on the pedestal, it's like, okay, queen of confidence, Lauren Currie, of course, you're still human.

There must have been so many times your confidence has been knocked. Are there any that you wanna share and specifically how you picked yourself back up again?

LC: I mean, there's some moments where my confidence is knocked. And how I always frame it in my mind is that my expertise and my superpower is entrepreneurship and building community. And it just so happens that I focused on confidence as the theme for this business and these communities that I'm building.

The moments where my confidence is knocked sometimes come fast and heavy, and I am now where I have such a depth of understanding of how confidence works, where it comes from, how you cultivate it in yourself and other people, those moments don't affect me the way that they used to they used to. For example, being on stage and your your tech not working.

And I'll tell you a story that happened. Last Wednesday, I was delivering a live class. 1,032 people had signed up to come along. There were 642 women in the room. And we're on Zoom, an online learning space, which I'm sure lots of you will be familiar with. And I was about ten minutes in. I was still in the introduction, and a woman's microphone was off whether this was intentional or not. And she shouted so clearly, every single person heard her. I'm not listening to this anymore. And I just and I just said, okay. Bye. And then kept going and didn't really think about it.

But afterwards, my team were like and they were like, you didn't even miss a beat. And later, one of the participants wrote about it on LinkedIn to say that moment taught me everything I need to know about up front, about Lauren's teaching style, about what I'm gonna learn in this bond. Confidence in action. And I was I felt proud of myself because it wasn't that's not something that I could have rehearsed or engineered or practised. But my reaction in that moment was kind of, this is hilarious that that's just happened. Move on. Whereas now, I can moment and think about it. I can see that for others, that could have been a, oh my, you know, I need to defend myself. I need to over-explain. I need to ask her to send me feedback.

So that was a very kind of tangible moment that happened recently.

I think the bigger picture challenge that I'm working through at the moment is what academics call the likeability penalty, which is this notion that the more successful a woman becomes, the more likely she is to be criticised, particularly by other women. And that's something that I have experienced, continue to experience. I often talk about this notion of tall poppy syndrome, which is how academics have studied and coined this phrase of when women stand tall above the parapet as a tall poppy, they are much more likely to be you know, other people are gonna try and cut them down. So much so that I have a a tall poppy tattooed on me, which I got this year because the work that I've been doing with myself is rather than showing up from a place of what are they gonna say and what are they gonna think, it's showing up from a place of I am a tall poppy. That is I have always been that. I've always been a tall poppy since I was four years old, and I always will be. It's part of how I see the world. It's part of my ambition and my creativity. And so I want to really own that and be proud of that rather than trying to live a life where I'm trying to strategise and come up with plans on how I'm going to respond to these people who are trying to cut me down because they will, and they will continue to do that.

That's okay because my focus is on myself and the communities that I'm here to serve and the impact that I want to have in the world.

SM: So a lot of these are very relatable and sound a little bit easier said than done. Of course, if somebody says something that, you know, nobody quite like or, you know, I feel like everyone's a bit of a people pleaser. We've all got at least some sort of people pleaser within us. So I'd love to dive into some of those strategies, because even listening to that hilarious remark on that Zoom call that you did, there's something that jumps out at me is just this kind of duck's back. Just this, like, move on next.

But linking it back to this people pleaser is we are inherent we are all social creatures. Right? Like anthropologically, we've evolved from with tribes. So that's where, obviously, if somebody doesn't like us, it can feel like death. It can feel existential.

How do we overcome that people pleaser within us?

LC: I think part of it is understanding where those feelings come from. You've articulated part of where that comes from really well as you know, my partner studied evolution, so we have lots of interesting conversations about this and that women are rewarded and encouraged to be nurturing and more aware of, is everyone in the group okay? Right.

And we are more likely to prioritise being liked rather than respected. But what I think is really exciting is we have the consciousness and the intellect to be able to have this conversation and to choose differently. And one of our strap lines upfront, which we have on badges and on tote bags, is may our confidence upset them. And And it's interesting because people who have been through the bond and people who are in the upfront community are like, yes. Like, they they see that that is part of this work, and they see that people not liking your new confidence is inevitable.

Like, that is what will happen. But people who are new to Upfront might come and say, oh, I don't want to upset anybody. Who's them? Who am I who am I upsetting?

And so how I encourage people to think about it is it is not your job to make other people feel comfortable, and there are ways that you can make other people feel comfortable without putting yourself down. So I think people see it as two choices. Like, everybody's gonna be really upset, or I have to kind of downplay myself to make everybody feel comfortable. And that's just not it's not the case.

Because when I talk to women one on one about this, they'll say, but I don't want other people to feel intimidated, and I want everybody in the room to feel comfortable, and I want everybody in the room to feel safe to speak up. And it's like, yes. You can do all of that whilst maintaining your own respect and your own boundaries and your own dignity without making fun of yourself, without saying sorry all the time, without slipping in comments that you're unprepared or you're not very smart or you're late or you're not wearing the right shoes or whatever this these stories look like. So I think it's something about understanding this is a systemic societal pro it's not about you as an individual. And the more we have these conversations about tall poppy syndrome, about the likability penalty, you know, it's like, I'm not here to be liked.

