Episode 167
Tiny Experiments – Unlocking big possibilities
What if we reframed failure as a step toward clarity rather than away from success?
In this episode, Laurence and Carlos sit down with Anne-Laure le Cunff, neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and author of the book Tiny Experiments, to explore why failure isn’t failure – it’s feedback.
Anne-Laure’s work is all about curiosity-driven learning; turning doubt into discovery through small, low-risk experiments. Her approach aligns deeply with how we support entrepreneurs, coaches, and creatives inside our Vision 20/20 group coaching program:
- Curiosity leads to clarity. What fascinates you is often pointing you toward the work you’re meant to do.
- Small experiments create momentum. You don’t need a master plan—just a first step.
- Failure is data, not a dead end. When you stop seeing failure as personal, you start seeing opportunity.
- Exploration before exploitation ensures alignment. Before you "scale" an idea, make sure it truly fits you.
- Structure + flexibility = a sustainable, fulfilling business. The key is having just enough structure to guide you, but enough freedom to adapt.
If you’re navigating a career transition, designing a business that truly fits, or just wrestling with the fear of getting it wrong, this conversation is for you.
Links
Transcript
Welcome everyone.
Speaker:Welcome Anne-Laure.
Speaker:You're someone we followed for a long time actually.
Speaker:So it feels great to have you on here and to celebrate your work.
Speaker:And obviously the book that's coming out next week, isn't it?
Speaker:I'm waiting for the physical copy, so I'm a bit behind on the, on the book front.
Speaker:Carlos is more of a listener, so yeah, I can't wait to get that in my hands.
Speaker:I'm excited.
Speaker:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker:I'm not gonna assume that anyone listening to this knows you inside out.
Speaker:I know you through Lawrence primarily, initially because of Nest Labs and
Speaker:the work that you were doing there.
Speaker:Uh, and then listening more, basically stalking you, uh, cyber stalking you
Speaker:and listening to all of the podcasts and reading all the blogs and all that
Speaker:stuff, and just got a much better feel for who you are and your journey and your
Speaker:passions as I understand it, particularly around the mind and, and productivity
Speaker:in a mindful way, and what you're doing with your community, which is amazing
Speaker:and there's so much, uh, alignment there.
Speaker:But I would love for you to, Give you an opportunity to share a bit more
Speaker:about yourself, maybe a bit more about where you find yourself right now in
Speaker:terms of the work that's occupying you, uh, and however you wanna describe
Speaker:in a, you know, short summary, how you got to this point right now.
Speaker:Yeah, I, um.
Speaker:I kind of think about my life in two chapters, which I think are kind of
Speaker:helpful to know about, to understand who I am and how I got here today.
Speaker:The first one was very linear in the sense that I had a very clear vision
Speaker:of what success looked like, and I tried really hard to get there.
Speaker:So got good grades in school, got a job at Google.
Speaker:I started a startup and I did that for really at the time.
Speaker:I didn't know it, but for all of the wrong reasons, I did that because that,
Speaker:that was expected for me and um, for a bunch of reasons that would be too
Speaker:long to explain here, I then entered a second chapter, and hopefully there
Speaker:will be many more chapters in my life.
Speaker:But that's the chapter I'm currently in, which is a lot more experimental,
Speaker:where I don't really know where I'm going, but I'm fully embracing it and
Speaker:I'm really following my curiosity in terms of deciding what to work on.
Speaker:And so in the past few years, I started a newsletter called Nest
Speaker:Labs, which has about a hundred thousand people reading it every week.
Speaker:I also did a PhD in neuroscience, which I completed last year.
Speaker:And, uh, I have this book coming out, which, uh, I'm very, very excited about
Speaker:Tiny Experiments coming out next week.
Speaker:And, um, what I love about all of these projects that I've worked on in the
Speaker:past few years is that I had no plan.
Speaker:I had no idea that that's what.
Speaker:I would end up working on.
Speaker:But uh, I just paid attention to the different opportunities that
Speaker:were in front of me and try to pay attention to the signals and to what
Speaker:I was actually curious and excited about as a compass to make decisions.
Speaker:I, I can imagine Lawrence, you, a lot of what Anna was sharing just
Speaker:seems to ring all the bells for us.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Well, uh, I dunno if you've read the book Second Mountain or heard of that
Speaker:book, but it talks to that idea of a lot of us are on this path to the,
Speaker:the summit of the first mountain.
Speaker:So we chase success for the wrong reasons, like you say.
Speaker:And then at some point it doesn't happen to everyone.
Speaker:Um, and it doesn't always happen in midlife, but typically can where we.
Speaker:I think David Brooks, you wrote it talks about this valley between the first and
Speaker:second mountain in life when we're kind of exploring and in this liminal space.
Speaker:And then at some point we want to commit to something that's bigger than us.
Speaker:Uh, whether it's a community like you or a cause that we care about.
Speaker:Um, or even just go on that journey of exploration and maybe
Speaker:there's no mountain to climb.
Speaker:It's just that meandering around.
Speaker:So yeah, maybe this is the second and many more mountains
Speaker:for you to, to sort of go on.
Speaker:Um, no, it's just funny because, um, the title of the book was
Speaker:supposed to be Liminal Minds.
Speaker:And, uh, it was really about, and it is still about, that's
Speaker:still what the book is about.
Speaker:It is about being comfortable in those liminal spaces, being
Speaker:comfortable in uncertainty and seeing these transitions, these moments
Speaker:when we're lost as opportunities for growth and self-discovery.
