Andrew Laws

Big Bad Beautiful Brains (James):

“Welcome to Big Bad Beautiful Brains. I’m James. Since I was diagnosed at the age of 45 with autism and ADHD, I’ve been on a journey not only to discover how my brain works and how to look after myself, but also about other people’s brains and how they look after theirs.”

Big Bad Beautiful Brains (James):

“This episode, I’m speaking with Andrew Laws. Andrew is a self-confessed tech nerd, author, musician, and skater who has been running an SEO agency for more than 25 years. He’s also a host of the Business Amplifier podcast, where he shares jargon-free, practical advice to help business owners get unstuck and grow. Away from the world of marketing, Andrew is an active musician with a stack of recorded albums.”

James Kindred:

“Andrew, welcome to episode one of Big Bad Beautiful Brains. I’m alright thank you, how are today?”

Andrew Laws:

“Hello James, how are you?”

Andrew Laws:

“I’m okay, yeah, I’m fine. It’s the end of, as we’re recording this, it’s the end of the school holidays, so free childcare’s come back in and I’m sort of emerged blinking into the light of having some time to get stuff done.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, I’m reminded by one thing. I went to a hypnotherapist once and a hypnotherapist said to me, what are you going to do when you’ve got all of this free time? And kind of getting rid of my anxiety and dealing with that. And I kind of feel like that post-school holidays are kind of like, I can get things done. This is amazing. You know, love spending time with the kids, but I’ve got work to do sometimes.”

Andrew Laws:

“Yeah, I usually quite like work as well. mean, it’s like you, I’ve worked for myself so long, I have to sort of be quite mindful of whether I’m working too much, because I could just, if I’m into something, can just lock in and the world kind of fades away and becomes, I just like this tunnel thing. And it’s a lovely thing, it’s a really nice feeling until like…”

James Kindred:

“Yeah.”

James Kindred:

“It’s…”

Andrew Laws:

“my child taps him on the shoulder and goes, I’ve aged four years since you started this project also.”

James Kindred:

“It’s like the scene from Interstellar where you suddenly kind of… okay, okay, okay, I won’t say it, I’ll say nothing more. jabbing plastic. So talking of kind of movies and that sort of thing, what’s a song or sound that’s been stuck in your head recently?”

Andrew Laws:

“No no no, haven’t seen it, I haven’t seen it. I can’t, I’m about to put my fingers in my ears, I can’t, I’m wearing headphones.”

Andrew Laws:

“there’s so many. There’s always something playing. It’s like a jukebox up there. I think that’s not everybody’s like that, but there’s always something. So I’d have to tell you right now, it’s Sunday afternoon by the small faces.”

James Kindred:

“Nice.”

Andrew Laws:

“It was on the radio a little while ago, but it’s one of those songs that some things just get stuck in there And I end up having to sort of exorcise them by just okay. I will sit down and I will give you the attention now I will listen to you fully But it’s usually metal if I’m honest. It’s usually like a little riff or something just go round and round”

James Kindred:

“is.”

James Kindred:

“For me it’s kind of… it can be things that I can either want in my head or some things will just invade my head. So there can be a certain sound that I will hear and that will be the sound stuck in my head and I will have to kind of say it out loud to let it out, to kind of let a bit of steam out of my head. And it can be the most innocuous annoying sound in the world but I’m gonna drag everyone down with me.”

Andrew Laws:

“You”

Andrew Laws:

“So, not songs, this is actually like sounds.”

James Kindred:

“It can sometimes be sounds, it can sometimes be like the noise that a bus makes when the air brakes kick in.”

Andrew Laws:

“So you’re to exercise it you like that that lad from police academy the one the sound effects”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, without all the kind of delays and echoes and distortion, I’m just kind of… there’s a word for it, I can’t remember what it is, but it’s one of the things, and I think my whole family is very similar, is that sometimes there’s a sound or a saying or a catchphrase. Jet 2 holidays was a big one for my youngest. And it’s just one of those things, it can sometimes be a song, sometimes be a sound, it can be from anywhere, but it can kind of overtake…”

Andrew Laws:

“If you ever tried to catalogue them or sample them”

James Kindred:

“No, I think that would be a slippery slope to madness.”

Andrew Laws:

“I do a lot of field recordings. I just use my phone now because it’s just as good as the fancy digital recorders I had. But yesterday, where I’m sitting, there’s a factory the other side of the door, like electronics factory. And there was something that I had to go and record. I’m going to play it to you if that’s all right. Because it’s a machine, but you try listening to this while you’re working without tapping your foot.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, sure.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, that’s…”

Andrew Laws:

“I had to go record it, because then I can put it in a little compartment in my brain and just leave it for another time.”

James Kindred:

“You could loop it and make a track out of it.”

Andrew Laws:

“There’s going be some bangin’ techno based on that at some point in the future that no one will listen to, including me.”

James Kindred:

“Absolutely, absolutely.”

James Kindred:

“Okay, so what’s something you’ve been curious about lately?”

Andrew Laws:

“man, everything. It’s a little overwhelming sometimes, but I like learning. I figured out years ago that learning on my own terms, course, not necessarily things I should be learning or have to learn. At the moment, I’m getting into writing again. So what I’ve really enjoyed learning about is writing business books that aren’t terrible.”

James Kindred:

“Absolutely.”

Andrew Laws:

“So I’ve written fiction a bunch of times in the past and I enjoyed the process of learning how to write novels. But now it’s that creation thing, learning how to create something, which is still really magical to me, whether it’s music, writing anything, just creating a thing that doesn’t currently exist in the universe but will do once I’ve made it. I think that drives quite a lot of my learning.”

James Kindred:

“curiosity and learning kind of go hand in hand I think. I think for me curiosity is one of the things that is something that the machine learning and AI will never be able to do. They’ll be able to synthesize it and they kind of do with follow-up questions with chat GPT and things like that.”

James Kindred:

“human curiosity is something that you can’t bottle and I think it’s like super precious because it is a gateway to kind of learning more and understanding more and I think just being kind of more accepting about you know how different things work and why different things work and whether that’s kind of a human level or a technological level. think curiosity is this kind of hugely important thing which would define us from machines farting out”

James Kindred:

“synthesized information.”

