For community architect Claire Perry-Louise, the often overused and somewhat clichéd word “community” means connecting people through shared experiences, shared values, or shared identity.

Claire doesn’t just advise others how to create community, she hosts her own. She founded Like Hearted Leaders so she and the people she’d met through a Do Lectures course could continue their conversations. Now, more than two years later, people gather for one-on-one conversations, masterclasses, group discussions, and more.

In her chat with Ben, she describes her route from solicitor to author to community builder, discusses the importance of psychological safety, and invites us all to pay it forward.

Links

• Connect with Claire on LinkedIn
• Like Hearted Leaders
• Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High Performance, by Matthew Syed

Hello there.

Welcome to Peripheral Thinking, a series of conversations with entrepreneurs, advisors, activists, and academics intending to inspire, maybe challenge you with ideas, with thinking from the margins, the periphery.

Why?

Cause that's where the ideas which we'll shape tomorrow are hiding today.

On those margins, the periphery.

This week I spoke to Claire Perry Loizou.

Claire is an all round good and beautiful soul.

She's also an expert in community, in business.

Community is quickly becoming one of those often repeated words in business, a necessary thing to do, which of course makes sense because community is an idea which.

Goes to the very heart of the human experience.

Anyway, Claire has been practicing and pioneering the art of community and business for many, many years, so I hope you enjoyed this conversation with her.

Claire, thanks for joining us on Peripheral Thinking.

Thank you, Ben.

Thank you for having me.

It's nice to be here.

Very good.

Very good.

Um, so maybe just start just with just a quick little overview.

Uh, would it, how do you describe what you do and what and who you do it for?

Right.

Well, this is super interesting because I keep changing it and, uh, ultimately I build communities, but essentially what I am is I am a facilitator, a facilitator of conversations.

So I created a community which we'll probably talk about, which I didn't set out to create, but it's called like-hearted Leaders and essentially it's it you've ever been to a networking event.

It's like instead of walking into a room full of strangers and feeling really quite awkward and someone throwing their business card at you, it's like walking into a room full of friends, or trusted contacts who all want you to succeed.

So that is kind of how I would describe what I do.

I just really love facilitating conversations and building connections between people, often known as a community builder, often misunderstood.

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

We can come back to that sort of, because, um, community is, is one of those words which, uh, you know, see, like my last company was around experience design and you know, businesses have a habit that they of, of kind of just sort of repeatedly kind of spitting out, chewing up, and then you kind of regurgitating words to the point where they become meaningless.

And so experience was one of those words for a long time.

And community, I guess is, is a word too, which is banded around so much now that I think, uh, you know, is, is in a way become almost, is almost on the, in danger of becoming a bit kind of meaningless.

Cause people hear it so often in so many kind of contexts, which is a shame for a word, which has kind of, uh, meaning and depth, you know, which runs thousands and thousands and thousands of years back.

But it is often banded around, isn't it?

Yes, definitely is, and that has been my challenge.

I mean, I have been in this space for nine, nearly 10 years, perhaps it is even 10 years now.

And.

My constant challenge has been how to describe what I do.

And I've done so I've tried so many different ways, but essentially it's about how to connect humans to each other.

And the way we do that and the way we connect with others is through things like shared experiences or shared values or having a shared identity.

And so fundamentally, if you want to build community, you need to start at that point.

And over the past few years, so many times I've Googled how to start a community when I've been trying to build some course or try to create a how to build a community product.

I'm thinking, Okay, what else is out there?

And you can't really Google that.

And so I've learned over the years that all you need really is one other person to start talking to and start that conversation.

And, and that's where all communities start with one person, and then you get the next person.

And there's a, have you ever seen that?

Great, I can't remember what it's called, but it's on YouTube where there's a guy standing on the side of a, um, hillside and he starts doing this crazy dance.

And then a guy joins him and he's the first follower and he starts doing the crazy dance.

And then there's two of them doing the crazy dance, and then three, and then four, and then suddenly the whole hillside's doing it.

So, um, And that's community building

Mm.

Yeah.

So you were the first answer.

I was, Oh, there was me at the front going, come Come along.

Yeah.

And so, um, so this idea of kind of creating conversations, we'll come back to the, the community.

You're sort of talking about, you know, your kind of work, being interested in creating conversation, being interested in creating connection.

