The Long Haul Leader: Why you *need* to prioritise rest, recovery and PLAY | Chris Ducker

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In this week's episode, Stephanie Melodia interviews Chris Ducker, a leadership speaker, serial entrepreneur, and bestselling author of The Long-Haul Leader, Rise of the Youpreneur, and Virtual Freedom. Known for his straight-talking yet inspiring style, he helps leaders build successful, sustainable careers without burnout. Chris has founded and scaled multiple seven-figure businesses and mentored thousands of leaders and small business owners over a 20+ year career. His work has been featured in major outlets including Forbes, BBC, Entrepreneur, CBS, INC, and Success Magazine.

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

• The hidden cost of success: burnout during peak performance

  Chris experienced severe burnout in 2021 during his most successful period—clients "coming out of our ears" during the pandemic. By September, he could barely work past 11 AM, diagnosed with phase three adrenal failure, anxiety, and depression. His story proves you can burn out even doing work you love with great people, highlighting that volume—not just stress—can destroy your health.
  

• The physical reality of burnout: not just feeling tired

  Chris's adrenal glands flatlined, unable to produce cortisol (stress hormone), leaving him with no energy, severe brain fog, and sleep disruption. He required antidepressants for over a year. Earlier burnout in 2010 led to spinal fusion surgery from sitting 16 hours daily. These medical realities demolish the myth that burnout is simply "needing a holiday."
  

• Self-care as strategy, not selfishness

  Chris reframes recovery as non-negotiable strategy for long-haul leadership. His practices include: no-work Fridays, weekly date nights, quarterly couple retreats, three family holidays yearly, plus sauna, cold plunges, and blood work every 90 days. Recovery goes on the calendar first—before any work commitments—making it truly non-negotiable.
  

• The guilt trap: why leaders feel bad for resting (and shouldn't!)

  Most entrepreneurs feel guilty taking time away from responsibilities, viewing rest as lazy or undeserved. Chris argues this mindset is backwards: schedule recovery first, regardless of whether you've "earned" it. When you say yes to something, you're simultaneously saying no to something else—so say yes to recovery before anything else.
  

• Motion vs Momentum: The "busywork" trap

  Early-stage founders often say yes to everything, mistaking being busy for making progress. Chris warns against filling calendars just to appear productive. Real strategy means being selective about opportunities and understanding you can't be everything to everyone. The Swedish employee's viral response to American hustle culture exemplifies this: working late signals poor time management, not dedication.
  

• Burnout as warning, not a badge of honour

  Society—particularly since the BlackBerry era ended work-life boundaries—treats burnout as a status symbol. Chris's book The Long Haul Leader serves as a "permission slip" to reject this narrative. You shouldn't have to burn out, lose relationships, or end up in hospital to achieve success. Show me your calendar and I'll show you your priorities.

SM: My regular listeners will know that I usually close my interviews with the traditional closing question, which is one tragedy that's taught you an unforgettable lesson, hence, the whole purpose of the show. But with you, we're gonna put that up front and center. Mhmm. And we're gonna actually lead in that as the opening question. So what's one tragedy that taught you an unforgettable lesson, Chris?

CD: the word tragedy is is different for everybody, right? So, for me, it it probably was more of a mistake, more of a massive lesson learned. So in 2021, we'll remember, we're in the middle of pandemic. We were just about to sort of start coming out of it. But we, as a family, we take a sabbatical, every August. Take the entire month off. Go ahead and do our things and travel and have lots of fun and create memories and all that kind of stuff. And I remember to myself, I really need this one. Like, I'm exhausted. I'm really, really tired, and I can't wait to get on this sabbatical. Now to preface that, business was I mean, we were crushing it. Because, you know, as as Youpreneur is my company. It's the one company I still now own and operate. I've sold all the others. And what we do is we help expert authors, publish, launch, market, sell, their books. And obviously, this frameworks and ecosystems around their, you know, around their IP and all that sort of fun stuff.