Andrew Laws:

“The machines have predictable output. That’s how they work. AI doesn’t currently think. And it just processes things. And it can only arrive, really, at a place that humanity’s arrived at before, because all it can do is learn from things that already exist. God, bloody hell, that was hard work getting that sentence out, but hopefully it made sense. Whereas humans, we’re pretty erratic.”

Andrew Laws:

“some of the small smelts.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah I think it’s kind of chaos. It’s the chaos and curiosity is those things that kind of you know the desire to understand things and you can kind of… when you’re a child you can kind of have curiosity kind of encouraged out of you. Of kind of don’t ask questions, don’t upset the status quo, don’t you know shake things up. But I think for me is kind of…”

Andrew Laws:

“Yeah.”

James Kindred:

“Asking why I think is just one of those really, really important things.”

Andrew Laws:

“I had, I know, sorry to mention somebody that the listeners might not know, but mutual friend of ours, Helen Oldfield. So she’s a PR amazing person. I had a really funny conversation with her a couple of days ago where we were talking about school experience. And it turns out we were both in quite a lot of trouble. spent, we both spent quite a lot of time in the headmaster’s office. And…”

Andrew Laws:

“we realized for both of us it’s because we asked why a lot of the time. So a teacher would like, for me, would tell the class what to do or ask the class to perform whatever school thing. I can remember looking around and everyone would be beavering away and I’d be sitting there going, what? What are they doing? What did I not hear? And so I’d just say, why are we doing this? And for a lot of teachers, was headmaster’s office. And I’d literally be walking there going,”

Andrew Laws:

“I don’t understand what’s happened here. What have I done?”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, what the hell just happened? And yeah, I’m exactly the same. And I think it’s one of the things of, you know, I was classed as a disruptive student, not because of my grades, but because of my curiosity. And it’s kind of like, this is the way it is. you know, stop asking questions. And I think it is hugely important, particularly with people with kind of neurodiverse leaning brains.”

Andrew Laws:

“Mm-hmm.”

Andrew Laws:

“Mm-hmm.”

James Kindred:

“is to understand why. And if you can understand why, then everything else kind of falls into place. But if you don’t have the why there, then it’s very, very difficult to kind of take people on that journey.”

Andrew Laws:

“It is and sometimes I have to accept there just isn’t a why and there isn’t a path. So I have a business coach who I’ve worked with for a long time. And I said to him yesterday, I said, if you could just draw a diagram of what we’re talking about or what the concept is so I can see the seed of it, the branches of it and where it’s going to arrive, then I’ll be able to latch onto it and I’ll be fully on board. But without that, I…”

Andrew Laws:

“I just can’t and running a business is the classic thing. mean, there is no formula to follow. Enough people will try and sell you a formula, but they don’t exist. And that’s, I find that really difficult, but also kind of cool as well.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah and I think it is the… and sometimes it is communicating there is no why, that’s why we’re here, that’s what we’ve got to find out, but again that’s the why of the why.”

Andrew Laws:

“Hmm.”

Andrew Laws:

“So Simon Sinek’s wrong. So the author Simon Sinek wrote a book called Everything Starts With Why. And it doesn’t always.”

James Kindred:

“No, guess it doesn’t. And I think sometimes that’s where curiosity takes over, is finding out the why”

Andrew Laws:

“The word curiosity I think is really cool. So pop culture reference, have you seen Ted Lasso? Oh yeah, I think Second to the Simpsons is probably the best TV ever made. And there’s a bit in that where he’s talking about being angry with people or if people are angry with you and he says, at it through the lens of curiosity. And I was like, wow, one of the many Ted Lasso kind of life lessons there.”

James Kindred:

“yes, big fan.”

James Kindred:

“That’s nice, that’s nice.”

Andrew Laws:

“Just, okay, you’re running at me with a baseball bat, but I’m curious as to… Now, I think in some circumstances you probably do just need to… If there’s a zombie apocalypse, why… I’m curious as to why do you want my brains? I’m not sure I want my brains sometimes, but why is that?”

James Kindred:

“Ha ha ha ha.”

James Kindred:

“Why is this happening?”

James Kindred:

“So talking of brains, if you had to describe how your brain works in three words, what words would they be and why?”

Andrew Laws:

“ball bearings in a can. Is that more than three words?”

James Kindred:

“We’ll smoosh them together and get three words out of there. So what would lead you to describe ball bearings in a can as being a good description of your brain?”

Andrew Laws:

“It’s, if the, for the analogy to work, if the ball bearings are thoughts and the can is my brain and someone’s shaking it, that I think largely is how it is a lot of the time. And it’s kind of fun. It can present challenges. School, certainly did. teacher would ask me a question about the rainfall in Brazil or something in geography. And I’d ask them, why did you want to be a teacher?”

James Kindred:

“you”

Andrew Laws:

“That will get you straight to the headmaster’s office, really will. I knew that room very well. I think that’s it. I’m not, I hope I’m not a nightmare for the people I live with, my family and my friends and people I work with, but there is, that chaos element is quite strong. And part of growing up and learning about myself has been to kind of go, that’s all right, as long as.”

Andrew Laws:

“As long as I still can remember how to tie my shoelaces and as long as I don’t accidentally start fires in places. Not that shoelaces and fires are like the two most important things, but well, there’s an example of the ball bearings. Because why on did I say shoelaces? I haven’t tied shoelaces for a long time. I’ve got those weird boots with like the… I was about to show you then. I’m not limber enough to kind of like get my foot behind my head anymore.”

James Kindred:

“There’s a connection there somewhere.”

James Kindred:

“embrace the chaos I think is a really kind of valid thing and I… me personally spent a long time trying to normalize it and kind of be a model citizen whatever that means to a certain extent of kind of to bottle the chaos up and not let it come out because you don’t want to appear weird but sometimes you just have to kind of go with it and and use it because it can be a really powerful thing it can look”

James Kindred:

“completely disorganized and all over the place to everybody else, but go with what works and kind of use it however you see fit.”