Has that always been your work?

No.

I was initially a solicitor on the advice of my father who still not quite got over the fact that I've turned away from being in the law.

So, sorry dad if you're listening, but it just wasn't for me.

Um, and so yeah, I started off as a solicitor and then 10 years ago I went on a internet marketing three day weekend course in London.

And I didn't actually want to get out of the car when I got to London.

I couldn't believe I was on the M 25.

I was freaked out by the whole process.

I lived in Devon and I climbed and got really insulate in my life.

And I, um, was kind of scared of the world, I think.

And I went on this course and, that was the pivotal point for me where my whole world shifted in so many aspects.

And on that course, they covered all kinds of things, social media, how to build websites, Google AdWords, all of the things.

But the one thing that stuck out to me was membership sites.

And the section was super small in the course, so it was only maybe a 10 minute section on member membership sites, even less maybe.

But I thought this was super interesting because here we have an opportunity to not have a one time transaction with somebody, but to start having multiple transactions with people on a regular basis.

So a membership site would be perhaps something like Netflix where you're paying a regular fee on a recurring basis.

And I was just really super intrigued by membership sites.

And, uh, I just got really into the model.

And I started researching it and working with other people who had membership sites.

And I decided, I saw someone with a book and I thought, Oh, that looks like a good idea.

I'll write a book on membership sites.

So I wrote a book, which is still available, but it's very embarrassing because it was me nine or 10 years ago and it's not where I would be now.

My mom preread it, but it's a proper book, How to Make Money From Membership Sites.

And I wrote a book and.

I was running seminars and I didn't like it because people would come along and I'd teach them about membership sites, but I didn't see them getting the results.

And then once it struck me, I thought actually membership sites are just the tool.

They are just so if you have a new kitchen and the guy comes along to set out what it's gonna look like in your house, uh, you're thinking about how will you entertain in this space?

Or what will it feel to be in this space?

Or are we gonna have a table in here or a sofa?

And you'll think about the layout of the kitchen and how it operates, but you won't say to the guy or the girl who comes along to check out and, and store your kitchen, what screw drive are you using because you are not really interested in the screwdriver.

You are, Yes, it's important, but it's not part of the whole process.

So membership sites are like the screwdriver, but what the real important aspect is, is the fact is you are building community.

and community is bringing people together in a shared space, which feels safe and people will be in that space and have the best experience if there's some point of connection between those people.

Um, what is it about the book that you find embarrassing now?

It's funny, and I feel like there's a whole story, a whole thing to say about imposter syndrome.

Because a good few years later, I joined on a program with an entrepreneur called Daniel Priestly.

And he runs a program and part of that program is publishing and everybody in this community on this course was publishing books and talking about the day their book came out.

And I thought, Wow, I did that years ago before I knew it was trendy, but I still was like, Well, but my book's not as good as everybody else's book.

And I suppose it comes from the fact that the internet marketing course I did was very much around, uh, this concept of the magic blueprint and how people are so often looking for that quicker solution.

So you can set up a membership site with, on any topic and you will be to create a recurring revenue and all of those things.

And yes, you can, but it's not something that you can just do overnight from my experience.

And so I feel like even though I'm not reread my book, I feel like some of it in there would be, say, would be missing out.

Some of the deeper things that I've learned now as a community builder that necessarily weren't in the book.

And whether there is an aspect of it was more of a magic blueprint kind of approach.

And I, I say that, having said it, I raise it myself and I probably didn't put that in cause it's probably not my feelings.

And I, I don't know, I just feel like I've learned so much and it's nine or 10 years old and I

feel, would, I want someone to think that was my best work and it was, it was my best work at that time, but it's not my best work today as Claire and all the things I've experienced.

So.

Good question though.

Hmm.

And so what are some of the deeper things then you've learned?

So if, if the, if the early version of Claire or that version of Claire, not the early version of Claire, that version where was, was basically kind of reveling in like the blueprint, the kind of nuts and bolts I guess, of what you're doing.

What would you put in the book today, I guess is the question,

Oh yeah.

So, so after I realized a few things about membership sites and then I had this realization, okay, it's about community.

I then thought, Hold on a minute.

So I've had this vision for years that employee happiness will be the norm and not the exception because in my experience, so many people go through the motions in terms of work.