Speaker:But, uh, it turned out when we conducted some surveys, a lot of
Speaker:people don't know what liminal means.
Speaker:The once you explain it to them, a lot of them have the same reaction.
Speaker:They say, where has this word been that that describes exactly my experience?
Speaker:It's such a useful word, but it's not really an everyday word that
Speaker:a lot of people have come across.
Speaker:And so people would look at the title and not really understand what it meant.
Speaker:So I changed the title to what it is right now, tightening experiments.
Speaker:But I just find it funny that you mentioned the word liminal, which is not a
Speaker:common word, and it was supposed to be the book of the title, the title of the book.
Speaker:And I love how you use tiny experiments to test out the title for tiny.
Speaker:It's quite meta, isn't it?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And I find this is all part, like these, these words, these terminologies, the
Speaker:way we approach change it, these are words that we discover on that journey
Speaker:of change where we think, all right, we're trying to look for the way forward.
Speaker:Uh, and I'd love to, because I wanna put tiny experiments into a kind of
Speaker:a, for us, a context for our, for our audience, uh, and then explore various
Speaker:ideas that you share within the book.
Speaker:Uh, hopefully to, well, primarily to get people engaged with, with
Speaker:this idea of what tiny experience could mean, particularly with
Speaker:respect to someone's life, but then also where they may come into play.
Speaker:And, and I love what you said in terms of your own journey of like
Speaker:this chapter, transition from one chapter to another, a one way of
Speaker:thinking, to another way of thinking.
Speaker:And, and to just help with that, I wanted to just share, you
Speaker:know, the Satya change model.
Speaker:This is something that a friend of ours who's a fellow coach just shared
Speaker:with us in terms of like, trying to describe this kind of process of change.
Speaker:there's this idea of the, the current status quo, and then there's a future,
Speaker:and then there's this idea of chaos in the middle, which is all messy and you're
Speaker:not sure how to, to navigate, part of that journey is the inciting incident.
Speaker:And I think it is really, I believe, believe is really helpful for,
Speaker:to share stories of this kind of what tips us over and to change.
Speaker:Then it's like, okay, when I'm there, what do I do next?
Speaker:Which I think is a lot to what you're talking about.
Speaker:Well, there were two moments.
Speaker:The, the first one was when I was at Google and I was still very
Speaker:much in that linear mindset of trying to get the next promotion
Speaker:and work on the next big projects.
Speaker:And, I had a health scare while I was there.
Speaker:So I woke up one morning and my arm had turned black and uh, I
Speaker:went to the Google Infirmary.
Speaker:They told me.
Speaker:You need to go to the hospital.
Speaker:So I went to the Stanford Hospital.
Speaker:I was based in San Francisco at the time and working in Mountain View,
Speaker:and they, they told me that I had a blood clot in my arm that was
Speaker:threatening to travel to my lung.
Speaker:And in that moment, so when they told me we need to do surgery as quickly
Speaker:as possible and take care of this, my first reaction was to open my Google
Speaker:calendar to see when I could schedule this at a time that would not disrupt
Speaker:any product launches I was working on.
Speaker:And so I, yeah, this, this like almost this out of body experience
Speaker:where you see yourself do something completely ridiculous.
Speaker:Um, and I had that where I noticed I was doing that and as.
Speaker:I felt like my priorities are completely wrong, obviously.
Speaker:the surgery went well.
Speaker:I still have both my arms, and everything is fine.
Speaker:But that was definitely a moment of realization.
Speaker:And so I quit my job at Google.
Speaker:But what I didn't realize at the time is that that it's really,
Speaker:again, the liminal space, right?
Speaker:It's that liminal space, that space of transition between one chapter and
Speaker:another, a way of being and thinking and another that's very uncomfortable.
Speaker:And I found that for me at the time, it was so uncomfortable
Speaker:to not have an identity anymore.
Speaker:To not be able to answer the question, what do you do when, especially coming
Speaker:from Google that had made, made it so easy for me to say what I was doing,
Speaker:that I rushed onto the next script.
Speaker:And the, the script in Silicon Valley that everybody knows the script, right,
Speaker:is that you stay at a big tech company for a while, you save money, you
Speaker:build your network, and then you raise more money and you start a startup.
Speaker:So I did that, and it's only a few years later when that startup failed.
Speaker:And when I found myself again in that liminal space, not knowing
Speaker:what I wanted to do next, that I finally, finally allowed myself to
Speaker:finally ask, what is it I actually wanna do if nobody was watching?
Speaker:If traditional success was out of the equation, if I could just decide that
Speaker:I would do something that I'm curious about and wake up in the morning and
Speaker:work on something I'm interested in, and that's it, what would that be?
Speaker:And for me, that had always been the brain.
Speaker:I had always been curious about how the brain works.
Speaker:And so I decided to go back to university at the, in my late
Speaker:twenties to study neuroscience, which.
Speaker:Funnily enough, I actually, I didn't put that in the, in the book.
Speaker:I, I'm just realizing while telling you this story, I had more people
Speaker:telling me it was crazy to do that than, than when I did the startup.
Speaker:The startup was such a normal thing to do in Silicon Valley after
Speaker:working at a company like Google or Meta that everybody said, yay.
Speaker:Like, congrats.
Speaker:People tell you, congrats for quitting your job and good luck on the
Speaker:startup for the neuroscience studies.
Speaker:I had so many people tell me, what do you mean these are very long studies?