So you can imagine when the pandemic hit, everyone was like, oh, I'm gonna write my book. Oh, I'm gonna market my book properly. Oh, I'm finally gonna get around to relaunching my book or whatever the case may be. And so we had clients coming out of our ears. I mean, it created so many opportunities for us.

So we were very, very, very busy. Now, it wasn't as if I wasn't enjoying the work because I was enjoying the work. Sure. There was just a lot of it. And so, went on this sabbatical.

It come back feeling rather refreshed and, you know, raring to go again. Walked into my office first day back in September. Turned on the computer. Stared at the screen for ten minutes. Turned it back off.

And didn't walk back in for about another month. And I remember my wife saying that this is not you. There's something going on here. You know, you're you're sitting around the house a lot. You're not you're not playing with the kids the way you usually do.

You don't wanna work, like, there's something going on. You need to go and see the doc and find out. And I remember, you know, retrospectively. Right? You always look back and you say to yourself, well, how was I feeling in this moment or in this situation?

Yeah. And how I was feeling was by 11:00 every day, I was done. Mhmm. Like, I had no energy. Brain fog was kicking in.

Fatigue was brutal. I wasn't sleeping properly. So on and so on and so on.

SM: Are we talking AM or PM, just to clarify?

CD: AM. Yeah. So by 11AM. By 11AM, I was basically Like done. Done. And I went to the doctor, told her how I was feeling. We ran a whole bunch of tests. And about a week or so later, she called me back in and she sat me down and she said, you've got phase you're you're in flat line for your adrenals. In phase three, adrenal failure.

Now your adrenals, I'm not a doctor. Right? So there's your disclaimer right there. But your adrenals, they create cortisol, which is your stress hormone. And what it should happen is your adrenal your cortisol level should be very very high when you when you begin the day.

And slowly but surely they diminish, and then melatonin kicks in, which is your sleep hormone. Right? So what was happening was I was waking up flat lined. And I was flat lined the whole day. Hence, no energy, brain fog, etcetera, etcetera.

And so not only that, also diagnosed with anxiety and depression as well. I was put on antidepressants for a year and a bit. Took myself off that, after I started feeling better and all the rest of it. Knowing full well that we're just treating the symptoms, not the cause. Yeah.

And I'm happy to say now, I'm out of the woods. Everything's great. And I've never been any better. But it was a massive, massive wake up call for me, that burnout. It was a huge wake up call.

Because through all the success, all the money, all the, you know, the joy of working with the right people and all that sort of stuff. If you don't have the energy to be able to lead in the right way, then what's the point? None of it. Like what what are you doing? Right?

Yeah. And and and being successful, if that comes at at the detriment of your health, your relationships, how you feel about day to day life, then that's not success at all. Right? And so I went down this huge rabbit hole, like a lot of entrepreneurs do. When they become interested in something, they read all the things and buy all the stuff and all that kind of stuff.

And that's exactly what happens. And so, you know, sit here now today with, you know, the sauna, the red light, the cold plunges, the supplements, draw blood every ninety days. You know, I'm staying on top of all hormone levels, all that sort of stuff. And I feel bloody fantastic. Amazing.

Oh, Christmas. So it's been a real common theme with this show over the past couple of years. Right? It's like none of it matters. Yeah.

I'm not surprised. There's a reason, you know, your health is your wealth, you know, you have all these cliches. So a couple of things that stand up story. One is how you're doing, like, great work that you enjoy, great people, and so you can still have burnout even if things are going well. Right?

It's just so much. You can still kind of be so severely exhausted. And then the second thing is how burnout is so thrown around these days. I'm sure you come across it all the time as well. And what your story there has highlighted is actually the medical translation for you in your case Yeah.

Of, like, how physiologically you were able to work more than a couple of hours a day. So I commend you on, you know, taking those steps and, you know, and sharing that with my listeners again. Right? Because even though it has been a common theme, it still bears reiterating. And so with that in mind, my next question then is with these entrepreneurs listening, it's a lot easier said than done.