And I thought if we can make businesses and employees happier, the ripple effect in the world is massive.

Because if you go to work and have a good day, you'll be nicer to the person on the way home, on the tube, and then you will be nice to the person in the coffee shop.

You'll be nicer to your spouse and your children.

And the ripple effect's massive.

And I just think that we can do better in business.

And so when I started thinking more about this whole topic area, I thought, okay, so I would see, I feel, and I felt for nine or 10 years that community will be the core of all businesses in the future.

Because ultimately we are humans doing business with other humans, whatever business we're in.

And we are wired to connect with people and, and where we feel seen and heard, we are much more likely to connect with that other person and feel more fulfilled as a person and all of those aspects.

And so putting community in business, if you have a large organization and you generally, you go into a large organization, you go to your desk and you might speak to the people in your team during the day.

However, there's a sales department over here or product department over here.

There's also someone on the front desk and there's somebody upstairs doing something else.

And are these people really having the conversation?

And so community in business is almost like the virtual water cooler cuz you go to get your water or you go to get your coffee and then you have a deeper conversation.

You might cross pollenate.

And so I see that by having something that I'm calling community within a business, we can start at those conversations between the different departments.

So the product department can help the marketing department.

Someone on the front desk has seen something that the CEO has just not seen because he's not on the front desk.

And it doesn't mean that it's not valuable because she's being paid or he's being paid just to welcome people into a building.

That could make a real impact on the ceo.

But they don't know cause they're not having these conversations.

So that's what I see.

And when I talk about community and business, but also you can create communities outside of business.

So for example, Apple, they have a support community and the reason they do that is because it reduces their customer service costs.

Because if you have an issue with your Apple product and you put it into Google, your issue will probably be answered by someone who's just another Apple user.

And because they're just super users, they love the product, they want to help other people.

And so ultimately Apple don't have to help.

So they create communities.

So there's lots of different reasons why people create communities.

But creating community requires that the business has a good culture.

Because if people don't like working in that organization, they don't want to talk to anybody, they want to get home.

If they are talking to people outside of the business and trying to build relationships, they just hate, they hate being there.

Whereas if they feel valued within the business, then they're gonna have, they're just going to, people are ha if people are happy, it, it just, just melts through every part of their life.

And so I saw at that point, and this is the deeper point, was.

We need to work on business culture and we need to work on the community aspect as well.

And they're both inter intertwined.

And so the membership book was very much the tool.

The deeper side was culture is important in business, community, combine them.

And then my journey took on this whole new unfolding where, um, have you heard of Zappos in America?

So Zappos online shoe retailer bought out by Amazon for about a billion.

And ultimately they had an amazing business culture.

And I was connected with the guy who co-founded something called Zappos Insights, and he went to Tony Shay, who was the founder of um, Zappos, and said, I think we should teach business culture to other businesses.

And so I got connected to this guy called Robbie, who co-founded that.

And he started teaching me about business culture and he showed me how to facilitate some events in businesses.

I went along with him to some things he kind of gave, it was kind of a crazy thing.

And in fact, it was an Amsterdam that we went together.

He said, Do you wanna come to Amsterdam to I n g and facilitate this open space technology event?

And I was like, This is crazy.

But it was actually only an hour from where I lived on the plane.

And, and again, that took me down a whole new route.

So that's the deeper aspect.

I think we need great culture.

We need to create opportunities to have more conversations in business, which could be called community building.

And that's how I see the world being in a better place than it is today.

There's something around this, uh, that kind of moment when you go, like going back when you went to the, went to the course, there was this thing around the kind of membership.

It was sort of talking to you, you know, there was something in there which are kind of awoke this interest in conversation, awoke the interest in connection.

Uh, and, and in a way, is it that there was, because a lot of these things kind of feel like they are kind of points around belonging, uh, and there was something in those ideas which you felt you belonged to.

Would that be, would that be fair?

Yeah, I guess so.

Um, I think when you look back at the things that inspire you or interest you or why you do things, I think you often create things cause you needed them, yourself, and so back as a solicitor, I did not feel that sense of belonging in the places I worked.

And on top of that, and this is something that's really important to me, it's about activating the voices of people around you.