Andrew Laws:

“I agree entirely and that’s why I mean I don’t want to confuse chaos with sort of inoperability, know, not being able to do things because I certainly can. I’ve run a business, probably not well, but I’ve run a business for 25 years and you can’t do that if you don’t have the ability to at least function as a normal person. Normal person, shouldn’t, I don’t like that phrase. I think the truth is…”

Andrew Laws:

“Irregardless of neurodiversity or anything like that, I don’t think anyone really does have their stuff together.”

James Kindred:

“No, Yeah, think it’s… we’ve kind of processing with me, I was chatting to somebody the other day and what fell out of my head to try and describe how I work is rigid flexibility. Where there’s one part of my brain that needs routine and it needs…”

James Kindred:

“familiarity and it needs those things in place. But there’s another part of my brain which is very happy to just kind of run free and go off and do what it wants and allowing myself to have those spaces within all of the kind of organization at the moment brain likes is that is the perfect setting. And I think that’s kind of embracing the chaos in bite sized chunks.”

Andrew Laws:

“So do you have a way of giving yourself, like setting aside time for kind of free thought or for allowing that chaos? Or do you just sort of note that you’ve not done it for a while and make time?”

James Kindred:

“I literally kind of let that side of my brain take over. So I have a routine, I know when I need to be places, I know I have a day book where I write stuff down that I need to do, and then anything that’s between those gaps which kind of acts like chaos glue is when I just let my brain go off and do something and…”

James Kindred:

“do what it wants to do and that could be tinkering with technology or it could be coming up with an idea for something or it could be problem solving something that was already a scheduled task that just needs a little bit more creative thought. I have to have that kind of awkward flexibility in what I’m doing so I kind of lean into curiosity and lean into kind of playing with things that gives me the space to kind of give both parts of my brain what they need.”

Andrew Laws:

“That’s amazing and I can identify that in that wholly. I I think, I don’t keep talking about school, but I think that’s probably what the daydreaming and staring out of windows is. And I do make time for, I don’t know, I it. I sometimes wonder if I should, but there are times like, well today, we’re recording this on a Friday. Friday afternoons, I will not book a meeting in unless it’s like, unless.”

Andrew Laws:

“something catastrophic will happen if I don’t because I have to have Friday afternoons to pursue the creative stuff around work, the playing with things. It’s playtime. It has to be that.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, I do exactly the same. Yeah, no meetings for me on Fridays. I don’t do Mondays either. And I use Fridays and Mondays as kind of transition days because I can’t kind of work right up until the weekend because I need time to kind of transition into weekend mode and family mode. And otherwise, it feels like a hard stop and I’m going to get dysregulated by it.”

James Kindred:

“So Mondays and Fridays, kind of use some of that as playtime and to do other things and to chat to people and go and get stuff done. And then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they’re kind of getting work done days and getting my head down. one of the things I kind of learned over the years post my diagnosis of ADHD and autism was that I need to transition. can’t.”

James Kindred:

“kind of butt up against things because my brain needs to kind of relax and then tense up again.”

Andrew Laws:

“I’m coming to a similar realization myself. It’s interesting. I quite often don’t realize these things until I hear other people talking about them. I don’t actively investigate the way my brain works. And I think that’s possibly a mistake. I probably should have had more curiosity around that many, many years ago. But it’s also, I think the older I get as well, I’ve just not got the fire.”

Andrew Laws:

“to work all the time or I can’t, I get migraine. My body just goes, nope, you’ve done enough and that’s it. I have to lay down and I kind can’t see straight and I’m not gonna describe all the symptoms of a migraine. And one of the biggest struggles I’ve had with that my whole working life is that’s very counter to what I perceive as the work ethic that I think I see in other people.”

Andrew Laws:

“I did briefly have a nine to five job, which was eight to five, which I found really brutal. And I didn’t ask very long. It was not long before I nearly got fired because I can’t do it. I can’t be productive at prescribed times. So I still have like a weird guilt that if I stop and play a computer game or something for a few minutes or have an afternoon nap, I’ve got a”

Andrew Laws:

“a settee in my office here. There’s my napping settee. But I still feel bad about it, which I really wish I didn’t, because I’ve run my own company. I can work when I want. There is no one. But it’s, yeah, when did, where does that get installed? Is that school again, do you think?”

James Kindred:

“Yeah I think it probably comes from school. mean you school does a lot to prepare you for society in general as kind of know routine and all all flowing in the same direction and all wearing the same uniform and getting into the mindset of kind of being a citizen to a certain extent and my brain didn’t like that at all.”

James Kindred:

“I was on the periphery of that in my weird little group of friends who wore secondhand East German army clothing and didn’t want to take part. But you will get kind of punished for that in some way shape or form, which is kind of unfortunate for what turns out in my part was a neurodivergent brain. But it’s…”

James Kindred:

“And in is indoctrination. I don’t know. Maybe.”

Andrew Laws:

“I read an opinion that schools as we know now were largely built by Victorian industrialists and what was seen at the time as being quite an altruistic thing and it kind of is, everyone should have the opportunity to learn but it was to condition people to be ready to work at a factory.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, I mean a really good example, modern example, is kind of American mining towns, which would have their own currency and the company that owned the mine also owned the grocery store and your credits were good there but nowhere else. It’s a very good kind of zoomed in level of what sometimes the education system…”

Andrew Laws:

“Mm-hmm.”

James Kindred:

“and the workplace system is geared up to be.”

Andrew Laws:

“So here’s a question for you. Sorry, I know you’re the host and I’m the guest, but I sometimes think, would I still work? Would I still run a company if I didn’t need to financially? And I’ll reveal my answer in a bit, but do you think if you didn’t have to earn money, whether that’s because money doesn’t exist or if you came into an inheritance or won the lottery or whatever, would you still?”

James Kindred:

“Mm-hmm.”

Andrew Laws:

“How similar would your working day look to how it is now?”

James Kindred:

“I think it would be fairly similar. think if I didn’t have an outlet for my curiosity or my need to problem solve or sometimes in a more negative way, intellectualize something that probably doesn’t need intellectualizing. If I was just kind of milling around it would look very similar to the GIFs of Pablo Escobar from Narcos. I’ve just sat very sadly on a chair swing in the garden and”

Andrew Laws:

“Is that what that’s from? I’ve never known where that meme’s from.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah and kind of being generally directionless and I think you sometimes need external inputs to find direction and purpose and I think if the need for that fell away I’d still want to try and find some kind of vessel to kind of put that into. What form that would take I don’t know but I think it is kind of one of the interesting things.”