Right? Especially, I mean, in any phase you're at. Right? Whether you're just you've just taken that leap from your day job and you're going out into that void, that's a stressful situation. Your next payslip is coming from.

Whether you're further along and you've got investors and you're feeling the pressure or you've got board members, whether it's coming from a validated external party or just yourself, again, easier said than done. So what advice can you give my entrepreneurial listeners now that you've been through this transformative experience and what you now know? Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest thing for me was and, you know, I've been an entrepreneur for almost twenty five years. Right?

So I should know better. Right? Like, I I actually had a very small bout of burnout in 2010. I recovered very, very quickly. It was mostly just fatigue.

I kinda got over it relatively quickly. But it actually came back to haunt me two years later when I ended up needing back surgery Wow. In my lower lumbar. I had a l five s one spinal fusion, which basically what they do is remove one of the discs and they kind of put this little deposit calcium deposit thing and they fuse the vertebrae together. And the reason why was because I was sat on a chair for sixteen hours a day crushing my back.

So recovered from that and all that sort of good stuff. I I don't I think the biggest thing here is that most entrepreneurs, most leaders, period, actually, they feel guilty. Yeah. Exactly. They feel guilty when they take time away Yeah.

From their responsibilities at work. And we shouldn't feel guilty. And so, that that aspect of self care becomes paramount for any leader that wants to be around for a long time, a change that they want to affect in the world. Right? Plain and simple.

And so, the way I look at it now, and this is what I said to anybody that's, you know, wanted to build a successful career or a great business or whatever it is like, think about self care not as being selfish, but actually being a strategy. And I think if you can get that into your into your cranium as early on as possible in your growth journey, you'll become a lot more successful a lot earlier on. So what practical advice can you give someone listening to this in the moment feeling guilty? And myself. Right?

So just a few days ago, I had a very lazy Sunday. I was wracked with guilt the whole time. I was just like, oh. Why? But why?

Because there's so many things I need to do and should be doing. It's the classic, like, internal narratives. Yeah. So if I had you with me in my living room on Sunday where I'm just horizontal, And I'm like, oh, but I should be doing this. Should be doing that.

What what do you tell me? Obviously, you're doing exactly what you should be doing. You're taking time for recovery. Because during the week, you're probably pretty full on. You're recording shows, you're speaking on stages, you're creating content, you're having calls, you're maybe being interviewed yourself.

That's a pretty solid schedule most days I would think during the week. The weekend should be the time where you complete the unplug and decompress. I remember years ago, one of my very good friends and a mentor of mine, Michael Hyer, who actually wrote the foreword for this book, he said to me that if the word recharge only is associated with your mobile phone, you've got big problems with us. And I truly believe that. I truly, truly believe that.

And so, you know, my Sunday is, yes, a little bit of horizontal time on the sofa. Maybe I'll I'm back in the La Z Boy. Nine times out of 10, I'm gonna have my eight year old daughter laying on top of me. I will either be if I'm not at home recovering that way, I'll be at a nature reserve bird watching. I'm a big birder.

So, or I'll be drawing or helping the kids with homework or whatever the case may be. Right? Like, the recovery is absolutely paramount. It really is. And speaking from personal experience, I think one of the worst things that you could do, do, and I'd love to obviously get your take on this, half heartedly doing both things.

Right? So when you're off, you're off. So that when you're on, you're on. So there's no good being horizontal on a Sunday and feeling guilty about it Yeah. Because then you're not really resting.

And there's the seven different types of rest. Right? Whether it is creative, spiritual, physical. And so if you've got that running through your brain, you're not really allowing yourself to fully recharge Agreed. So that you're not allowing yourself to be fully on when you are on.

I think linked to that is, well, the line, because where is there a kind of again, this is being me, just more personal here now, is my fear is a slippery slope, and it's the same with money, with rest. It's like, oh, but, like, this could get too comfortable. This could get too good if I really, like, allow myself. Yeah. So you mentioned, like, weekends, for example.