Speaker:You're not going to go back to university in your late
Speaker:twenties to study neuroscience.
Speaker:and that was the beginning of that second chapter for me when I stopped
Speaker:listening to those scripts and I started making decisions that were more aligned
Speaker:with what I was actually curious about.
Speaker:So One of, I think a few inciting incidents I hear
Speaker:is like, okay, the arm okay.
Speaker:And need to think.
Speaker:And then it's like, okay, quick Google, do a startup 'cause that is
Speaker:where I'm what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker:That didn't work out quite well.
Speaker:Oh my God, I need to do something different here.
Speaker:There's this idea that we, we learn about this, this transformational
Speaker:idea that starts getting us on a different par trajectory.
Speaker:and I'm, I'm wondering in your case, was that part of the journey of doing the
Speaker:risky research or was there, was there something else, uh, a a moment or an
Speaker:incident that think, okay, actually I need to rethink how I look at life and work
Speaker:and this is a way that's gonna help me.
Speaker:It was really just realizing that I was completely lost and for the first
Speaker:time in my life, not resisting it.
Speaker:I think that was the big change for me after my startup failed, is that instead
Speaker:of trying to cross that the middle space as quickly as possible and find something
Speaker:to clink to, that would make me feel like I knew what I was doing and I knew where
Speaker:I was going for the very first time in my life, I told myself, I have no idea.
Speaker:I'm completely lost.
Speaker:And somehow that felt liberating.
Speaker:That felt really good.
Speaker:I didn't have a plan, didn't have a vision, but that also meant that anything,
Speaker:literally, any decision I could make in that moment was something that was
Speaker:possible, something I could explore.
Speaker:And so I really.
Speaker:Went back to the drawing board.
Speaker:It was really through a lot of journaling, a lot of reading, a lot
Speaker:of introspection and self-reflection.
Speaker:Just asking myself, trying to really untangle the, those, those
Speaker:external scripts from what it was that I was really curious about.
Speaker:And sometimes even thinking back on my childhood and things that
Speaker:I used to like at that time.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Well, it sounds like to, from what I'm hearing is, is
Speaker:you, you shifted the script.
Speaker:There was a script that was running and you somehow was able to shift that script.
Speaker:And in the book you talk about cognitive scripts.
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:And this is really how I went about writing this book.
Speaker:A lot of it was inspired by my personal experience, but, um, I don't actually talk
Speaker:a lot about my personal life in the book.
Speaker:Most of it is in the introduction, but those, those were seeds for, for me
Speaker:to read papers and look at research and interview other people and do
Speaker:case studies to see if that was a more common experience than not just me.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Turns out absolutely, yes.
Speaker:Not just me.
Speaker:So many people struggle with exactly the same challenges that I went through.
Speaker:And, um, I discovered this fascinating study from 1979 where scientists,
Speaker:so it's a very simple study.
Speaker:Scientists just ask people, if you're in this situation, how do you behave?
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:And what they realized is that when you put people in similar
Speaker:situations, most of it, most of them behave in exactly the same way.
Speaker:And in a, in those, those first studies, so they looked at things like going to
Speaker:the doctor or going to the restaurant.
Speaker:Just think about it for, for yourself.
Speaker:Imagine what you do when you go to the doctor or when you go to the restaurant.
Speaker:If I ask everyone who's listening right now to answer this question, we will
Speaker:probably have very similar scripts.
Speaker:You go to the waiting room, you wait there, that's why
Speaker:it's called the waiting room.
Speaker:And then you, you wait for someone to call your name and you go and
Speaker:you go in the doctor's office and maybe they ask you to get undressed
Speaker:and check what's wrong, right?
Speaker:If the doctor walked out of their office and asked you to get undressed in the
Speaker:waiting room in front of everybody, you would feel like something is really wrong.
Speaker:And that's because the doctor went off script.
Speaker:We're all following these scripts as to how we're supposed to behave.
Speaker:And a lot of situations, it's actually fine for going to, to the doctor.
Speaker:That's very useful, that I don't have to think every time about how
Speaker:I'm supposed to behave right for going to the restaurant as well.
Speaker:So these scripts can be great in situations where there's actually
Speaker:a routine that you want to follow.
Speaker:The problem is that researchers found that we follow these scripts and also
Speaker:in lots of other areas of our life that are more important and where
Speaker:maybe we don't want to follow a script.
Speaker:We follow scripts in our career decisions, in our relationships.
Speaker:Uh, we follow scripts in the way we dress, in deciding what we eat.
Speaker:We have cognitive scripts everywhere in our lives, and they're unconscious.
Speaker:We, they're subconscious.
Speaker:We don't know we're following them.
Speaker:And so in the book, I talk about the three.
Speaker:Big scripts.
Speaker:The the three biggest ones, that a lot of us follow.
Speaker:So the first one is, I call it the sequel script.
Speaker:And it's this script where you feel like whatever you do today, whatever decision
Speaker:you make today has to make sense based on the decisions you made in the past.
Speaker:And so this is why, for example, someone who built a startup in one
Speaker:area will do their second startup in a similar one, or someone who studied
Speaker:something will only look at jobs that are aligned with whatever they studied.
Speaker:This is also why we rewrite our resumes, uh, when we apply for jobs
Speaker:because it needs to make sense, it needs to have a nice narrative.
Speaker:The second script is the crowd pleaser script.
Speaker:It's when we make decisions based on making people around us happy.
Speaker:Rather than asking ourselves what, what makes us happy?