James Kindred:

“that if you had to do nothing, what would you do?”

Andrew Laws:

“I can’t do nothing. My wife and I have not had a holiday longer than four or five days since, or certainly this century. And some of our friends find that bizarre. They find it absolutely wild, but I can’t really do sitting around. I can do it for about a day, day and a half. So like, of doing nothing much at all, but I’ll still be reading a book or still be reading”

James Kindred:

“Yeah.”

Andrew Laws:

“newspaper or still doing doing something they’re not like just sat there in a meditative state and my wife and I realized after years and years it’s because we’d like to believe that we have created she works for herself as well we’d like to believe that we’ve created a life a work life that we’re not always desperate to escape from so it’s not like thank god it’s holiday I haven’t got to do that”

Andrew Laws:

“And it’s not, dreading going back to work. We kind of like it. Actually, she can’t take a lot of time off. She’s a gardener and all her clients’ plants would die. That’s one of the reasons we don’t go away for very long. But it’s, I left school, it was fairly dramatic, me leaving school. Well, it seemed it at the time, and less so now. Because I was in all the top sets for everything. And every school report was, if Andrew just applied himself.”

James Kindred:

“yes, yep.”

Andrew Laws:

“You hear that a lot from other people who think in a similar way to how we do. And then I, so I did know, I did, I also had an IQ test. I’ve never mentioned this on a podcast, but I had an IQ test at quite a young age and found out what my IQ is. Is IQ being debunked yet?”

James Kindred:

“is bordering on.”

Andrew Laws:

“Good, good. I’m pleased. So I thought, well, this revisions for normal people. I don’t need to revise. So I got no GCSEs, nothing above. I think I might have got a D in something, but the rest were like, they were nothing. I remember being really surprised. Kind of like going to the school, because we’re old enough that we had to go to school to pick up the piece of paper with your results on, and just going, I don’t understand. I’ve got nothing.”

Andrew Laws:

“And that was such a tipping point in my life that I think I had a couple of years of just kind of going, like reeling from it, like, what happened? I think about things a lot. Why did I get no GCSEs? I mean, none of them would have got me anywhere. I have got some now. I did go to evening classes at the college for a couple of years and got me some GCSEs, which again, I’ve not used for anything at all.”

James Kindred:

“So speaking of kind of figuring things out and coming from one place in your life to another, what’s something about everyday life that’s easy for you and hard for others, or the other way around, difficult for others but you find fairly easy?”

Andrew Laws:

“that’s probably curiosity, if I’m honest, it’s, finding, it’s fine. It’s concerned, but finding joy in things, just looking for joy and, and I’m not always like that. And to a certain extent in my adult life, I’ve purposefully developed this as a skill that and cheerleading probably. love to see people doing well. That that’s, get a real kick out of it. And that’s comes very, very naturally to me. things that other people.”

Andrew Laws:

“might not find so easy, but I find very easy. Being irreverent probably. Being slightly obtuse sometimes. It comes very naturally. It’s a very easy thing for me to wander down the aisle of whimsy.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah and I think that again falls into a similar kind of mindset that’s built around curiosity, is to just kind of sometimes let things happen and not in a kind of nihilist approach to stuff but more of a kind of I’m gonna be fairly relaxed about what information kind of comes my way and then if something kind of grabs my attention then I’ll really kind of hook into it and take a deep dive on it but I think if you have”

Andrew Laws:

“You”

James Kindred:

“too much of a rigid thought process and not allow space for that sort of thing to happen, you can get fairly closed off or fairly kind of stagnant in how you want your brain to work and the joy and the play that you can find around it.”

Andrew Laws:

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to figure out how, trying to figure out unconsciously at first. Now it’s a much more conscious thing. I’m trying to figure out how to take that and make it something that will make me money so that I can buy food for my family. And I’m still not there. Still not done it. And sometimes I get quite curious about really large companies like Google or usually tech companies.”

Andrew Laws:

“They have a thing where you go speak to them. One of my freelancers at the moment, he’s on his sixth interview for a new job. Sixth. But you go and they figure you out. They do psychometric testing and all that. And then they go, right, we’re gonna put you in a job that suits you perfectly in a way that will make you happy and make you productive. And sometimes think, God, can I just do that?”

Andrew Laws:

“Can I just do that bit? Can I just do the test? I’ve done psychometric testing. The psychometric testing I did at high school told me to be a plasterer, which would not have worked for many, many other reasons. And then the last psychometric testing I did was probably 20 years ago. I’ve worked with a HR consultancy, not the one that you and I collaborated on, a different one. And I did it and it came up saying I don’t like people. And I was like, I’m 100 % sure that’s incorrect.”

Andrew Laws:

“So yeah, I think I want like a good psychometric testing. I’ve done like grid radius and all those kind of things and kind of going, yeah, that makes sense. I’m sympathetic and encouraging rather than accurate.”

James Kindred:

“Ha ha ha!”

Andrew Laws:

“You”

James Kindred:

“So if you found any approaches with kind of leaning into the way that you think, and the way that you navigate the world, have you found any approaches that make it easier for you?”

Andrew Laws:

“uh, transparency. And again, it, makes, probably makes my life difficult more than makes it easy, but I had to have a very difficult conversation with the client yesterday because I’ve just not managed to get done what I should have got done. And that still fills me with panic to a certain extent, but I’ve learned to just be honest and set expectations and say, like, I will, I will do my”

Andrew Laws:

“absolute best I can for you as my client. But my focus might be elsewhere sometimes. But it’s never gonna wander that far. So I had the meeting with a client. said, look, you know, I’ve just got to be honest. It hasn’t happened. And it’s not because I don’t love you. It’s, I wish I could tell you. But you know.”