Are there any other, like, specific practices we can take inspiration? Oh, yes. So so I have a no work Friday rule. Okay. Nice.

Not work till Friday, like, for probably now. Yeah. Wow. And what what Fridays are for for me is extra time with my wife. So we might do a movie in the morning after drop off at schools.

It could be a couple's yoga session. It could be actually just catching up on, you know, watching a TV show or reading a book or whatever the case may be. So no work Friday is the thing. I appreciate. Maybe not everybody's in a position where they're trying to find up.

But But I think what yeah. And we also have a we have a date night every Thursday night as well. That kind of the long weekend is our date night. Day. We have, an early year reset in April, where we go away for three nights together.

We have a late year reset at the October I love that. Where we go away for three weeks together. Three, night. Got three weeks would be great. Three nights together.

And then we have, usually three family holidays as well. Now whether you can do the Fridays off every every, you know, week or maybe it's half a day once every other, week or something like that. The most important is that you're putting the recovery first. That's the key principle here. It goes on the schedule and it becomes a non negotiable.

You have to kill yourself. Exactly. Feel like you deserve it. Right. Yeah.

So so many people say, oh, man. I've had an insane month. Yeah. I deserved this spa day. Right.

No. Your spa day should have been on the bloody schedule Yeah. At the beginning of the month Yeah. Regardless of what work Flip it. You end up doing.

Right? And so I think I think that's the big thing is it's become a non negotiable. Like, we have a a company retreat every November, first week in November. We go away for two weeks. We only have a small team.

So usually a couple of people in a in a room with me, and then we'll buzz our VA team and everything in The Philippines as about five of them now, via Zoom for half the day and things like that. Well, we talk about what we wanna do in in the upcoming year. Going into that meeting, Steph, all of my personal time off is on the calendar already. So my team knows when I'm available to work and when I'm not available. And if it's on that schedule going into that meeting, it is a 100 non negotiable.

Doesn't matter what it is. And I'm just a really big believer that when you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else in the exact same moment. So I say yes to my recovery time before I say yes to anything else. That's a big point to make. Love that.

So powerful. So, obviously, you are in a very privileged position now, thanks to, you know, your own, you know, bootstrap success. You know, you're self made, so very, very deserving of all of that. But you mentioned earlier you've sold a few companies. You have had this business success.

And so what advice could you give someone who is in the trenches for the first time? Yep. They're earlier on. Maybe their only buffer is their own savings, which even that would feel a bit kinda daunting, scary to kinda dip into. So I guess it's like, what what advice can what practical advice can you give on self care and prioritizing those fundamentals when you don't have the luxuries that you do?

Yeah. I mean and time is our most valuable commodity, particularly as entrepreneurs. Right? Because if we are bootstrapping our businesses, like I've done, or at a single dollar or pound from anyone, any money I've made, I put back into the businesses in terms of expansion and scaling and things like that. So I get it.

Wholeheartedly, I get it. The most important, I I think, lesson that I've learned in that earlier stage is understanding that I can't be everything to everybody. And nor can I be everywhere all the time? So it's about making as many informed decisions as I possibly could at whatever time I was at with whatever opportunities were coming my way. Because it's very easy when you're starting out.

It's very very easy to say yes to everything. Yeah. Exactly. Like I did at the beginning. Yeah.

Yeah. I think I think pretty much everybody does if they bootstrapped. Right? Because they see everything Yeah. As a genuine opportunity.

Yeah. Right? Well, we know they're not genuine opportunities. Like, any any idiot can fill up their calendar full of stuff to do. Yeah.

But don't don't ever misinterpret that motion for momentum. Mhmm. There's a big difference between those. Mhmm. And so, yeah.

You can look busy, but are you actually doing busy work for the sake of doing busy work? Or are you actually being very very specific and strategic with the work that you're doing and the opportunities you're saying yes to? So I think the big lesson here is understand that you don't have to say yes to everything. You should be able to call the shots a little bit more than you probably are. Yeah.