Speaker:Um, this is why a lot of people find themselves in careers like being a
Speaker:lawyer or nothing against lawyers, but like, you know, where they
Speaker:probably did not wake up one morning feeling like that's my calling.
Speaker:It probably results from a lot of pleasing people around them, maybe
Speaker:their parents, that who supported them for a very long time and now they wanna
Speaker:give back by doing the right thing.
Speaker:And then the last one, which I think is the most insidious one, because that's
Speaker:one we celebrate as a society, is the, the one I call the epic script and it's
Speaker:descriptive follow when we feel like whatever we do, it needs to be big, it
Speaker:needs to be impressive, it needs to be our passion, we need to be obsessed with it.
Speaker:And anything less than that is not meaningful, is not worth us
Speaker:our time or, or even is failure.
Speaker:Because of that, we either don't explore things that might be interesting, but
Speaker:that don't look really big at first.
Speaker:Or we put all of our eggs in the same basket.
Speaker:We say, this is me, this is my identity, this is my life.
Speaker:And when that thing doesn't work out, and obviously you
Speaker:know the consequences, right?
Speaker:So those are the three big scripts that a lot of us follow.
Speaker:And just by being aware of them, you can start noticing them,
Speaker:questioning them, and maybe try to write your own script instead.
Speaker:You just talked about going off script and when you were talking
Speaker:about being in Silicon Valley, my sense is you're surrounded by lots of
Speaker:people who, there's a, there's a path there, there's an expectation there.
Speaker:There's a script there in some ways of what is, what is the norm.
Speaker:So yeah.
Speaker:What allowed you to go off script and have that courage other than doing the sort of
Speaker:in inward reflection, did you have people around you who were thinking differently?
Speaker:'cause it feels like there's almost like a values misalignment there.
Speaker:You are thinking of a different path, more about learning and growth and
Speaker:then this other path, which is more about external measures of success.
Speaker:to be completely honest, I was very lucky because I was back in
Speaker:the UK when my startup failed.
Speaker:And I think having started the, the company when I was kind of like following
Speaker:all of these scripts of Silicon Valley, but being back in the uk, being back
Speaker:in Europe, when that happened, it did give me a little bit more space.
Speaker:To be able to actually explore and ask myself these questions.
Speaker:Whereas maybe if I had still been in Silicon Valley when that
Speaker:happened, I would've had so many people around me telling me, because
Speaker:that's the script there, it's okay.
Speaker:Startups fail all the time.
Speaker:You just, it's the first one.
Speaker:You almost need to get a failed startups under your belt and then
Speaker:you can go and raise more money.
Speaker:And investors actually like this.
Speaker:They know that it means you're resilient and you know how it works.
Speaker:and that's certainly what people would've, told me if I was in Silicon Valley, but
Speaker:I was in Europe, I was closer to a bunch of friends who are not doing startups.
Speaker:And it just slowed down that transition a little bit and gave
Speaker:me that time to, to do this.
Speaker:So in my case, this really is pure luck and it's so, it's very
Speaker:easy for me to look back on this.
Speaker:And so this is also why in the book, I never give advice based
Speaker:on that period in my life.
Speaker:I just pointed out as a way to say that.
Speaker:My story is not a story of, I just figured it like I figured it out.
Speaker:I, I kind of like, you know, this, I think we like beautiful stories
Speaker:of transformation that are, again, the nice narrative that goes from
Speaker:A to B that's very satisfying.
Speaker:And that was not my case.
Speaker:I actually kept on following scripts for quite a long time,
Speaker:and it's completely normal.
Speaker:That's our natural pull.
Speaker:We want to belong, right?
Speaker:And, and when we see other people following a certain
Speaker:script, it kind of makes sense when we're right in the middle.
Speaker:So that's the first thing I want to say, is that the, the only reason at
Speaker:the time I did not follow the script was because I had the space to do so.
Speaker:And the second one is that I'm not saying that you should not ever
Speaker:follow any scripts in your life.
Speaker:It's really about being intentional about the ones that you follow.
Speaker:So it's actually completely okay to say that in some parts of your,
Speaker:of your life, you know, that people expect you to behave in a certain way.
Speaker:And that could be either cultural, that could be what you agreed with your
Speaker:partner, that could be whatever it is in your industry that you're expected to do.
Speaker:And you can look at your cognitive scripts and say, you know what,
Speaker:actually this is fine with me.
Speaker:Like I'm, I, I'm not interested enough or curious enough about this, that I
Speaker:actually want to do something else.
Speaker:And you see quite a few people who actually decide to say, for my like,
Speaker:day job, I'm going to do this thing.
Speaker:And it's actually nice, I like it.
Speaker:I work on something interesting.
Speaker:My team is nice, but I'm going to be more experimental in other areas of my life.
Speaker:Whether that's a side project, whether that's experimenting with my creativity
Speaker:was that, whether that's, you know, food, diet, health, relationship,
Speaker:running, whatever it is that you wanna be a bit more experimental with,
Speaker:you don't have to turn everything in your life into an experiment.
Speaker:What I'm hearing with that is, uh, and I, the idea of discernment, like a
Speaker:conscious, mindful choice as to where to follow a script and not follow a script.
Speaker:Uh, and what comes up for me is the, what's the cost?
Speaker:The real actual inner cost of not flipping the script, which I'm hearing
Speaker:with you, was part of that inner journey, really trying to define, okay, what
Speaker:do I want to choose to follow and what do I need to rewrite the script for?