James Kindred:

“And do you think, I think that leans to sometimes that if you can catastrophize about a situation you kind of think, you know maybe the imposter syndrome comes in and you kind of worry about what the response of that client or the person you’re working with might be if you’re kind of, if you bottle it up and keep it inside, rather than bring it out and kind of get it out the same, rip the plaster off a little bit where you just kind of go you know”

James Kindred:

“hold your hand up and the honesty and the transparency, you kind of get, you cut off the opportunity of perhaps overthinking or catastrophizing what the result might be because you didn’t quite do something that went the right”

Andrew Laws:

“I’m getting better at spotting the people I don’t want to work with. mean, personal life, personal life is much, much easier because we all build these bubbles of comfort around us and we naturally, you know, have non-work relationships with people that are very easy to get along with. But work-wise, I’m still not found a way when I meet a potential client that I know is going to be, I don’t want say a nightmare, it’s not them being a nightmare, it’s just we are so incompatible. I am going to craze the out of you.”

Andrew Laws:

“And within two months, you’re going to be saying, I don’t want to work with you. I’ve not yet found a way because I’m also a bit of a people pleaser. Everyone is really, but it sort of comes with the being a cheerleader kind of bit. And I’m just like, yeah, I can, I, this one will be different. This client, I won’t end up irritating the shit out of them, but it never, never works.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah and I think it’s the people pleasing bit. think for me I’ve learned that you know I want to make sure that people I work with get what they’re you know get good results and they’re getting something out of it. I think the difference in people pleasing is when it can slip into actually affecting your own mental health because you’re putting your the people everyone else’s needs in front of your own and I think it’s a super healthy way to have”

James Kindred:

“looking after your clients and looking after people that are around you and making sure people are safe and happy and looked after is absolutely one thing that you should strive for but it shouldn’t be for the detriment of your own mental health.”

Andrew Laws:

“No, and even in recent months, I found myself in situations where I’m around, trying to force myself into a square hole because I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, I want to do amazing things for my clients, but some clients who, usually ones who come to me and work with me for a project or a short time, I haven’t got what they want at all. And I try and give them.”

Andrew Laws:

“what I think they want and it doesn’t work. Clients that I’ve with for 20 years, those ones, absolute delight because one of them comes in here every week, sometimes twice a week, and he can ask me a question and I say, I have no flipping idea whatsoever. I don’t know what the answer is and I’m probably not the right person to do it. You go look over there and we’ve worked together so long.”

Andrew Laws:

“basically not offended. And those relationships take a long, long time to build. They really do. And I appreciate that because we deal with business owners a lot, both of our professions, business owners tend to be driven in a way that I guess not everybody is. And they want to get to the”

Andrew Laws:

“get to the money, they wanna get to the point, they wanna get to the progress. And it’s quite challenging having a brain that doesn’t work in a straight line. Because the classic question is, okay, we need an answer to this, or we need this creative input that we come to you for because we’re not creative. And I’ve had clients say, we can’t do the creativeness. And I’m not gonna mention them because you know them. And I loved that. I loved the fact that that client said, look, we come to you because you’re creative. But they then say,”

Andrew Laws:

“when will this creativity be complete? Don’t work that way! my god! I wish it did! It’d be so much easier! Yeah, can you do me a creativity? I’ll have three units of creativity please and I’ll want them by Thursday!”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, there’s not a KPI for creativity. Yeah, can you do a creative?”

James Kindred:

“How much does that cost? I don’t know. Yeah, and think it is the… if you start kind of understanding how you think better, it’s much easier to understand the people that want to work with you, who you’re going to give the best results for, because they understand not just the process, but perhaps a little bit forewarned about how you think and the journey that you might take them on.”

James Kindred:

“as opposed to it being completely transactional like, I’d like three creative units please and please return once you’ve completed three creative units with a rounded off complete answer. It’s not that easy sometimes and I think that the trap is to try and kind of take everyone on that journey because some people are gonna push against it and resist it and other people are gonna kind of embrace it with both arms and take a real interest in that journey.”

James Kindred:

“And that’s for me when kind of projects, project work and client relationship work best because they’re happy to kind of let go and see where it takes them a little bit rather than measurable results at every step. Sometimes it’s immeasurable and it’s chaotic, but that’s part of the journey. And that’s the interesting bits are for me.”

Andrew Laws:

“It feels to me like you and I ought to try and find a way of expressing that for people who perhaps don’t have brains the way that work, brains that don’t work the way ours do. And I think everybody must be thinking that. It just comes back to me. I just want everyone to get along. I just want everyone to understand everyone and people to get it.”

Andrew Laws:

“I think I try and do this by being myself on business platforms like LinkedIn as much as I can. And it’s a real cliche to say, just be yourself. And the stuff I put on LinkedIn is frankly things that would have terrified the 20 year old me. I don’t overshare, I will. You know me pretty well, James. There is weird stuff I do in my life. I’ve been making a nonsensical series about Mark Twain on social media for about five years.”

James Kindred:

“And I do genuinely do a little dance when you release another one, because it’s just like, oh, Andrew’s doing the Mark Twain thing again, yay!”

Andrew Laws:

“Hahaha”

Andrew Laws:

“I mean for the listeners they’re like 20 seconds long all non-secretors and don’t lead anywhere at all but”

James Kindred:

“and just kind of in random places and just kind of the irreverence shines through.”

Andrew Laws:

“So I let that stuff out and I let it out as often as I can because there’s plenty of it. If I sit down and try and write, you know those LinkedIn posts where people go, here’s a picture of me on a space hopper and it made me think, is it not like the business world? Like, is it? Of course it’s not. So I just put up a picture of me pretending to do or trying to do a skateboard trick and go, hey look at this, this is me trying to do a skateboard trick. I haven’t got a business lesson and my knees hurt.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah and there’s so much more honesty in that and I do enjoy the kind of parody versions of… I ran face first into a brick wall and here’s 10 sales tips I learned. And it’s kind of like, you know, I think a similar thing with a really good indicator of, particularly on LinkedIn, of people”

James Kindred:

“needing to post and having nothing to say is the kind of action figures AI thing that happened for a while and it was like you know it it was quite trite and you’re also giving away a lot of personal information.”