I mean, you left the job. Mhmm. You started the thing To be your own boss. To be your own boss not to have another job. Yeah.

Yeah. Right? Where you have to pay even more in taxes and costs and all the rest of it. So I I think that's a big one is is understanding that you don't have to say yes to every single opportunity. Yeah.

And what you remind me of that, shout out to another great interview. I think it may have been Lottie White who talked around building a business, not a prison. And that's what comes to mind. It's like, you've left this for a reason. Right?

And it's like, how many entrepreneurs fall into that trap of of trapping themselves into a business that either they can't take holiday from, they can't switch off from. And so, just a couple of things that you said there as well. One is, what comes to mind as well is the food analogy, is between kind of a quick, like, sugar fix versus that more kind of nutritional kind of fruit and veg where you're just kinda like looking for that kind of sugar fix and that and that kind of busy work and feeling like you're in motion versus momentum. So my follow-up question to that is, I think a real a really uncomfortable truth for a lot of, especially early stage entrepreneurs, is that we may all be climbing ladders, but those ladders me resting up against the right walls. So how do we balance that kind of strategic thinking and trying to say yes to the right opportunities when, again, in the moment, you know, we don't have that benefit either of hindsight.

What advice can we get from you on that? Well, I mean, everyone's gonna have their own style of doing things. Right? Working through whatever tasks they need to do every day. For me, what I have found to be and and it probably took me, I think, probably about five to figure this one out.

I do my creative work, the kind of the more deep work first thing in the day. Mhmm. Because that's when I'm at my most kind of switched on. I wasn't always like that back in 2021, but I am now. So I don't exercise every day or anything like that.

I mean, I I keep active. I work out three, four times a week and all that kind of stuff. But, like, I'm not one of these guys that spends, you know, every morning in the gym for an hour and then he has his protein shake and all that. It's not my style at all. But I do make that I get up at the same time every day regardless of what time I've gone to bed, and I've got much better on the sleep routine.

That was a major Mhmm. That was a major issue. Number one fundamental. Yeah. I mean, we can talk about sleep all day long.

It's like my best friend now. I'm here for it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I think understanding that when you're when you're at your sharpest is when you should do your most important work. And for me, that's first thing in the morning. So I don't check email. I don't check social. I don't do any of that sort of admin, first up.

I'll go straight into deep work, whether that's recording a podcast or shooting video or writing. You know, I write a a weekly newsletter called Future Proof, and all these other things that's kind of like, that's my job. Like, that's the work before the work. Yeah. That's the way I look at it.

Because as a speaker, as you all know, before you get up on stage and perform that forty five, sixty minute keynote, you've you've you've practiced that keynote at least 20 times probably. Right? If not more. And so, a lot of people say, you get paid x amount to do a forty five minute speech. I said, no.

No. No. That's just that's Tip of the iceberg. That's the conclusion of everything else that's happened prior to it. You get paid for all the work before the work.

Yeah. The unsexy stuff Definitely. That people don't see. In a hotel rooms with a little clicker that you bought on your laptop and going through your presentation in performance mode and all this kind of stuff. Right?

We've all done it. So do the important stuff first Yeah. And then get to the real to do list Yeah. So to speak. I think the common theme with all of this is like that, is managing the guilt internally.

Like, I love that you're sharing some real life practice here, but it's like as I'm listening to you, how both I'm reacting and imagining my listeners here, like, oh, okay. But, like, can I really? And do I need permission? If you do need permission, you've got it from us here. Who's your permission, sir?

I'm writing it out right now. It's You know? Not only permissible, but strongly recommended. And, actually, that again is the other flip, isn't it? It's not yeah.

You're allowed to take a break, to recharge, to draw, to watch a fun movie, to prioritize your deep work first thing in the morning and not get back to someone on email straight away. Yep. Not only are you recommend you like, it's a nonnegotiable. It's to your point on putting that rest first. Yep.

Links to your book here, which really appreciate you bringing it in today, The Long Haul Leader. You mentioned before about this rest And this has been autographed now, Steph. This is one of our founders. Show this. It's been autographed.