Speaker:Which for some people is really, really scary.
Speaker:Like you said, I think we scripts are, Cognitive shortcuts so we
Speaker:don't have to spend so much energy trying to work out what's next.
Speaker:But then if there is no way to work out what's next from an existing script,
Speaker:we have to step into the unknown.
Speaker:And that's for me, which is a lot of your work in this book, is like, how do we
Speaker:navigate this space called the unknown?
Speaker:And I'm gonna say, well, you know, one way that people do that particularly
Speaker:that we, that we encounter in terms of starting a new business
Speaker:is like, I need to have the plan.
Speaker:I need to know where it's gonna go and I just need to execute.
Speaker:That is a script.
Speaker:I would love for you to just share your alternative view on this, particularly
Speaker:when you're not sure whether the destin, what the destination is.
Speaker:Yeah, it's, it's really about changing your mental model of success.
Speaker:So what you just described here is basically a ladder.
Speaker:So that's the mental model of a ladder, which implies that you need to.
Speaker:Climate and in a certain way and, and go through things in a certain order.
Speaker:So first you make the plan and maybe you, you raise money or you don't, you decide
Speaker:you're going to be bootstrapped, and then you go onto the next one and you get your
Speaker:first customer and you do this right.
Speaker:And you almost need to go through all of these steps in order a little bit
Speaker:like, um, a platform video game where you're only allowed to, to go to the next
Speaker:level once you've collected all of the points and the artifacts at one level.
Speaker:So this is the linear model, this is the mental model of a ladder
Speaker:that you're supposed to climb.
Speaker:And there's, there are a lot of issues with that.
Speaker:Uh, it's very rigid, so not very adaptable.
Speaker:It also kind of, it's based on the assumption that you know where you're
Speaker:going, and it's also based on the assumption that you're not going to
Speaker:change and the world is not going to change, which we all know is not true.
Speaker:So the alternative is replacing this.
Speaker:Ladder with a loop.
Speaker:And that's the experimental cycle that you find in the scientific method.
Speaker:When I, I talk about tiny experiments, all I'm doing really is taking the scientific
Speaker:method and unpacking it so people can use it in their daily lives and work.
Speaker:And so the way a scientist designs an experiment is that they're
Speaker:not starting from an outcome.
Speaker:When we have a linear mindset, we start from the outcome, this is what
Speaker:I want and I'm going to get there.
Speaker:For a scientist, if they knew what the outcome would be, there would be
Speaker:no point in running the experiment.
Speaker:So they start instead from a hypothesis, from a research question.
Speaker:And it's more something like, maybe if I do this, this will happen.
Speaker:That's my hypothesis.
Speaker:And it could be correct, but also it could be wrong.
Speaker:And the only way to find out is to actually do the thing to collect the data.
Speaker:So this is really the experimental mindset, and this is the idea of going
Speaker:through a cycle of experimentation and just designing everything like that.
Speaker:So first admitting that, no, you don't know where you're going.
Speaker:And so instead, based on your current knowledge, current information context,
Speaker:who you are today, what the business looks like today, what your current constraints.
Speaker:Ask questions and say, okay, let's design an experiment here.
Speaker:So it always starts with observation.
Speaker:You observe the current situation, then you ask what could be different.
Speaker:So again, maybe, maybe this, maybe this could be the case.
Speaker:That's the hypothesis.
Speaker:Then you design an experiment around it, and I have a very simple tool in the book.
Speaker:I'm happy to share if you want, but to, to design that experiment.
Speaker:And then once you're done collecting data, you reflect on it.
Speaker:The beautiful thing about conducting experiments to you is that just like
Speaker:a scientist, you withhold judgment until you're done collecting the data.
Speaker:Scientists don't start looking at the data and analyzing it, or maybe
Speaker:stopping the experiment in the middle because they're like, I'm not quite sure
Speaker:what I, I like what I'm seeing here.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:They collect all of the data and they decide at the end what
Speaker:they're going to do and how they're going to implement those lessons.
Speaker:And that's also a completely different definition of success.
Speaker:And, and failure with the linear mindset, you have a very binary definition.
Speaker:Either you get there and that's success or you don't, and that's failure.
Speaker:When you start from a hypothesis, as long as you learn
Speaker:something new, that's success.
Speaker:And if you say, that's what, that was my hypothesis, and it turns out
Speaker:to be incorrect, that's fantastic.
Speaker:Now, you know, instead of making decisions based on something that's wrong now, you
Speaker:know, and you can make better decisions.
Speaker:So that's the, that's the shift in mindset from a linear mindset
Speaker:to an experimental mindset.
Speaker:And there's a number of aspects of that I'm curious about for, for people
Speaker:making that transition, particularly when they're thinking of a new idea.
Speaker:And the hypothesis that I, I generally hear that people formulate when
Speaker:they're thunking a new business is the hypothesis is, is this a good idea?
Speaker:And it is like they're still clinging onto the fact that, oh, I need to
Speaker:validate that this is a good idea.
Speaker:But if it's a bad idea
Speaker:mm-hmm.
Speaker:Do you like my idea?
Speaker:Do you like, do you like my idea?
Speaker:That's the other aspect of it.
Speaker:So there's a whole, I think I can well read the book if you wanna learn more
Speaker:about how to construct better questions as opposed to just, is this a good idea?
Speaker:But tied to that, um, there's an element, uh, and I love what you said
Speaker:is like, when we, when we start on a linear journey, we assume nothing
Speaker:changes other than our progress.