Andrew Laws:

“Yeah”

Andrew Laws:

“that yes he know I I I I lent into that in my own way because they all looked the same so these are like action figure in a blister pack and they were all the same and I was an event a couple of weeks ago and the person giving the talk knows me and they showed one of the action figures of somebody else I know and it was the the beige nurse it was don’t ask to describe it and then he went right and also Andrew Laws is in the room and he did one as well and I was thinking man”

Andrew Laws:

“did. But then he showed mine and what I did, I made it as terrible as I possibly could, and made it as unprofessional and dumb. And it was when I was still missing teeth, Westland missing teeth, they’re fake. And I was like, oh, and then I still felt bad because yeah, I did burn a bit of the earth by running that through chat GPT. But in the same course, I was like, no, you just have some”

James Kindred:

“You”

Andrew Laws:

“Just do something different. Don’t be the feckin’ same as everybody else. Just don’t and you’re gonna really upset some people.”

James Kindred:

“And it is that, you know, it’s the same as the school thing. The algorithm is very similar to kind of preparing you for putting you through school and preparing you for society and adult life. You have to play by the algorithm’s rules if you want to get engagement and likes and whatever that means. And sometimes you have to play the game a little bit. But I think it is the point of interest for me is finding something that is”

James Kindred:

“that ticks the boxes of the algorithm, but also sets you different from what everybody else is doing. I think a really good, I mean, you’re a perfect example of that with doing Mark Twain and some of your skateboarding posts and that sort of thing that go on LinkedIn. I think Dan Callis is the, who’s a mutual friend of ours, is the antithesis of absolute chaos on LinkedIn.”

James Kindred:

“And he’s probably one of the few reasons why I’m still on LinkedIn because I just I wait for Dan to say something and it’s always going to be absolutely absolutely bonkers completely off the wall swear-laden, but very interesting and and right yes”

Andrew Laws:

“I adore.”

Andrew Laws:

“And right and correct. Absolutely correct. That man has made, we do a podcast together called SEO or Die. And the first time, the first episode came out, I thought I’m going to lose every single one of my clients if they hear this episode. And then a bunch of my clients heard it and thought it was hilarious, but couldn’t get quite where Dan was coming from. So to give you an idea, dear listeners, he’ll put posts on, he has put posts on.”

Andrew Laws:

“about, I’m paraphrasing, but I’ve sat down to write this LinkedIn post, but I have been ripping this bong all morning and I don’t know what’s gonna come out. Like, just talking about stuff like that on LinkedIn, like wow! And he’s not, I don’t know, he’s not a jerk, he’s a lovely man, I know him really well, he’s a very loving, very gentle person. But if he thinks you’re talking crap, he won’t tell you you’re talking crap, he will give his version of events and then highlight the fact it’s very different and it is very different.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, and he comes, he’ll come with facts as well. He won’t just kind of, know, there’s certain people on LinkedIn who are always calling for a bullshit button to go alongside found funny or support. Dan doesn’t, know, Dan doesn’t need one of those. He’ll just turn up and correct you with very good information in a very entertaining way.”

Andrew Laws:

“but very entertaining. yeah, yeah.”

Andrew Laws:

“Yeah.”

Andrew Laws:

“You know what the end result of him being like that is? He works with fantastic companies, big names, who love working with him. He’s braver than I am. I’m not sure I could go quite as far. It’s not in my personality to be that. He’s not abrasive. It’s really hard to describe how he does it, but I’m…”

James Kindred:

“Yeah it’s kind of it’s hard to… it’s like trying to catch a fart in your hands. You can’t… that’s a very weird analogy but that’s the first thing that came into my head. It’s kind of very difficult to kind of pin down Dan and that’s why he’s brilliant. I’m hoping for him to be a future guest but I did send him a note the other day with the house rules for the podcast that I share.”

James Kindred:

“And he said, I’m probably gonna break all of those. And I said, it’s fine, I’ll edit it around you. You just be you and we’ll find a way to do it.”

Andrew Laws:

“Ha ha.”

Andrew Laws:

“He is the best Callis I know. You must have family members. I’ve not met them. They might be better. he’s unique and wonderful for it.”

James Kindred:

“Absolutely, So let’s kind of get back to some some questions But what’s one thing that always makes you smile?”

Andrew Laws:

“cats don’t probably music more than anything else but cats there’s there’s a bit of reddit i stumbled across with my curious mind a few weeks ago and it’s just called blurry photos of cats it’s just that’s it it’s like medicine but yeah no music just always music there’s loads i can’t there’s not one thing it’s i’m generally quite a cheerful kind of guy”

James Kindred:

“I think I’m kind of the other side of the scale on that is that I’m mostly… I hate… I’m allergic to cats. I love cats, but I just kind of puff up if I get two new one. That’s one way around it. Or maybe eat them and that will kind of… Yeah, exactly. Internal existence for fur.”

Andrew Laws:

“You hate cats.”

Andrew Laws:

“Oh no! Stop eating them.”

Andrew Laws:

“Build up a resistance, yeah. Start with just like, or just like the same way, kind of smallpox and whatever inoculations were. Start with a small cap, just like a really small one, and just carry it in a little bag under your arm, and then gradually, just little bit, and then work your way up to like one of those big ginger toms that attacks vacuum cleaners.”

James Kindred:

“now and again, just rub it on my face. Yeah.”

James Kindred:

“Nice. I’ll try that. Yeah, just things that bring you joy and make you smile. I think I’m the kind of opposite end. If there’s kind of centrist levels of joy I’m probably kind of on the surlier end of it. I find joy is not a default.”

Andrew Laws:

“I derailed you completely there, I can’t even remember what your question was now.”

Andrew Laws:

“You’re not, well not my experience of you, you’re not. I mean, you’re not surly.”

James Kindred:

“me I have to kind of actively go out and find it. Whereas I think on your side you’re far kind of more optimistic about there’s gonna be joy somewhere. I will find joy in something in this process whereas with me is that I’ll have to rummage around for it a bit and find it. It’ll be there, there’ll be some to find but sometimes I’ll have a confused angry look on my face while I’m doing it.”

Andrew Laws:

“That’s probably less annoying for the people you live with than my angle.”

James Kindred:

“I don’t know. If you had a free day with no plans, how would you spend it?”