I'm here to create impact. I'm here to be respected. I'm here to be kind.

SM: I definitely wanna get into the systemic thing in just a sec. Riffing off what you just said there, personally, in my experience, I've actually found, like, flipping it completely on its head that by being more confident, maybe as a woman in particular, I make other people around me feel even more.

LC: think especially as a leader because you've got somebody that's clear direction, that's reliable. So it's that kind of what about if being your most confident best self made everyone else around you feel even more comfortable if that's what you're worried about? Is what the data tells us. That is what happens. So for every person who might feel jealous or intimidated or insecure, there will be 10 people who feel, wow. I could be that.

SM: Exactly.

LC: What would it look like if I emulated that person? And we know that when people feel more comfortable and secure, they're more likely to do good work, they're more likely to be happy. A really great example of what you've just shared is stand up comedians. So if you imagine going to a stand up comedy gig and the comedian's, you know, mumbling, sweating? I mean, you just wanna die.

You're like, I need get me out of you because you're so embarrassed Feel it. For the person. But if the person stands up, grabs the mic Right. Instantly, they're telling you, I'm fine. Yeah.

I'm fine. You're fine. Fine. Have a good time. And you let off. Score it. It's fine. Because you're setting the tone. People feel it. People feel that energy. And it's the same at work. It's the same at home. It's the same in parenting. And it's not about being a perfect person who's always, I've got this. You know? It was like, what happened in the webinar last week? What happened the week before when my tech failed on the stage? Like, things go wrong. But you're okay. Nobody's dying. Everything's fine. And you can just hold that moment and let everybody know that you're okay. And if you're okay, they'll be okay.

SM: Do you encourage your I know you call them bonders. And, again, we keep talking about it, so we will dive in in a sec, gang. But, do you incur do you talk about the what is it? Like, the zones of comfort and getting into that zone? Is there any more on that you can, share on pushing those boundaries and keep kinda coming out of your comfort zone to increase your confidence?

LC: Absolutely. Confidence is a practice. So we talk about confidence as a practice of building new muscle the same way you would build new muscle at the gym through a fitness regime. And that muscle only starts to stretch when you are outside your comfort zone.

So you can't build confidence sitting at a desk behind the screen doing the things that you've that you've always done. And it's not about yourself in positions that feel so scary. You know, you're thrown up the night before in sweating buckets. It's like, what is a what's a healthy a healthy stretch? So maybe you're someone who goes to meetings and doesn't say very much.

So you decide, okay. In the next week, I'm gonna say something in every single meeting I'm in. And that something might be not super significant, but you're practicing the muscle of saying something, of letting your voice take up space in those rooms. Then the next week, it might be, I don't even have a photograph in profile. Because what if Andy that I had a crush on in nursery school comes to find me on LinkedIn, which he might, he probably won't, but also he doesn't care.

So let's get your photo on LinkedIn. So it's these we call them micro reps. It's like, what are these micro moments of confidence that can really start to build build a practice? Love that. Love the micro reps.

As a so I'm a mentor to MBA students in entrepreneurship, and they are first time founders. It's the first time that they are, like, taking that leap. So it's kind of that stretch. Not quite a micro rep, but a little bit more. And the amount of my students who I see hold themselves back, men and women, but from fear of don't even know what.

Right? Because we haven't even given ourselves the time, the opportunity to even think about it and talk about it. But when you do start to open it up a little bit, it is mind blowing how much we stop ourselves from doing things because of other people. So your kind of funny example there of kinda like someone I had a crush on if they see or whatever. Can you expand a bit more?

Can you share any more kind of practical tips on overcoming other people's judgment, their perception? What will they think? Who are they anyway? I'd love to hear you talk a bit more about that. So there's an amazing quote that I love from Dita Von Teese, and she says Yeah.

I know what you're gonna say. I can be the ripest, juiciest, most delicious peach in the world, and there will still be people who don't like peaches. I think that's the clean version. That is a great mantra Yeah.

Because you can do the best world in the way that is full of kindness and integrity, and there will still be people who don't like you, who don't like your work, who don't like what you stand for. That is just part of being a change maker in the world. The way that I think about it is this. There are lots of people who will have opinions on you, what you do, what you don't do, what you say, and how you say it. You get to decide whose opinion matters to you.

So for me, the opinion that mattered to me is my own. What do I think of how I showed up in this podcast today? So when I go to bed at night and when I do my weekly review next Friday of all the things I've done this week, I'll think to myself, how do I feel about how I showed up, about our conversation we had, about how I rehearsed, prepared, delivered? If I feel good about those things, that's the most important thing. Then I might think, okay.

Who else matters? So my partner's my son's opinion matters, and there's maybe a friend and then a couple of professional advisers that if they called me up and said, that really was not a good move. You shouldn't have said that, or I don't think this has landed well. I would say, tell me more. Mhmm.