Speaker:There, there's this thing about how we potentially change along the way,
Speaker:and one of the things that we talk about with our community and the
Speaker:people who who do our programs is this.
Speaker:Um, as you work, as you do the work, your clarity becomes,
Speaker:you know, the clarity emerges.
Speaker:It isn't necessarily the beginnings, like through the exploration, you kind
Speaker:of realize, ah, that's what I want, or that's where we need to get to.
Speaker:But there's a fear around that going into that space because
Speaker:they're clinging so much onto the initial idea or what I wanna do.
Speaker:Where am I getting with this?
Speaker:I think I'm just curious about for you is like, was there anything that
Speaker:allowed you to let go of that still that need to be right or need to know
Speaker:exactly where you're gonna get to?
Speaker:I think it really helps to have this structure.
Speaker:Um, a lot of people who just hear about develop an experimental mindset,
Speaker:live a more experimental life.
Speaker:They think it's this very floaty kind of approach to life when
Speaker:it's not actually, it's again, inspired by the scientific method.
Speaker:So it is quite rigorous actually, when you think about it, you define
Speaker:your question and that question could actually be like, do do I enjoy this?
Speaker:Or will people resonate with this?
Speaker:Um, is that something that people find useful rather than just is it a good idea?
Speaker:So that could be the, the question that you have and
Speaker:then you design an experiment.
Speaker:I mentioned I have a little tool in the book.
Speaker:I'm just going to share it now because I think it's actually helpful
Speaker:to frame it and really understand what I mean by tiny experiments.
Speaker:So if you look at an experiment.
Speaker:Any kind of experiment.
Speaker:It has two main building blocks.
Speaker:The, the first building block is what you're going to test, what's the
Speaker:action, the thing you're going to do.
Speaker:And the second building block is the number of trials.
Speaker:How many times you're going to repeat that action for you to know
Speaker:if something is actually happening.
Speaker:If there's actually a, an interesting pattern here.
Speaker:And so when you design your own tiny experiments, that's all you need
Speaker:design on an action and on a duration.
Speaker:And so you say, I will do this thing for this specific duration.
Speaker:And then you do the thing.
Speaker:And again, no judgment while you do the thing.
Speaker:You're just doing the thing at the end.
Speaker:When you're done conducting the experiment, you can look back and it's
Speaker:very important to look back both on the internal and external signals of success.
Speaker:We're all very good at looking at the external signals of success.
Speaker:We have our spreadsheets, our dashboards.
Speaker:We have like a little notion like thing that's connected to our Zapier
Speaker:that's pulling all of that data.
Speaker:We look at it and we feel like, okay, this is trending up, up and to the right.
Speaker:This is looking good, but if you're successful on the outside, but feeling
Speaker:miserable every morning when you wake up and you work on your business, that
Speaker:is actually not success, and so it's very important when you analyze that
Speaker:data from your experiment, you ask yourself, how does it look on the outside?
Speaker:Cool, but also how does it feel on the inside?
Speaker:Based on that, you can decide what your next cycle of experimentation
Speaker:is going to look like, and so that's why there's no failure or success
Speaker:because there's no end point.
Speaker:There's no end goal.
Speaker:All you're trying to do is with each cycle to learn something new that you can use
Speaker:to iterate and grow and evolve even though you don't know where you're going, and so.
Speaker:You might have results where actually the, the external signals are very good.
Speaker:Growing fast is great, but you're completely burned out.
Speaker:But that's not failure.
Speaker:That just means that for the next cycle of experimentation, maybe
Speaker:you need to tweak some things.
Speaker:Do you need to hire some help?
Speaker:Do you need to maybe scale down a little bit for now and try while you
Speaker:figure out what the business structure is, do you need to maybe build some
Speaker:systems, automate some things, uh, maybe work with AI a little bit more
Speaker:so you don't have to do everything?
Speaker:What does that look like?
Speaker:And again, it's not about having the answer to these questions, it's actually
Speaker:just about formulating a hypothesis.
Speaker:And so you could say, I have the hypothesis that maybe, maybe if I
Speaker:worked with AI more, then this would be a lot more manageable to do.
Speaker:And so you design your next experiment and you say that for the next 15 days, I will
Speaker:spend, every morning I will spend an hour.
Speaker:Just talking to Jack g PT about my current challenges and figuring
Speaker:out if there are any ways to make things a little bit easier.
Speaker:And in two weeks at the end of the experiment, same, I'm going
Speaker:to, was that correct or not?
Speaker:That's really the idea of experimenting.
Speaker:And so to answer your question, you can completely let go of the idea of
Speaker:failure or, or trying to have a plan or this illusion of certainty because you
Speaker:have this very simple structure that you can follow that is giving you a sense
Speaker:of growth without giving you this full sense of having a clear destination.
Speaker:what does it mean for something to feel right?
Speaker:How do you.
Speaker:RT or come to terms with that for yourself.
Speaker:This actually does require a little bit of work to define for yourself and is
Speaker:going to look different for everyone.
Speaker:So I would actually highly recommend sitting down and asking yourself that
Speaker:question because for some people, something that feels right might be to
Speaker:be a, a good partner or a good parent.
Speaker:And that might be actually an important factor in their lives that yes, they
Speaker:have a successful business, but for the internal factors, they feel like they're
Speaker:still able to show up in ways in their life that actually make them feel good.
Speaker:That's what feels, feels good for some people, it's very physical.