Because as a solicitor working within that environment, I didn't feel that my voice was worthy of being heard or even people didn't want to hear it.

It was their way or the highway.

And I think through my own experience, being shut down in the workplace just made me withdraw and just go in and go through the motions.

So I was invested in the people who were coming in to see me, to talk about, to have really difficult conversations with me at two very difficult, you know, two very difficult, um, things to think about.

Obviously, if you come in to do your will, you're thinking about death and if you're coming in around probate, you've lost them on close to you probably.

So I think that's ultimately my experience in the workplace.

And then in a personal aspect, um, when I was married, I also didn't, I wasn't able to verbalize things that felt authentic to me and or speak what was true for me.

And my, the way I got around that was because my voice was shut down, I would then find passive aggressive ways to get what I wanted.

And I don't think that's a healthy way.

To be in a relationship or to operate as human.

And so through those experiences, I want to create a space for other people to be able to operate from a different narrative and be able to express themselves in a way that feels authentic to them, rather having to push themselves into a space and conform to what others think around you.

Cuz I don't think that's healthy,

Hm.

Well, I mean, what do you think creates the conditions for people to feel like they can speak honestly and openly and true to who they are?

Or guess the, the converse of that, what is it that happens in organizations, you know, too often, I guess, which means people don't do that.

You know, you were talking about your, your own sort of experience of that.

What, what's happening in organizations, which means that people are not turning up as they are?

Well, the biggest issue, and this is the most important thing if you want to change conditions, is the creation of psychological safety.

Because people don't speak up because fundamentally they are fearful.

And in the workplace, people don't speak up because they're fearful that if they speak.

, they possibly could lose their job.

They lose their job, they might lose their home, they might lose their spouse.

They might end up on the streets, they might end up destitute.

And I know that sounds extreme, but humans are geared to survive.

And if you've come across Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there's the, the whole what we need and, and at the bottom is the fundamental needs of shelter and food and warmth.

And once we have those things, we can move up the scale, love and belongings quite high up all of these things, and then if we feel like doing something could jeopardize safety, which is basically the fundamental human need, then we don't talk.

And so if you are an organization or if you want to create a space for people to be more open and vulnerable, you have to be able to demonstrate that it is safe to have that conversation without jeopardizing your position in the company.

And I don't think businesses are able to do that very well and the traditional structures of how things work.

And I think from a leadership point of view, it's about signaling.

And the businesses that are more successful, there's more transparency from the top.

I was listening to an interesting podcast the other day about the guy who co-founded Pret a Manger and he was talking so much about this concept of transparency and openness and how important that the relationships with the employees was and building those relationships and how key they were.

Quite often above the profit side of it, because if you've got the right team in place who are able to be more honest in their conversations, that's where the magic comes from that.

And, but it's, it's shifting years and years of just the way things have been done and within business.

Um, so I think leaders, leaders need to signal that and be more vulnerable and open and that can allow a space, a deeper space for people underneath to, to open up a bit more.

And we need systems where failure is not seen as failure.

It's seen as feedback.

It's a shift in mindset.

Have you read the book Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed?

He is super interesting book.

One of my favorite books actually, and it talks about how in the aviation, aviation industry, they are so good at reporting.

So obviously aeroplanes have the black box, but also any incident is reported and there's a, something like a two week period where you have to report any incident.

So everything that happens in the aviation industry is reported and there is a feedback loop on it.

And so it's very transparent.

It's shared across everybody who's in that industry.

And so we learn and that's why actually it's super safe to fly because we are learning all the time.

And he compares it to the case in the NHS where people are too scared to say, Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

Because they're gonna get sued by whoever's been whoever wants to sue, something's happened with medical negligence claims and all those kind of things.

And so within the nhs, so much is covered and it actually leads to thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths because no one feels safe enough to report it.

So creating the spaces where people feel safe to talk, which in turn create the conditions for love and for belonging and connection and all of those sort of positive attributes, could infuse any kind of organization really.

So how much of your work now is about trying to get, let's call them old style companies, to think and act in this way?

Or is your work more about just creating new things which embody these ideas more fully?

So I run these workshops that they run at Google called obstacle breakthrough sessions.

So in an obstacle breakthrough session, the analogy of it is if you go out drinking and you drink too much and then you're sick, and then after you're sick, you feel a bit better afterwards and you're like, Okay, I'm good now.