Take it on board. What do you think? Help me learn. Help me improve. All of the other stuff is noise.

So on your own opinion mattering the most out of everyone, which is fantastic advice and completely agree with, for me is honestly both personally as well as some of these other incredible entrepreneurs that I mentor, how do you reconcile then another blocker to taking action and being more confident? Being perfectionism. Because, like, I'm never happy. You know? And I don't want to be okay because I don't want maybe I need to join a bond or get some help.

But I fear complacency so much. I'd rather it's so difficult. I can see you're smiling in there, but it's such a tightrope that I feel that I wore I'm turning this into my therapy session now, but it's a tightrope between, almost in my mind, not even perfectionism, but, like, you know, striving and wanting to do better, and that wasn't quite I'm being nitpicky about certain things versus that complacency. And just like, I don't want to get too comfortable because I know myself. I know I could get too comfortable, and it scares me.

So I'd rather veer on this side of the tightrope. How do you reconcile that your opinion is one that matters the most, but when you're a bloody perfectionist that's never happy? So have you ever been in a place where you've been complacent and comfortable and lost opportunities? It's so rare that I give myself the opportunity to do that that there isn't a lot of statistics. The short answer.

The right answer is no. What she means is no. You're I'm so scared. So far away so far away from that place. Like, people who worry about that, what you've just described, that fear, it's like the question I always get asked is that I'm so, so being arrogant, terrified of somebody calling me back.

Me, actually. I feel like I could be the most arrogant woman, and I'd be nowhere near a mediocre man. People who are ruminating and obsessing over never being called arrogant Yeah. Yeah. So far Right.

Arrogant because they're so worried about it. Don't ever think about it. It never crosses their mind. People who are being complacent, who are not challenging themselves Mhmm. Don't have these thoughts, are not having this conversation.

Right. So there's work for you to do around your identity. You need to own and accept the lived reality of the type of person that you are. You are a person who does things. You are a doer.

You are a creator. You push yourself outside your comfort zone. I don't know you super well, but I'm gonna guess you always have been that type of person. That is not gonna change. And then the fit we're gonna put the spotlight back on you in a sec, but then this is where it's problematic.

Okay. I hear you. It makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And this isn't the first time someone's tried to tell me this.

Yeah. But my problem is is because I've I'm so scared to allow that to happen Mhmm. That I'm like, well, the only reason I have been that type of person is because of those fears. Do you know what I mean? So it's integrated within that.

You see what I mean? So you think that's the reason you've had the success that you've had? Partially. Yeah. It's not.

Because I don't know. Right? So I've always been too scared. We do know. Okay.

You know, that we we do know that you are you are if you were to do a really deep dive into what you're driven by and your values, why you do your work, what motivates you to do your work. Mhmm. That is not driven by what if one day I become lazy. Mhmm. You know, you're driven by impact.

You're driven by creativity, relationships, financial success, impact, all these things. Yeah. And it's a bit like it reminds me of conversations I have with artists in the Bond who have say they think that their success has behaved struggled so much. Like, that's why I've had the success. Or you meet corporates corporate women in the bond who are like, the reason they've had their success is because they've burnt out so many times.

And so you're a test the price to pay. Yes. Like, I wouldn't have got this good stuff without that bad stuff. And so the the the thing we need to unlearn, which is all of the work we do in the bond, is about unlearning much more than as learning new things. We have to unlearn this idea that to create something powerful and useful in the world, there needs to be some sort of pain and negativity attached to that.

And do you know what that ties into is deservedness? Yeah. Is to feel like you deserve it. I've had these burn like, I have this promotion, this gig, and then that ties into the confidence because you you don't you're lacking the confidence to own and be okay with that role, with that creative success, whatever it is. So it's almost like the pain, the burnout, the struggling, the suffering is the price to pay to help you evidence that you deserve it.

It's like this internal narrative. Right? And the other way you can think about it is, okay. Let's let's say your theory is real. So let's say in six months, you're gonna be, oh, I've not been gone to work for two weeks.

There's no money in my bank account. I'm not getting any inbound emails. I've just took my foot off the ball completely. It's like worst case scenario. Like, what would happen then?

You'd figure it out. It's so unknown to me. Actually figured it out that you figured out everything else. It's like I people say to me, are you not scared? Because my partner works for my business, And we have a young son.

We live in Sweden. We don't have any support system. We both come from very working class backgrounds. There's no inheritance waiting in the wings. And all our eggs are in this business, this basket.

You know? It's like, this is our this is our son's future. This is our how we make our livelihood, and folks will say that's just terrifying. Like, what if it doesn't work? What if it all goes horribly wrong?

And I've gotten to a place now with my in my entrepreneurship journey where I think if that happens, I'll just build something else. Yeah. And I know that it would work, and it would be a success of some shape and kind because I've done it so many times and because I trust myself. I trust my skills and my abilities, and you're the same. It's like, what what would the worst case scenario be?