Speaker:Um, so for example, in my case, it's very important that I feel
Speaker:rested and um, and also I pay a lot of attention to signs of anxiety.
Speaker:' cause sometimes I feel the anxiety without knowing where it's coming from.
Speaker:For me, it's a sign to you start paying attention that something might be wrong
Speaker:somewhere, and my brain is already picking up those signals, but I'm, I'm
Speaker:not yet seeing them at a conscious level.
Speaker:And so you can be a bit more proactive.
Speaker:And really it's, uh, so I do talk about this in the book.
Speaker:It's, uh, it's really a beautiful human capability ability that we have.
Speaker:That as far as we know, we're the only mammals that are able to do
Speaker:this, which is called meta cognition.
Speaker:And it's the ability to observe your own thoughts.
Speaker:Obviously, you know, anyone who has a dog or a cat, they think, right.
Speaker:People who think otherwise have never had a pet, but they think, but they're
Speaker:not able to observe their own thoughts.
Speaker:Only human beings are able to do this.
Speaker:And so I would highly encourage anyone to try and do this a little bit more
Speaker:proactively, where you observe the way you feel, you observe how you think.
Speaker:You ask yourself, why is it that I'm feeling this way?
Speaker:Why is it that I'm thinking this thought?
Speaker:And sometimes the answer is just like, oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker:I'm a little bit tired right now and that's fine.
Speaker:I'll take a little nap and, and all is good, right?
Speaker:But if you start noticing these patterns over and over again, then it might be
Speaker:a sign that something needs to change, whether in the, the, the personal or the,
Speaker:the professional, the kind of parts of your life, but something needs to change.
Speaker:So I would say that the answer to this is just really paying attention to
Speaker:how you feel and also being radically honest with yourself in terms of
Speaker:what matters to you and in terms of how aligned the way you feel right
Speaker:now is with what matters to you.
Speaker:And what that says to me, because in order to really, well, from my perspective,
Speaker:at least in my own experience, in order to listen to that or feel that.
Speaker:I need to slow down.
Speaker:I can't be acting and moving all the time which kind of touches on this
Speaker:idea of our, our relationship to time.
Speaker:Because as entrepreneurs, and particularly in the startup world,
Speaker:time we need to, it's ticking down.
Speaker:It's ticking down, it's ticking down, which means that sometimes some of us can
Speaker:be very, we can get very, very quickly to somewhere where we don't need to be.
Speaker:we've all seen this, um.
Speaker:For people who are familiar with Tim Urban from Wait, but y this square that's
Speaker:filled with hundreds of tiny squares that represent your life in weeks.
Speaker:And, uh, this is how we think about time.
Speaker:Most, you know, most of us in our societies, a series of tiny boxes that
Speaker:need to be filled with as much stuff as possible in order to be productive
Speaker:and make the most of that very limited time that we have on Earth, right?
Speaker:This is how we think about it.
Speaker:And this is also why whenever we procrastinate, whenever we're not being
Speaker:productive, we feel really bad about it, we're literally wasting that time.
Speaker:Um, and so what's really interesting is that the ancient Greeks were also
Speaker:already very aware of this, and they actually had two words for time.
Speaker:The first one is Kronos, and that's the one we still use a lot.
Speaker:We live in a time.
Speaker:Kronos in our society, and that's the time of the, the all of the
Speaker:little squares, the little boxes that you need to fill with stuff.
Speaker:The other word that they had was kairos.
Speaker:So Kronos is the quantitative definition of time.
Speaker:Kairos is the qualitative definition of time, and the idea of kairos
Speaker:is that each moment is different.
Speaker:It's not just a series of identical boxes that you can fill with whatever,
Speaker:and you just need to manage it in the most efficient way possible.
Speaker:It is more about being able to connect deeply in each moment, to
Speaker:allow for this moment to expand.
Speaker:And I'm going to give you two examples of this because I think we've all
Speaker:experienced kairos, but we just don't have a word for it in our English language.
Speaker:So whenever you're in a, you lost in a very interesting conversation with
Speaker:a friend and you look at the time.
Speaker:You, you feel like what happened?
Speaker:Like, you know, I thought that was, we started chatting 10 minutes
Speaker:ago and it's been two hours.
Speaker:That's Ros.
Speaker:You lose track of time.
Speaker:This is the, this deep sense of being lost in the moment and of having this
Speaker:beautiful experience that where time you, you really lose the idea of time itself.
Speaker:And another one is whenever you get in the flow, when you're working on something so
Speaker:interesting that you also forget the time.
Speaker:You might even forget for some people to get up and have lunch.
Speaker:You're just so focused and last in whatever creative
Speaker:project you're working on.
Speaker:And those are kairos moments.
Speaker:And so when you have a linear mindset, you're trying to optimize your time in a
Speaker:Kronos way, you have your little calendar and you add as many meetings as possible.
Speaker:It needs to feel productive.
Speaker:And whenever you catch yourself not doing something, this is wasted time when you
Speaker:have a kairos approach to time management.
Speaker:You realize that time, expense and contracts, that there will be
Speaker:moments where you do absolutely nothing and that's fine.
Speaker:And there will be moments that are so rich that they feel like
Speaker:it was 10 years in one hour.
Speaker:And what you ideally want to do is allowing yourself to live both types of
Speaker:moments and maybe try and optimize more for seeking kairos moments in your life.
Speaker:Those kind of moments where so they, they're so rich and deep that they
Speaker:almost dwarf any other moments that you had during that day, during
Speaker:more like krono types of tasks.
