Dear Reader,

Hello from Sardinia. I’m supposed to be on holiday but I find it hard to sit still. Lying on the beach doing nothing has a shelf life for me. And so having my Kindle nearby helps.

My kids do “the eye roll” when they hear what I’m reading. It’s generally non-fiction and something to do with business, psychology, or spirituality. Today’s book of choice is Very Good Copy by Eddie Shleyner. I’m reading it because I want to learn how to write better.

Eddie’s a great writer. Short pieces that draw you in. His book is a collection of blog posts. Which is no bad thing. It definitely makes for an easy read.

Today’s chapter is about the story of King Abbott and King Billow. They are having a battle about who could “contain” the other. King Abbott starts by putting King Billow in the most complex maze he could design. After many years of wandering around King Billow finally finds his way out. It’s then King Billow’s turn. He doesn’t build a thing. He just puts King Abbott in the middle of a vast desert. No landmarks. Nothing to help him navigate.

He ends up dying in the desert.

Lying there on the beach, surrounded by sand, and ALL the options for what to do with my day, I could really feel into this. Shall I go back into the water? Maybe practise a bit of Kung Fu? Jot down some ideas about this book? Go get an ice cream? Too many possibilities. Admittedly none of them were existential threats.

But too many possibilities can be paralysing when you’re needing to pick the right thing.

Eddie’s moral of the story:

“You can’t escape a borderless place.”

And “The scariest thing in the world (for a copywriter), is a world of possibilities.”

I know that feeling well.

Two years ago I decided to write more regularly on LinkedIn. Prior to that my writing was sporadic. I was always worried about writing the wrong thing. I found writing in public uncomfortable because I wasn’t a writer. I always worried about whether I’d get criticised. Or worse still, if anyone would even care - the crushing feeling of no likes or comments.

I also didn’t know my own voice and I always struggled to get to a finished piece. I believed that I had to nail an idea before I put pen to paper. I had so many hurdles between me and the publish button: I needed to have the right idea; I needed to write well; and I needed to know who I was writing for. Too many possibilities. Not enough focus.

Two years ago I took David Hieatt’s Micro Blog System course. A course on how to write on LinkedIn sounded perfect. Two takeaways from that course turned the tide. I was given a simple structure to follow and I made a commitment to write regularly. Daily. Just for 30 days.

That’s when I really understood that the only way I was going to learn how to write in public was to just write in public. All the courses and content were no substitute to just doing it. But it helped to have some simple scaffolding and a simple process to follow. It then just came down to practising, turning up, and doing the work.

And if there’s one thing I’m very good at, it’s turning up and doing the work. Being busy is my super power.

The structure got me started, and so I began to experiment. I wrote daily, but I didn’t have my own voice. I tried writing like David himself. I tried on Mark Manson’s style, as well as Douglas Adams, Oliver Burkeman, and Sam Harris. These were successful authors. They wrote in a way that worked. They had audiences. They had writing styles that resonated.

I took on their voices because I still didn’t trust (or even know) mine. I was also dealing with a deeper wound. I wasn’t just learning a new skill, I was also overcoming a judgement about myself. It happened at school. A teacher had casually asked if English was my first language after reading one of my essays.

I thought I was clever but that question made me feel ashamed. Was my writing so bad that they had to question my grasp of my first language. I’ve carried this with me all my life. Like a dissenting voice whispering in the back of my brain. It’s a visceral experience. No matter how much I learn, I can’t shake my doubt - I don’t really know how to write.

And so borrowing someone else’s voice and someone else’s process was both a way to hide while being visible. I was scared of being fully seen, but if I adopted someone else’s style at least I could pretend to write. Turning up this way, while it wasn’t fully authentic, helped me explore what writing in public felt like. It also helped me explore what I really wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

I see the same thing happening when people decide they want to build a business.

They have too many ideas and don’t know which one to choose. And so they immediately default to the one that makes most sense. The one that makes money. Because the one that they really believe in, means being truly seen.

They immerse themselves in books, podcasts, and courses trying to learn the right skills. But they never really put their ideas out there. They either fear success (making money that burns them out) or they fear failure (doing what they love and not making money).

It’s a tricky bind.

You’re not an entrepreneur if no one wants to buy what you offer. But making money isn’t the only measure of success.

In my time, I’ve seen too many people trapped in financially successful businesses. On the outside it all looks great but on the inside they’re burning out. They’ve become incredibly successful at following other people’s rules. But they still don’t feel successful.

I remember running our agency and seeing other agency owners becoming thought leaders and being lauded for their work and their clever ideas. I thought “to be successful I needed to be like them”. Agencies at the time like Clearleft, Made by Many, and Makeshift were role models. Their creativity and energy was inspiring. But I had no energy to be a “successful digital agency”. I wasn’t passionate about creating new websites and clever widgets. I didn’t really want to be building apps and scaling platforms.

I was interested in being happy, not just making money. But I also knew that I needed to make money. I was trying to live in the overlap of the passion and profit Venn Diagram. This wasn’t a simple problem to solve. I was still looking for “my purpose”. The thing I’d be willing to commit to. I needed to go on an inside out journey but I’d only been taught to do it the outside in way.

Startup programs tell you to: find a problem to solve; validate the demand; design the scaleable business model; and hustle!

My passions were around community, self-knowledge, meaning, purpose, teaching, and making impact. But how do you make money out of that?

I wanted to help people. But who and how?

That’s the question I really needed to answer first. And the clearest answer? To help someone like me. The me of 10 years ago. The person who was knowledgeable, a little lost, and seeking a new way of doing things.

Someone who was capable and wanted to apply that capability to something meaningful. All they needed was the permission to choose that path and the support to make that happen.

I didn’t care for code but I did care about autonomy and agency. Deeper shifts. That’s what I’m passionate about. Because I believe that when that shift happens people start to create beautiful things. That’s how the Happy Startup School came into existence. That’s how I see so many beautiful projects and startups happen in our community. They’re not unicorns in the billion dollar business sense, they’re beautiful rainbow unicorns that bring joy to those who run them and those who experience them.

Rainbow unicorns live in fields, not factories. To find that kind unicorn idea we need space to explore. But not too much.

Too much freedom and too much possibility leaves us stuck in the desert.

What we need is guidance and structure to help us work with the freedom we intrinsically all have. We all have choice and agency, it’s just stifled by our shoulds. We can follow our own paths, but it isn’t about meditating and manifesting.

There is a loose process.

We act, we learn, we fail, and we flounder.

And during that process we find ourselves and the work that’s ours to do. It’s an evolutionary process. Adapting to our surroundings and our circumstances, while being guided by our innate knowledge, skills, and essence.

I don’t believe in fate but I also don’t believe that we have unlimited potential. I will never be an NBA basketball star. Not just because I’m only 5ft 5. But also because I just don’t care about it enough. We’re living flesh moulded by life and conditioning, as well as spiritual beings guided by an inner compass.

At midlife some of us misplaced the compass.

The kind of business I want to help people build is one where success is felt not just measured. The size of your following or the size of your bank account doesn’t become the proxy for your prosperity.

This approach is about knowing without knowing.

Knowing that this is your work to do without knowing what’s coming down the line.

What binds us is the desire to make impact, however big that may be, without burning out or losing ourselves. Without becoming slaves to a mission or a story we’ve inherited.

Unlike King Abbott, we don’t get lost in the desert because there are no sign posts. Instead we follow our compass and accept where it leads us.

That’s the whole idea behind Happy MBA. Not a map. Just enough structure to help you find your own way through the desert.

Big love,

Carlos