And when you really deeply believe that you would be okay in that worst case scenario, then it become it's not a fear anymore worry anymore because why would it be? You would figure it out. It's like another quote that comes to mind. I hope I don't butcher it, but there's that quote about the bird on the branch. Does this ring any bells on?

I was hoping you'd save me on that one. It's something about how, like, the bird doesn't fear the branch breaking from underneath it. Sounds good, though. So it's like the bird doesn't fear the branch from breaking beneath its feet because it trusts its wings to fly. Something like those lines.

That's what I mean. That's what it is. I'll look it up and borrow that for next time. Interesting. I love how this is, like, semi conversation around confidence versus, you know, therapy all kinda mixed in here.

I'm sure your Bond sessions, they must be so therapeutic, emotional. I can really imagine. So thank you for giving me a bit of a taste of that. I've always got so many other questions I wanna ask you. One of the other things I wanted to ask, we mentioned about sort of the systemic issue, especially bringing it back to, like, confidence in women in particular.

I loved your quote. I'm checking my notes here so I do get this one right. The problem is not that women aren't confident. It's that confidence in women is not rewarded. They have a rational valid reaction to a system that is penalizing their confidence.

So I would love for you to expand Yes. And it's a very intentional strap line that I use a lot in my in my keynotes and in my lectures because especially now, bear in mind, I've been doing this upfront work for ten years. Ten years ago, we were not talking about confidence the way we are now. We would definitely weren't talking about it from a systemic intersectional perspective. And that is one of the reasons that I built up front and saw a huge gap to create something like up front ten years ago because all of the conversation around confidence from the webinars and the training, most of them were built by men.

And they were preaching this kind of fake it till you make it, power poles, business suits, model of confidence. And then on the other side, you had kind of body, breath, vibrations, crystals, which I think both of them are not fit for purpose. We need something rooted in science and rooted in reality. And the reality is that we live in a world where 90% of people have a negativity bias too. And that is a statistic from the United Nations most recent gender report.

Is that just general? Like Yeah. Even outside of the workplace? Like Yeah. All people.

What? Yeah. It's a very scary statistic, and it's one that underpins how we've designed the bonds because you can't talk about confidence and isolation from that. So you can't confidence your way out of oppression. You can't confidence your Right.

Out of that bias. So when we look at confidence in that context, yes, you as an individual, your agency, your power, the control and influence that you do have, but it's also about your role in the system that you're part of, the teams that you lead, the family that you look after, the friendship groups you're part of, community groups, political groups, whatever that looks like. How are you using your confidence to build the collective confidence of the women and girls around you so that future generations are not having conversations about confidence anymore? So, obviously, the workplace is most relatable and extreme examples of this. So what we see at work is women being punished for having confidence in a way that white men who are often incompetent and mediocre get praised for showing confidence.

Women of color are often penalized and punished for having too much confidence, and white women are continually told that we're doing confidence wrong. So you're either too confident or not confident. And usually, when I'm in theaters, I'll say, raise your hand if you've ever been told you're either too confident or not confident enough. Every hand goes up. Then I say, raise your hand if you've been told you're both, and most hands go up.

And that's a really good example of what academics call the double bind. So we are told to be more confident, and then when we display those confident behaviors, we're told to tone it down. We're told not that much.

To go back in your box. Mhmm. So upfront is changing hopefully, changing the conversation. That's why we talk about starting a confidence revolution to help women understand this. It's not you.

It's not your confidence. This is a systemic issue. And one of the reasons is we have such a narrow fixed idea of what confidence is, and we are fed that story from when we're little. Confidence is usually masculine. It's usually very loud and extroverted.

It's often American. And, you know, I see this as your favorite Scottish extrovert friend. We live in a world that rewards extroversion and is not good Yeah. For any of us. So if you don't fit that really narrow box, you get feedback really early in your life that you're doing it wrong and that confidence is not gonna get you anywhere.

So my version of that story you know, I was a very confident little girl as most of us all were. Like, I always say, we are all born with all of the confidence and the creativity that we need in the world, and then someone or something takes it away. And for me, that was learning that, knowing the answers, putting my hand up Mhmm. Did not make me popular. Mhmm.

Other girls did not like that. And I remember my teacher saying to my parents' night, she's pretending she doesn't know the answer. Wow. And a question I would love to your listeners to think about is, like, when what age were you when you started to hide your cleverness? Because every woman has an answer to that question.

And I think I was probably seven. Wow. So young. Shrinking ourselves, literally making ourselves less visible. So a couple of things.

One is, I plot twist the, I guess, like, the bonders of what's revealed to them when they join, which is this whole Yeah. Mission and impact all around confidence, comments, and you're like, welcome to the club. This isn't actually about making you more confident. This is a systemic global issue. This isn't your fault.

So I love that immediate. It's almost like you bought the book or you've seen the you bought the ticket to see the film, and you're like, wait. What? And you're like, immediately, like, wait. What's what's all this about?