These are what these sessions are.

So they, they bring up an obstacle within your, within your organization.

That all within your team that's going on and you get everyone to splurge out all the things that aren't working with it.

So everyone is able to communicate and share what's really bothering them.

And before all of this happens, when I facilitate a session like this, I get the leader to say and demonstrate this is a safe space for this conversation, and to share things, even the things that you think I don't want to hear as the leader, I want you to share it.

So it is kind of, the sessions opened up like that.

So what happens is people are able to get out everything that's not working and then when they've done that, that's like the being sick section for this analogy that I'm using, after that, I shift all the energy.

Uh, sometimes I do something fun, like put on a Taylor Swift song, Shake it Off.

We do it dancing.

We all get that high.

And uh, or sometimes do something else, but anyway.

And then we think, okay, so what do we want to replace this with?

Or what's better?

Or what can you bring in?

And then this is the time for the solutions driven approach and different ways to approach all these things we've got rid of.

And then we get people to take responsibility.

I, yes, I feel really inspired to do X or I want to take responsibility for that.

So by the time the session's finished, people have gone through this thing where they've actually all been heard, so they feel better.

Because the worst thing is in any situation, we've all got friends.

You go and see them and they spend the whole time talking about themselves.

And the last second they say, Oh, how are you?

You're like, Yeah, I'm fine.

Thanks.

You know, and that's.

You don't feel fulfilled in that conversation.

And just like this situation in a team environment, if you feel like someone's actually listened to you and you've been able to share and you feel safe that you shared because that was the, the space created, and then you said, Well, actually I think this would be good, and then you can take responsibility.

Because if I say, Ben, can you do this?

You know?

Hmm.

I dunno.

Like, but if you want to do it, you're like, Yeah, I'm really inspired to do this.

So My friend works, the nhs, she's a midwife, and she said they had a leadership training day, she said.

They all sat in lines.

Her colleague behind us, she didn't see her face all day.

They wrote on the board, these are the five types of leadership and da da da da.

And she, at the end of it, she came out and she sat in her car and she just cried.

Cuz she said she hadn't felt anything.

She didn't feel heard.

She didn't feel, she didn't feel like any shift.

She said, I could have read five leadership sales in a book.

Shifting a culture in a business is not something you can do overnight.

It's all those tiny things.

Every bits got a culture before you even go in there and shift something.

I does someone steal your sandwiches if you leave them in the fridge or your chocolate biscuits?

If they do, that's the type of culture that's already going on in the business.

Or if everyone's late for meetings and then everybody else's meeting overruns and all those kind of things.

It's like make those small changes.

And I think this is the same really for any anything.

It's not about trying to convince someone that you are for them, it's about them thinking, is there a better way?

And then them thinking, Yeah, I wanna be more connected to my team.

I want them to be more productive, I want to be engaged, engage them to be more engaged.

So you were saying also at the beginning, uh, when we were with sort of the starting question, you know, describing what you do, what, what's the struggle in describing what you do?

well, if I use the word community builder, Or IE.

Is on LinkedIn, Community Architect.

Now I'm an architect of community because there is no one size fits all if I'm gonna do this, because there's no relationship That's the same as another relationship.

There's no organizations that are exactly the same.

So that's why I say, but who knows what community architect means?

So that's what the struggle is about describing what I do.

And then when I was saying about the community that I created, Like-hearted Leaders, people within Like-hearted Leaders, once people join, hardly anyone ever leaves.

And people have left.

And this has happened more than once.

And then they come back and they want to come back and they're desperate to come back to something.

Now that hardly ever happens either.

Cause once she leaves something, you're like gone.

But they haven't been able to the timings or something.

And then they're like, We wanna come back.

And then they come back.

And so people within LHL say, I love it here.

I didn't even know I needed it.

And that's the almost the, the difficulty with things.

Because until you feel like you belong somewhere and you experience it, how do you know you needed it?

Like, that phrase isn't like, there's things, you know, there's things that you know you don't know, and the things you don't know, you don't know.

Is that the right way?

You're like, there's lots of things you don't even know, you don't know about them.

So for all of those reasons, it's kind of hard to describe what I do and, and what.

like-hearted leaders.