Right? So if I find this on eBay, you and me are gonna have a problem. What's what's gonna happen is this episode is gonna go viral. You're gonna get more famous. That's gonna increase the value of this book that's now been autographed.

No. I love it. And I and I love the title so much as well. And and what I'm linking it to is a little sound bite you said earlier, which was how is a strategy. It's not just a self care and being selfish.

It is a strategy because you need that resilience to keep going, and you're not gonna be resilient by just holding on. So before I do dive into this, this is my bedtime reading. Can you expand on that through the lens of your great book right here? When I started writing the book, I followed the exact same processes I did with my last two books or my first two books. So Virtual Freedom 2014 was all about how to build a team of virtual assistants to help you run sport business.

Well, I've been doing that for seven or eight years before I wrote the book. So I just wrote about what I had experienced. Rise of the Upaner 2018 was out about how to market and monetize your expertise as a personal brand. Well, I've been doing that for over a decade at that point, so I just wrote about what I knew. This was different.

I went into the book thinking I was gonna do exactly the same that I've done prior. But actually, working with the publisher and an amazing developmental editor, she drew so many extra stories out of it and got me to do so much more research for this book than I've ever done before for any of my other books. I feel like now this is this is something that will hopefully truly stand the test of time. Because not only is it that precautionary tale of burnout and recovery and strategies to avoid and recover and all that kind of stuff. But also, I think more importantly, it is a permission slip.

It's a permission slip to understand that we have got to the point in society where burnout is being shown to people as a badge of honor Yeah. And it is not. It is a warning. It is a true warning that you are doing things wrong. You shouldn't have to burn out to have relationships fail, to, you know, go bankrupt, to end up in hospital.

You shouldn't have to do that in order to become successful. Right. And I'm just gonna jump in here really quick because I'm not sure if you saw this viral post about a Swedish employee, his response to his new American boss. Right. So it was a bit of these cult I'm I'm loving this already.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can already kinda tell how this is going. Culture clash.

And I think it was this company that had recently got acquired by this bigger American company, and so American North America, you know, you got a bit more of this kinda hustle culture. Yep. And this boss I'm not gonna get this, like, word for word, but this this American boss was, like, kind of a half reprimanding this Swedish employee for not showing as much, like, dedication as his colleagues. And his response was kinda along the lines you were saying, which was, like, in this part of the world, like, don't finish your work by the before the day's ended. You, like, either haven't done a good job Yeah.

Or you're milk or you can't manage your time effectively, or you're milking it, or it's just that presenteeism and you're just showing it. Like, in Japan, right, you've got that, like Yeah. Napping at your desk to, like, show that, like, how hard you're working. So really interesting with all these different kind of cultures around the world. But it was such, it was such an effective clapback, basically.

And it just speaks to what you're saying there, which is it's not this badge of honor. Like, you staying late to work, you working, like, all hours, being in the office, killing yourself Yeah. Is just like, that that it's a it's a it's a signal of something not working. Yeah. I mean, you know, simple way of looking at it is show me your calendar and I'll show you your priorities.

Yeah. Exactly. Right? Yeah. Show me what's on your schedule and I'll show you what's really important to you.

So if if recovery and downtime is important to you, it should be on your schedule. If it doesn't get scheduled, it won't get done. Yeah. Exactly. So I think that's what people go wrong is is they try and jam their schedules with as much as they can to feel like they've done a lot of work and they've been busy.

You know, you call your friend up that you've not spoken to for a while and says, oh, you've been oh, man. So busy. It's kind of like, oh, I'm so awesome. I've got so much to do, man. No.

You know, I want I wanna be able to call up my friends and say, hey, you know, honestly, I'm feeling a bit lazy right now. Oh, that's not anything. You know? Yeah. I've watched all of British Bake Off.

I've killed two two box sets in the last thirty six hours, you know, or whatever it is. You know? And and I I really feel that that has, you know, society has led us to believe. Like I said, that burnout has become a badge of honor. Yeah.