The other thing that comes up for me is I must be part of the 10% crazy statistic you shared the UN with the negative bias. And I I would guess one of the biggest reasons for that is because I grew up in a matriarchal household, which makes me wonder what kind of household did you grow up in? What were your parents like? So I grew up in quite a traditional male female partnership. My mom and dad are both closet artists.

They're both very, very creative. My mom is also very entrepreneurial, and I had a brother. I think the context for me was more my school and where I where I grew up and a place called Ayrshire in in Scotland, which is the most impoverished parts of The UK. So at school, there was a lot of, I think, particularly in the West Coast Of Scotland, and I'd be so curious to hear from your Scottish listeners, but there's a really intense culture of who does she think she is. Yeah.

Mhmm. And it's the tall poppy thing to an extreme. Yeah. It was like everybody has to know their place and stay in their box. And I'm just not that type of person, whether it was my red duffle Yeah.

That I wore when I was a when I was here. I I enjoyed performing. I wanted to be on stage. You know, that just did not go down well. Yeah.

And I was both subtly and very explicitly given a message of, you know, this is not welcome here. To the point where I once had a family, a friend of my parents suggest that I tone down the red if I ever wanted to get a boyfriend. Wow. These idiots. Apologies to your relative, but, you know, it clack a little bit to my question before on, you know, over overcoming other people's perceptions.

And it's like, if you do stop and really think about it, and you're like, the classic, like, they, them, and you're like, who are they anyway? You stop, you think, you're like, to your point on, like, whose opinion matters? But also, like, what are they doing? You know, it's like, are they lurking on the sidelines? Are they a spectator of the sport?

Like, I'm a player on the field, move on. I think what you touched on there as well was also anthropological and so powerful is the groups in which we belong. Right? And so your story of growing up in Ayrshire, how can you give any advice for anyone who might feel like they're surrounded by friends, family, loved ones who they love. They don't wanna cut them off.

But there's maybe that they hate to admit it to themselves, but there's maybe that sense of, like, I'm outgrowing this group. And again, it's that sort of fear of leaving the group. It's like death, I'm leaving the tribe. But sometimes you do have to put yourself in that situation. Can you give to that?

I think it's so important because we don't talk enough about the grief that comes with that. Right. And for me, you know, entrepreneurship, leadership, building businesses, publishing books, like, I don't have hundreds of friends who are doing those things. Yeah. Because there are not hundreds of women in the world doing those things, period.

Yeah. Never mind women who I have access to, who I've built friendships and relationships with. And I don't it's something that I'm it's a very kind of thing that I'm working through. And something that came to me last night so I had the launch of my children's book in London, as you know Congratulations. You.

And it was such a huge day, and I was full of adrenaline. My partner and my son were in the hotel room asleep, and I was, like, wandering around London with my notepad and my headphones and thinking, gosh. This is like, how do you even start to process it? And there was a bit of me that could feel myself slipping into sadness of being, like, I'm by myself. I would have friends around me at this moment.

Mhmm. You know, nobody's organized a dinner for you know, you kind of go into this like, oh, nobody. And then I realized I kind of sat with it, and it's like, it's not that it's sad. It's just singular. Nobody else in the world, even some of my closest friends who love me with all their heart, do not know the three year journey that has taken me to get that book to the stage where we launched it in London in front in full of a room of 70 people.

They just can't they weren't on that journey. I'm the only person who can sit with that the aftermath of what that feels like. And so it's, yeah, the grief thing. So I think it's about recognizing when you grow, when you invest in yourself, when you make decisions that are not always comfortable and familiar, there will be people who will be and it comes back to what we talked talked about earlier. There will be people who are upset by that, and that is a very inevitable part of it.

So the first thing you have to do is really trust yourself that that'll be okay and that you'll be able to deal with that. And that it's not about cutting everybody off and, you know, never speaking to your family and friends again, but you'll figure it out, and you'll find a way. Maybe not with all of them, but for the ones that really matter, you'll find a way. The second thing I want your listeners to think about is there are so many people in the world who your biggest cheerleaders and champions. They will be leaving you voice notes at midnight.

They will be preordering your book in bulk. They will be bringing homemade lasagna to your door for your kids because you've been up all night pitching. Those people are just waiting to meet you. Aw. There's so many of them.

And I I get a bit emotional when I think about some. Like, I've not met so many of these people yet, and we're gonna have so much fun in the future. And they're gonna support me so much, and I don't even know they exist. And that is a a kind of vision that I connect with when I feel because it is isolating. Entrepreneurship is lonely.

Being a leader is lonely. And we need that's why support groups, communities like the bond are so, so important. But I always think, imagine those future cheerleaders who haven't even met you yet. That's gonna be amazing. That's such a nice thought.

I've never heard that before of, like, the people you haven't met yet. How exciting that's and I can feel cheer for you so loud. I can feel your energy even as you're saying it. You mentioned the bond as well. Let's segue onto that because I keep sort of teasing it.

So tell my audience, what is the bond? What it about? What does it look like? What what is it exactly? So bond is the collective noun for a group of women.