Speaker:So you will still have kno time.
Speaker:We live in a society of kno time, but try to seek those kairos moments in your life.
Speaker:I've got a question before you dive in, is that right?
Speaker:Um, I think on what Julia highlighted, because I think Julia said, I think
Speaker:the trick is tiny experiments.
Speaker:Um, we talked a lot about experiments, but one thing we see a lot of as
Speaker:people, I think we are all guilty of this, is like making the first
Speaker:thing they do the, a big thing.
Speaker:Like they find it really hard to break it down into a tiny step.
Speaker:So any words of wisdom for someone?
Speaker:I'm sure there's lots in the book about how to, yeah.
Speaker:How to, how to start small ultimately, even if you've got a big vision.
Speaker:Yeah, I, um, I call it the Maximalist brain.
Speaker:And it's really this tendency that it needs to be, it needs to be big if,
Speaker:if, for it to be worthy of our time.
Speaker:And so that's actually why I ended up calling the book Tiny Experiments
Speaker:because it was such a fundamental part of this mindset and this approach.
Speaker:So what I would recommend is, uh, first, whenever you're hesitating in between
Speaker:two durations for your experiment to just go with the smaller version, because
Speaker:that's the great thing about experiments.
Speaker:It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to do that thing only once, right?
Speaker:You wanna do it once, complete that cycle, and then based on what you learn,
Speaker:you can go for another cycle that might be longer, but also where you might
Speaker:tweak a little bit of your approach.
Speaker:So, for example, let's say that.
Speaker:You decide to start a daily newsletter for your startup.
Speaker:And so it might be tempting to say, I'm going to like, send a day
Speaker:newsletter for the next three month and, uh, I'm going to interview all
Speaker:of these people and I don't know what's the big version of this, right?
Speaker:But instead, you could say, let's start a day newsletter and let's do
Speaker:that just for the next two weeks.
Speaker:Uh, and at the end of the two weeks, let's see what works.
Speaker:Let's see what doesn't, and let's see what we wanna do next.
Speaker:And in terms of what you, you can do next, you can just go for
Speaker:another two weeks if you're like, I'm actually not quite sure yet.
Speaker:Like, I'm not gonna, I don't know if it's working or not working.
Speaker:Let's just go for another two weeks and see.
Speaker:I, I'm, I'm enjoying this, but I'm not quite sure if customers
Speaker:are actually resonating with it.
Speaker:So let's go for another two weeks.
Speaker:Or you could say, actually, you know, similar example to earlier,
Speaker:people seem to be resonating with it, but it's taking a lot of my time.
Speaker:So for the next iteration, is there someone on the team that can help?
Speaker:Should we work with a freelancer?
Speaker:Is there another approach?
Speaker:And then you can go for the next cycle of experimentation.
Speaker:Or sometimes it is so clear after even one tiny experiment that this was a
Speaker:horrible idea and you can just stop you.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:Now you can say, okay, this is actually taking way too much
Speaker:time, way too much energy.
Speaker:Nobody cares.
Speaker:Let's just stop.
Speaker:Let's park it.
Speaker:What's nice to you is that when you do that, I highly recommend taking
Speaker:a few notes as to why you made the decision to either persist with the
Speaker:exact same experiment or pivot a little bit, or completely pause it.
Speaker:Because in the future, if you or someone else on the team has a similar
Speaker:idea, you can just go back and say.
Speaker:Those are the results of the experiment we run last time.
Speaker:And so if you feel like you're going to do something differently, and
Speaker:so you can use that and tweak it, but now, you know, I tried, it went
Speaker:horribly wrong, but feel free to, to run another tiny experiment if you feel
Speaker:like you would do things differently.
Speaker:So I would really start with the, the smallest version possible.
Speaker:The only case where I tell people it's okay to go for a bigger one, it's when
Speaker:it's something you're actually already quite familiar with, you know how to do.
Speaker:You're, you're almost a hundred percent sure that this is going to work and
Speaker:you just need a commitment device.
Speaker:And in that case, the, the experiment can be more of a way to commit to doing it.
Speaker:And so that's how I, for my newsletter, for example, like I had this experiment
Speaker:where I said, I'm going to write a hundred articles in a hundred weekdays.
Speaker:Yeah, that's a really big experiment, actually.
Speaker:But I already was writing a lot.
Speaker:I had already started newsletters in the past.
Speaker:I had all of that background where the, the challenge for me was more
Speaker:about that daily consistency, and in that case, it's okay to have a bigger
Speaker:experiment if it's new and uncomfortable.
Speaker:Start tiny and then you can scale it up later.
Speaker:That is wonderful.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Brilliant.
Speaker:And Laura and I, I've been enjoying this tiny experiment as well.
Speaker:I hope we can continue these conversations.
Speaker:But if you wanna learn more, and book is, and Laura's book is coming out next week.
Speaker:Order it, get it.
Speaker:I highly recommend it.
Speaker:There's stuff that you talk about.
Speaker:I'd love to talk about pacts and curiosity circles and just ways to
Speaker:continue with these experiments.
Speaker:Keep you going.
Speaker:I think if you are in that space of just, uh, navigating a liminal
Speaker:time in your life, you can't go wrong with getting Laura's book.
Speaker:And I look forward to seeing you actually in a couple of weeks at your book launch.
Speaker:Take care.
Speaker:Bye everyone.
Speaker:Thank you so much.
Speaker:Take
Speaker:care.
Speaker:Having me care.
Speaker:Thank you for your time.