Andrew Laws:

“many different ways. I don’t have a lack of things I want to do. Something I’ve been really enjoying recently is bird watching. I never got bird watching before. I like birds. I’m a fan of all life. But I grew up with… My godfather was a warden at Blacksall for the RSPB. And every weekend were long walks and he’d just go, there’s a tree pipette! And he’d point…”

Andrew Laws:

“And I’d be like, where? And then he’d give me his binoculars with big massive things and I’d look and everything would just be black. And it went on like that until about two months ago. And I’d go to Bird Hides. I love a Bird Hide. I think one of my favorite places. I’d sit there with my wife and she’d be like, there’s a lapwing. And I’d be like, and she’d hand me the binoculars. I’d just see, and it wasn’t until I went to RSPB Titchwell in Norfolk and they had some binoculars, like just sit in, you could test, obviously they were selling them.”

Andrew Laws:

“And there was a moment a bit like Gary Newman discovering the Moog Model D in a studio and just going, what’s that brrr? And it changing history. I picked these binoculars up and they must have been perfectly set up for my skull. And I lifted them up and I was like, my goodness, I can see everything. And ever since then, I kind of get it now. kind of, so it’s probably sitting in a bird hide with my wife, her telling me what the birds are and me forgetting and having to ask her.”

Andrew Laws:

“every 30 seconds. What’s that one? It’s a lap wing. What about that one over there? It’s a lap wing that’s further away. Exactly.”

James Kindred:

“that’s facing in the other direction. Yeah I think it’s sometimes the desire, the sense that you have to fill your time with something and sometimes that something can be nothingness or stillness or quietness or just kind of letting stuff happen and I think you know those sorts of pursuits birdwatching”

James Kindred:

“or just getting out into nature in general, I think can be incredibly restorative because you’re just taking yourself out of all the noise and all the chaos and just having stillness.”

Andrew Laws:

“My wife’s… I love that there’s an app called Merlin which is amazing. It identifies bird sounds. And in that there’s a thing called a life list and you can keep track of all the birds you’ve seen. And I started to do it and then I stopped because I thought I want bird watching to have no productivity. I want it to have absolutely no productivity. I want it to be something I do that doesn’t have a goal, doesn’t have…”

Andrew Laws:

“areas for improvement. I’m into cycling but you can always cycle more efficiently, you can always go faster or whatever. Bird watching, I want to be utterly unproductive.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, there’s no room for marginal gains in birdwatching. It’s just let it happen. I found a similar thing with candle making, in that there’s no real kind of end result. Obviously you have a candle at the end of it, but it’s just the process of not being on a screen and not having any kind of end result other than just enjoying the process”

Andrew Laws:

“No.”

Andrew Laws:

“I was going say there’s a candle.”

James Kindred:

“But the thing that you get out of at the end is kind of an added bonus really, it’s not really while you’re there, it’s just to have your brain doing something, but it’s just very passive.”

Andrew Laws:

“It’s exactly the same thing. Actually, I mentioned cycling or I’ve just started going to the gym again or tinkering around on guitars. I’ve not made an album for for quite a long time. And I think part of the reason is I made made a lot of albums, electronic music, and I suddenly realized again, that was too much of a goal. I want to enjoy just the fiddling around, the noodling about and…”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, like the Gary Neumann with his move and kind of what does this do? And just the joy and the discovery of things.”

Andrew Laws:

“to join the discovery of things. I think you’ve summarized our entire conversation just there.”

James Kindred:

“I’ll just put that out as the episode is, just the joy and the discovery of things. So what’s something that makes you lose track of time? I guess it is in the joy of discovering things is part of it.”

Andrew Laws:

“the old classic hyper focus. Yeah, it’s that’s exactly what it is. I can remember seeing a short video of somebody like a skit. Two people in a shop in America working in a shop that’s got no customers in it. And one of the guys going, have you heard about Reddit? And the other guy, go, no, what’s that? And he said, I don’t know if I want to show it to you because you might think it’s fun just to do like time to time, but it could take over your life. quite dangerous. He goes, no, that can’t happen. He hands him hands him his phone.”

Andrew Laws:

“And then it does like one of those things where the guy stood still and you see night becoming day becoming night becoming day and then he starts to grow a beard and like… That wasn’t an answer really was it? I can’t even remember what the question was.”

James Kindred:

“It’s something that makes you lose track of time, guess, but it can be that hyper focus is… and it can be on anything, but it can be a really powerful tool is that, you know, I’m going to do this and…”

Andrew Laws:

“I can hammer stuff out. If something takes my mood, will create things that I know take other people much, much, much longer than me. But if my mind isn’t in the right place, it will take me hundreds of times longer than anyone else at all. I just can’t schedule that. It’s like scheduling creativity. I can’t schedule it.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah and that’s kind of one of the things I’ve learned is that if I don’t feel like doing it, don’t force it. Because you’ll get mediocre results out of it if you’re trying to force a creative solution to something, or just the need to write something, or lots of different things. And I have to kind of like, okay I need to do that, but not now because my brain is elsewhere and there’s no point trying to drag it.”

James Kindred:

“kicking and screaming into this space because I’m not going to be happy doing it and the results aren’t going to be anything that I’m happy with anyway.”

Andrew Laws:

“It’s one of the reasons I struggle with like standard business theory, like having a default diary, you know, on this time each week I do this and I can’t do it. Can’t do it all. mean, other than meetings, which clearly you have to turn up to a meeting when there’s a meeting. Outside of that, I’ve actually found a lot more freedom recently by just kind of keeping a rough to do list. I used an app designed for ADHD called Motion with an”

Andrew Laws:

“And the idea with that is I rigged it up to my project management system. It’s got everything I need to do. The entire company needs to do it, all the team members. And it would decide when I was going to do them. And after a little while, I was like, has the people who made this ever met anyone with ADHD? Because the idea of going, this is when this is going to happen, like that’s the polar opposite of what I want.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, I think that’s just inviting rebellion rather than action. I think it is kind of… motion, I tried for a little while and I had exactly the same response to it, was it’s very good at filling gaps in, but that’s it. And I don’t need gaps filling. I just need the space to be able to feel relaxed enough to do what I do really well and to…”

James Kindred:

“forgive myself for when I don’t feel like doing it. But an app can’t do that. An app can kind of fill my time with stuff and kind of go, hey look you’re being more productive because we’ve slotted these little tiny things into these places. It’s like, yeah don’t want to do them then. I’m now gonna have to go through and take them all out and feel bad about it.”