And so our flagship product is called the Bond, and it is a six week online learning experience that transforms your relationship with your confidence and the confidence of the women around you. We have had over 15,000 women from 24 time zones graduate from a bond so far. The bond is scalable across time zones and geographies, which is why organizations love the bond and bring lots of their team to bonds. And for individuals, you you're joining a bond to join the confidence revolution. You're joining a six week program that is made up of prerecorded content.

There's a a course, so the course is based on all of the leading academic research around self efficacy and self advocacy. Then every week, we have a live call with an expert that's like a TED talk, very high energy and educational. And then there's the community piece where there's lots of peer to peer learning, offline meetups, or upfront incentives. And then you have twelve months access to the bond course, the curriculum, and the community. And so they happen four times a year.

And we also host Bonds for different topics. So, obviously, the confidence one is the one that's most well known and the one that kind of links to the theme we've talked about today. We also have a leadership bond. We have a Taylor Swift Bond.

SM: Nice. What's that one about?

LC: So that is for entrepreneurs and creatives who want to learn from the business lessons from how it has built the brand that she's built. Because I think there's lots of stories and information out there about her art, but nobody is studying and distilling the business decisions that she's making. And I think how she builds brands, how she serves her customers, how she builds community, her personal brand building, there is so much we can all learn from how she's doing that.

And I'm a huge Swiftie.

So I was like, I really wanna build this. It's like, instead of read the book, oh, was it write the book you want? I'm gonna make the course. That's incredible. I wanna be part of it. And just goes to show, right, how the rest of the world views Taylor Swift.

She's the song who writes She's an entrepreneur. She's the singer who writes these songs about her breakups similar to Reese Witherspoon. Yes. Exactly. Wearable case study with how successful She's commercially minded.

We also have a boys bond, which is for moms and young boys.

SM: Nice.

LC: And we're building out bonds in lots of different verticals. But the confidence bond is our most famous one, and we have data and stories. Like this morning, I met Laura Pacey who's just joined Upfront's, advisory council. So she did bond nine. So every year, we have public bonds, seven, eight, nine, ten.

So Bond 10 kicks off on the November 3. Bond 11 will be in 2026. Now Laura did Bond 9 because she was made redundant. Confidence through the floor just did not wasn't in a good place. Found up front, came across Bond 9, did the program. She graduated from the Bond and applied for a job and is now in her very first C-Suite position. And that is a very common story right through to Donna Patterson who joined the Bond when she was on maternity leave. At the time, she was working for Morrison's who she believed had discriminated against her because she was pregnant. And due to the support of the bond and lots of other brilliant communities in our life, she decided to take more single handedly.

She could not afford a lawyer, so she did it by herself using a lot of the techniques that we teach in the bond around owning the room and speaking in a way that gets people to listen, and she won. She took Morrisons to court and won right through to bonders who start businesses, leave relationships. Salary increase is 49%.

SM: Wow. Okay. If that hasn't sold it to you, you're already there. So I'm not sure exactly when this is going out. If it does go up before November 3, the time if you wanna check it out, we'll be propping the links and everything in the show notes.

You mentioned these incredible case studies. What wonderful success stories.

I do want to our final sort of chunk of this interview, I do wanna kinda deep dive a bit more into the entrepreneurial side of things. So you mentioned you have got entrepreneurs to go through the program. We talked about, you know, forging your own path and how lonely that can be. Just wanna read out another statistic here. Up to £250,000,000,000 could be added to the UK economy if women start their businesses at the same rate as men. So obviously, there's loads of problems when it comes to access to finance, unconscious bias, the list goes on and on.

But connecting into the confidence piece, what advice can you give to, let's say, if there is a budding female entrepreneur that's listening?

She probably isn't even calling herself an entrepreneur, right? Like, even that label is like, oh, that's not I said that. Right? I'm like, oh, other people can call me that, but I can't call you. Like I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a founder. Especially if you haven't had your first taste of it, but you do have that itch. And there's, like, oh, I could do this, and especially on social media and the Internet.

Can you give any more advice we haven't already touched on to help them take the leap?

Because full circle back to what you said at the very beginning, around the tragedy of all of these ideas and potential businesses and products and services that don't make it out there into the real world because of how confidence has blocked you.

LC: So I think for the people who are listening who are in that position, we need to stop thinking about, I'm either in a job doing what I'm doing now, or I'm a founder or I'm an entrepreneur. Like, those are not the two choices. It's not as binary as that. As you say, especially because of the Internet. We can do a very slow merge of those two worlds.

We can take baby steps, little pigeon steps. We can find what those micro confidence reps are so that it feels manageable and doable. I think the reason that, though, your listeners are not doing it is because that gap is just too huge. It's like, what? How would I even what about no.

Thank you. So one way that I always tell folks to think about starting that journey is to work in the open. Be visible. Show yourself and your work to the world. What does that mean?