You wear it kind of on your sleeves with the stripes that you've earned. And I don't believe that should Same. And and, you know, can be the case. Like, there's another way of doing it. Exactly.

The tides are turning. And again, it's just pointing to the system that, like, it's just it's just not working. It just Well, I'll tell you where I think it started. Right? I think it started with the advent of the blackberry.

Because all of a sudden, if you're in a corporate job, you would nine times out of 10, you would end at 5PM. Okay. I thought we were gonna talk about the fruit. No. Not where is those going?

Where is those going? I'm like, lock my interest. What the history of the blackberry? This could be a great analogy for business, isn't it? I'm like, okay.

But what I mean is that before you, you know, ten to five, you'd be packing up your stuff. Yeah. Exactly. You'd be out the door. Exactly.

You'd get on the train. You'd be home, and you'd have your dinner. You'd flunk in front of the TV, and that would be Good boundaries. Then the BlackBerry came along. Right?

And you'd be on the train, you know, replying to emails. Exactly. Right? And and then maybe it might buzz when you're sitting down watching a film after dinner. Yeah.

Oh, no. This is the boss. I better get back to him kinda thing. And what happened was that work life balance, I believe that that that was the end of work life balance Yeah. As we kind of knew it before.

Right? Yeah. And so now I don't look at it as work life balance. I actually look at it as just priorities. And like I said, show me your schedule.

I'll show you my priorities. Yeah. It's all about boundaries. Right? And boundaries aren't boundaries until you implement them.

So it's like you're saying on your company retreat, where you're like, this is the time I blocked out for my holiday. And whether it's leaving the office, disconnecting, recharging, it's if you're letting one seep into another, here's another kind of mental reefer when I kinda get over that guilt, is you're actually doing a disservice to the other one. And so, again, flipping the script on, do you want to be more effective? Do you want to be a better leader? Do you want to be producing more creative work?

You're gonna have to play around. You're gonna have to mess about, be creative, watch inspirational films films that you enjoy. Watch the other night I watched cartoons. I loved it. What cartoon did you watch?

Disney. Just like Is Disney a cartoon? You you and my wife will get on break. Oh, dear. I I've lost if I had a 100 every time I've seen my wife actually sit on the sofa, open up Disney plus and select an actual cartoon film to watch on her own with the children, I'd I'd be a very very comfortable man financially.

SM: You know what? Sticking with this for a hot second because what's also interesting is a friend shared with me research on how much cartoons can relax you. So it's one of the if you have to watch TV, you know, if you're not gonna sit sit back and read a book and stuff, you're gonna watch TV before going to bed, cartoons is the best thing because it's like color shapes. And the point there the research is irrelevant. The point is actually how I needed that scientific research to feel better about watching the cartoons. Do you know what I mean? Where it's like, I can't just enjoy it for what it is and just embrace the childhood nostalgia. I also went to art school, and I was gonna be an animator in a different life. So, like, I've definitely got that, like, artistic appreciation. But it's like, I needed to have that kind of research.

CD: Interesting you say that that kind of yesteryear like, going back into yesteryear and reliving certain things that you remember when you were kids. Right? Like that retro kind of style. I, over Christmas, I, paid for and downloaded all of the Knight Rider TV show from the eighties. I love that show.

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Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best podcast for curious entrepreneurs and ambitious founders. Learn from those a few steps ahead of you in these candid interviews of the highs and lows of scaling and failing business.

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About Stephanie Melodia:

As ex-CEO of an award-winning marketing agency, Stephanie now hosts Strategy & Tragedy, advises MBA students with Oneday, coaches founders 1:1, and travels the world as an international keynote speaker on her signature subject of ‘Hacking Luck.’

She has delivered impactful sessions for household brand names including Qatar Airways, Soho House, WeTransfer, LinkedIn, Xero, Harvey Nash Group, Web Summit, and more - leaving audiences feeling inspired, motivated, and energised.

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