Andrew Laws:

“sorry.”

Andrew Laws:

“It’s like the Pomodoro thing, take a 10 minute break every… I tried that and it popped up and I’d be like, you can’t tell me what to you’re not my real mum and all this kind of… It’s like no, if I’m being productive, I do not want to stop. 10 minutes will break me, because I’ll just be sat there watching the clock go come on, come on, come on, I’m back in.”

James Kindred:

“I need to get back on it. And now I don’t feel like doing anymore. This is ridiculous.”

Andrew Laws:

“So this is the reason I think a lot of people who are creative like we are probably have exceedingly strong bladders. Because it gets so simple that I don’t want to have a wee. I know I need a wee. I don’t want to have a wee.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, I’m locked into this and I don’t want… I’m hugely dehydrated. I’ve not eaten for hours and I really need a wee, but this thing needs to get done.”

Andrew Laws:

“Hahaha”

Andrew Laws:

“Yeah. It’s a joyous thing. mean, anyone listening to this, hyper focus, I think when, some people talk about it, they make it sound like it’s an unpleasant thing. It’s not, it’s probably too pleasant if anything.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, I think if you wield it in the right way it can be an incredibly powerful thing. think that the danger can be with hyperfocus is where over analysis or beating yourself up about hyperfocus and kind of going, why do I do this? Why am I being like this? Rather than leaning into it. Or the kind of catastrophization that can come with hyperfocus is that you can overanalyze a situation and your brain’s kind of like, I need something to”

James Kindred:

“jump onto and hang onto and I’m going to really focus on this thing because it’s the only thing that I can feel I can latch onto at the moment. And it’s kind of like Venom from Spider-Man that just kind of this is kind of gooey horribleness that just kind of latches onto you. And that’s when hyper focus can kind of go in the wrong direction. But if you have it in the right direction, it’s super, super, super powerful.”

Andrew Laws:

“God. It’s in my mind, it’s intrinsically linked to anxiety and to being an anxious person, which I very much am. have learned to. To you can’t you can’t control anxiety, but you can learn how to live with it. And I’ve quite far down that that path. But it makes total sense to me that if you can hyper focus about”

Andrew Laws:

“building a website or I don’t know anything else like that that’s creative you can also hyper focus on fictional events that have never happened”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, or the thing that happened weeks ago that is completely irrelevant but your brain has just decided that that needs to be the thing that you focus on. And the kind of Dr Strange 1.4 million eventualities that don’t happen. You’ll focus on them rather than thing that did and that was kind of innocuous anyway.”

Andrew Laws:

“There’s the way for anyone listening to this who’s yet to start on the journey of living with anxiety, something different works for everyone. But for me, each time I found something, a little phrase or something I helped, I wrote it down, recorded it. And I had a website called positivity.click for three years that had all these on. They’re still on one of my websites. If you search for positivity click, you’ll find them.”

Andrew Laws:

“But one of my absolute favorite things that I read that comes into my mind quite a lot is a Mark Twain quote. He said, I’m an old man who has known a great deal of problems in my life, most of which never happened. I’m getting the words wrong, but it’s something along those lines. And I was kind of thinking, well, yeah, your body’s reaction to things that haven’t happened.”

Andrew Laws:

“that it’s still real you can’t just you can’t swipe anxiety away by going yeah my logical mind knows that’s not real because your body still makes you feel like you’re gonna throw up and and and all that stuff but yeah it’s it’s a”

James Kindred:

“you kind of experience the highs and lows of things that haven’t even happened. And it’s a nasty roller coaster to be on sometimes, but I think it is case of.. the anxiety can and will always be there. It’s just kind of whether you learn to use that nervous energy in a meaningful way and kind”

Andrew Laws:

“Yeah.”

James Kindred:

“have some self-care and some understanding built around it as well of kind of I’m not feeling great at the moment I need to take some time to kind of reset and then come back to something. The urge to just kind of press on can sometimes be very very overwhelming but sometimes it can be something that you probably shouldn’t be doing.”

Andrew Laws:

“Yeah.”

James Kindred:

“So last four questions, and I think we can probably kind of do these as slightly more quickfire questions. What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?”

Andrew Laws:

“Don’t think too much.”

James Kindred:

“and how easy do you find it sticking to that advice?”

Andrew Laws:

“Horrendously difficult, but I’m getting better.”

James Kindred:

“and it’s a worthwhile thing to stick to.”

Andrew Laws:

“It really is. somebody who’s, they’re actually a counselor. They weren’t counseling me. It was somebody I worked with who was training as counselor actually. And it’s true. Don’t think too much. It’s got, thinking’s gonna happen.”

James Kindred:

“Yeah, you know, that energy for the right times. What’s something you’re excited to learn to try in the future?”

Andrew Laws:

“Everything! It really is. could be. I don’t know. I could see something tomorrow, even if it’s on Reddit or something, and go, do you know what? Antique coins from Peru. That’s exactly what I’m going to be into now for about the next six months. And then something else will come along. The problem I have is I don’t always slam the door on things when I lose interest on them.”

James Kindred:

“It’s kind of a blank canvas, really.”

Andrew Laws:

“I have many things.”

James Kindred:

“What’s one thing that you’d like listeners to take away from this conversation?”

Andrew Laws:

“You’re important.”

James Kindred:

“what’s next for you? well, yeah, that’s for the listeners, not just me. And what’s next for you?”

Andrew Laws:

“Not you, James. I mean, you are, but…”

Andrew Laws:

“I’m gonna have some salmon and artichokes because I like eating nice food and I’ve been working really hard recently so I’m gonna have some salmon and some artichokes for lunch.”

James Kindred:

“Sounds like a nice Friday treat. Andrew, thank you very much for being a guest on Big Bad Beautiful Brains.”

Andrew Laws:

“Mm-hmm.”

Andrew Laws:

“Thank you for inviting me, it’s been a hoot.”

Big Bad Beautiful Brains:

“Okay, that’s it for episode one. Thank you for joining, Andrew and I, for our chat. Hope you found it useful. Next episode will be in a couple of weeks time. Make sure you like, subscribe, whatever it is you do with your usual podcast routine. And I hope you’ll be back for another episode soon. Until then, toodle pip.”