That means that you are showing up normally online, not always. There are ways to do this in person in your own communities, of course, but online is gonna be the most effective impactful way to do that, is to get used to seeing what you think, having ideas and opinions online. So for example, say you are an employment lawyer by day and you have got an idea for a tech startup that is going to streamline part of the legal process. You can start to talk about that online through one LinkedIn post. And the post might say, I've been thinking about how we might solve the problem x y zed.

What do you think? Do you know anybody else who solves that problem? Because that's the first thing I think you're also operating from up this idea you've got doesn't exist. It probably does in a different shape or form. So your first job is to find those people, take them for coffee, have conversations, figure out what's working and what's not working about their business.

So I would start to see it as what is the what's the tiny step that you can take rather than making this huge big leap. You are never ever gonna wake up one day and say, that's it. I'm ready. I'm ready to type into my notice. I'm ready to start a business.

Most businesses start by accident. Most businesses start very, very scrappy. Another question I would pose to you is, what is the quickest, cheapest way you can prove to yourself that it's a shit idea so you can move on with your life, so you can move on to your next idea. Maybe you make a holding page. Maybe you do a poll on LinkedIn.

Maybe the next time you're in a taxi and they say, what do you do? You tell them that you're the CEO of this new company and see what their reaction is. I love that. Product that you're selling. You don't even know them.

It's a stranger. Exactly. Low risk Yeah. Low stakes environment. Mhmm.

Because I think that's also for me, so much of this is about our relationship with our own identity and the stories we tell ourselves. And I think we see this a lot with writing and creating art, building businesses. Like, I'm not a founder. I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a writer.

I just write on LinkedIn every day. I'm not really a writer. Mhmm. If you write, you are a writer. If you are building something, you are founding something.

You are a creator. The stories you tell yourself, especially in those early days, really, really matter. And it is a journey that I've been on. As we said, like, I used to cringe at the idea of being called an entrepreneur. I would never have called myself an entrepreneur, and I don't even know where that came from.

I think because my education my self education was, you know, was Richard Branson, James Dyson, Steve Jobs. These were the books I was reading. These were the role models that I had at the time. Right. I mean, obviously, you know, I don't have those men.

Yeah. And I wonder, you know, how my journey would have changed if I'd had access to women building businesses and women with backgrounds like mine building businesses. I think the other thing is you just need to get over yourself. And I say that with all the love in my heart. It's like nobody is really watching that closely.

Right. You don't really matter that much. Try the thing. Do the thing. It might work.

It might not work, but you will never know if you And I'll be damned if you wanna be one of those people on your deathbed who didn't try the thing. Yeah. Right? You haven't tried. Yeah.

You missed my 100% of the shots you don't take. A 100%. Oh, I love it. The, the weight that we've just given other people. And the other thing I I that comes to mind there is, like, good news.

This is not a big deal. Like, bad news. Bad news. This is not a big deal. Good news.

It's not a big deal. Given that you are so much further along and not putting you on a pedestal, but this is your sixth business. You are a serial entrepreneur. Any other tips that you can give? I guess, like, before we wrap, can you share sort of your top pearls of wisdom as it relates to, again, in keeping with the entrepreneurial theme on, like, finding product market fit, growth?

I read that you hit the 1,000,000 milestone in twenty three months, so congratulations. Share your simple eight steps. Yes. Download my PDF. Yeah.

Exactly. So I think the first thing, and we've kind of touched on it, is bias towards action. So anybody who knows me or has ever spent any time with me, I am intensely driven by doing the thing. This book is a really great example. It took me it was supposed to take me one year, but I am like a dog with a bone.

Like, I will I see it through to execution every single time. And I think part of that is my education. I went to art school and to study product design. And when you study product design, you are rewarded for how many shitty prototypes you can make. Mhmm.

And so I learned in my early twenties to make scrappy models, scrappy sketches. How can we let's go and to show it let's go show it somebody at the bus stop. What do you think? So that's how I approach everything, how I design my company, how we run meetings, what our policies are, how I show up online, Instagram posts, LinkedIn posts, and also how how I built our product. You know?

I'm here now telling a very compelling story about the bond, how it works, where it came from, why it's called a bond. At the start, it was a course. There was a Facebook group and 20 videos uploaded to a drive. And 300 people paid for that, called a bond then. And that was four years ago.

And every single bond gets better and better because of the second point. So number one, buys towards action. Second is obsession with customer feedback. I am constantly shook at how many suppliers I engage with who never ask me for feedback. Yeah.

Same. What is that? Nobody does. It's insane. Yeah.

It's like anything I do, when someone pays me to deliver a service, which would usually be a keynote of some sort Mhmm. I will always ask for feedback. Of course, the products that my business sell, where we have thousands of customers using these products, we have a really robust feedback framework. And, we read every single point, and we take action on the things that need to be better. We reach out and ask for more information if we want or need it.

And we also double down on the things people love and things that are really great and things that matter to people. Because people hear feedback and think it's like, oh, tell me how bad it feedback's also about what is it you really love about this thing because that's the thing that I'm then gonna put on the home page. Yeah. Exactly. Because I can't guess what and the speech I gave in Edinburgh last week when people said, oh, it's so great.

And then I kept saying, what was your favorite bit? Exactly. And it wasn't the part that I had guessed, and I often go around at the end and look at people's notebooks. What's the bit that they've written down? Or when they'll take out the bit they take pictures. Because that's the bit that I'll lead with.

SM: Exactly. I ask the exact same question with the show. Whenever anyone's, oh, I listen to I'm like, what was your favourite bit? Always asking for feedback.

LC: And then I think the third thing is really engaging with money, making money, spending money, investing in yourself, investing in your team, being comfortable with losing money.

Again, a journey I'm still on, but I meet a lot of entrepreneurs still, oh, I don't know if it's gonna make any money. Don't pay myself. If you if you don't pay yourself, you don't have a business. You still have an expensive hobby, right? So you need to figure out how to make it work. And if you're not paying yourself, it's like, what's the plan? Okay. I can afford to not be paid for ten months. At the ten month mark, I know that I need to be paid x to pay my bills. When are we gonna check-in on that? What does that look like? You know, being really comfortable with seeing how much your product is. Again, often I'm shopping around for services, photographers, social media support. Can I find how much it is? Put it there, front and centre. It's like, if you want to join a bond, it is £749 or a £125 for six months. That's how much it costs. If you want to buy my children's book, it's $10.99.

I would love you to buy all of those things. Like, get comfortable with owning how much your product costs, what the business model is. I see and, again, it's linked back to all the things we've talked about. Women are culturally conditioned to feel uncomfortable around conversations about money.

The status quo wants to keep us poor. Because when women have money, we create economic power. And when we have economic power, we can build businesses. We can invest in each other. We can hire each other. We can pay each other. Like, that's what motivates me. But the powers that be, of course, don't want that to happen because the current state of things is what's serving them. So, again, please don't feel embarrassed or ashamed or, oh, shit. I've got so far to go because we live in a world that is nine that has a 90% negativity bias towards women. There is a reason that these things are difficult. The system is working exactly as it's designed to. And that is not to reinforce negative stereotypes or, you know, to bring out my tiny violin. I actually find it very liberating and motivating. Because once you have that knowledge, then you can go about trying to fix it and make it better.

SM: Lauren, incredible. It's you're making me think about, you know, everything that exists on the other side of fear. Whether it's that fear of getting familiar with your money, talking about sharing your prices, taking that leap, those micro reps. I love it.

Lauren, is there anything I haven't already asked you that you would like to talk about before we finish here?

LC: Can I talk about my new book?

SM: Yeah. Of course. Congratulations!

LC: Thank you. So my children's book is Taylor Meets the Trick, and it is written for three to eight year olds.

And it is all about teaching young people about the patriarchy in a very fun, easy, gentle, kind way. The story is inspired by my little boy who's got long blonde curly hair. People often think he's a girl. And the trick has become such a incredible tool as language for our family to to talk about. And so it doesn't make him feel shame or embarrassed.

So I'll give you two examples that happened at the launch yesterday, which just blew me away, given that I have literally just written this book, and I've been talking and working on the trick for five years. One of our speakers, Lee, an incredible guy called Lee Chambers, who is from the Male Ally Institute, turned up to the event to speak on the panel in running gear, like joggers in a jumper. And I met him at the door, and I didn't he thought, kind of noticed, but had no emotional response to that noticing. Wasn't till he was on the stage that he shared with us that he'd left his suitcase on the train. Oh, no.

And he had no clothes, and so he had to turn up in very casual joggers, no jumper. And then he said, and the fact that none of you have really noticed, but yet had any of the women on this stage turned up like that, you would have all noticed. And that's the trick. And I was like, I was tricked. So that was a funny moment.

Double standard. And not only that, but all the connotations of, like, what a slob, lazy, doesn't care, like, all these other things that we would put on. Then at the end of the event so I had bought really beautiful, bouquets of flowers to have around the venue. And at the end of there's hardly any left. Everybody had gone home or packing all the stuff up.

And I thought, gosh, these gorgeous flowers. I don't want them. They'll just go to waste in the venue. And so I ran around the room saying, would you like to take the lovely flowers home? And I only asked women.

I was tricked. I was tricked. I was tricked. So it's these moments where, you know, the trick is making you think there's rules for boys and rules for girls. Grown ups call it the patriarchy.

Children call it the trick. In the book, the teacher is tricked because the teacher thinks that Taylor is a girl, and the daddy has to educate the teacher and Taylor that there's this thing called the patriarchy. In the story, it's a little black squiggle that sits on you, and it's really sneaky and jumps into your tummy and jumps into your heart. And at the back of the book, there's lots of resources for parents and families. And, really, this is for grown ups.

This is for moms and dads, aunties and uncles, grannies and granddads who want to build a better future for all of us. So go to the https://the-trick.co/. You can also get it on Amazon. We'd really love you to get a copy if you have any little people in your life.

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