So Like-hearted Leaders, again, I, I describe it as a community, but then I started thinking about it in a different way.

So it's like networking, but it's better than networking.

Because networking is awkward conversations, people holding up a business card saying, Buy my stuff.

And Like-hearted Leaders is like going into a space of your trusted friends and contacts and they all want you to succeed.

And so Like-hearted Leaders didn't start off as Like-hearted Leaders.

It started off by accident because a few of the founding members were on an online course during lockdown, um, put on by the Do Lectures and David Hyatt.

And it was called the Keyboard CEO course.

And it was fundamentally for people who worked on their own and they were the CEO of their keyboard and did all the things.

And when that course ended, I said to the Do Lectures, Is it okay if I reach out to the people who were on this course and ask them if they want to carry on having conversations around the topic areas we discussed?

And they said, Yeah, that's absolutely fine.

So the following week I set up two meetings on Zoom contacted lots of people and said, Who wants to carry on having these conversations?

So that was all it was.

And I did it not as a business idea, but as a something.

I just wanted people to be able to have connection and have a conversation around the topics we'd been learning.

Cause it, it was, the course was, I think two weeks and then everyone would've just scattered everywhere.

And so I, I had this idea, I wake up in the night thought, right, I'm gonna do this.

I did it.

And then for the first six months, we were called the Unofficial Keyboard CEO Community, which is a bit of a mouthful.

And we met every week, and I wish I remembered what happened in those early weeks, but it turns out that I liked getting people to have conversations.

And I started applying, probably unconsciously, but applying my skills of how to bring people together.

So we always have one-to-one conversations, so you get your voice heard within the community.

And I always set a question.

So in the early days, I used to always set this question, If you really knew me, you'd know this about me.

And so you'd meet someone one to one, and then what happens is you start to share things that you wouldn't normally share.

So it moves from that deeper.

connection as opposed to a surface level.

Like what do you do?

Wow, I do this or I used to do that.

And, and people quite often don't understand what the hell you do anyway.

And they just nod cause they don't wanna look stupid.

You know, you do it all the time.

You go to networking roads and it's like, I'm this.

And you're like, Oh right, okay, I've over that now.

I'm like, what does that mean?

Cause I have no idea.

I don't care anymore.

I just ask them.

So those kind of conversations, got people to really connect and know each other.

And then in six months in on a Zoom call, which I found very uncomfortable, the community said, Claire, we need to start paying you for this because you are facilitating it.

You're paying for the software, you're doing all the things.

And at that point, I realized, and if you're gonna build a community yourself, you need to have a shared identity and know what your values are.

So, and the values are kind of like the loose guidelines that say what is and what isn't acceptable, whether you're in a business or whether you're in a community.

And so at that point, I came up with this name Like Hearted Leaders, and we took on this whole new identity and then people started paying me a membership fee.

So it turned a business model, which was kind of a different way of doing things when the community insists they pay you as opposed to you after the community, which is pretty cool when you think about it.

And that was two and a half years ago.

So it's just built and built since then.

And we meet every Friday at Harper State in the morning.

Sometimes we have master classes, sometimes we have outside speakers.

Sometimes we have, well, mainly we have people in the community sharing what's important to them.

We've had calls on product innovation, color psychology, intuitive eating.

We've had meditation classes, we had your pricing course.

One thing we have pricing.

So all of those things.

So it's a really amazing community where people really help each other out.

Um, loads of people have got loads of new business in the community.

Thousands of pounds worth of businesses save businesses because people will be out on the brink of finishing their business because they didn't have any, any leads or any new, um, new business.

And through that community and through people investing over a long period of time, it's really created something quite magical.

So that's lighthearted leaders.

So light networking, but without the awkwardness,

Right.

Lovely.

Cause yeah, that, that question then what do you do question.

I hate that question.

know.

I can never tell them.

I wanna say I'm a solicitor.

Cause it's easy.

Yeah, exactly.

I think that's the thing, isn't it?

We kind of default to those labels because it's easy and it.

It doesn't require explaining someone's understood.

We can all just get back to our sort of shit, just feeling awkward on our own.

Leave me alone.

I'm a solicitor.

I know.

I do hate that question.

It's the worst and always change every time.

And then they say, Did you have a business card?

I'm like, Nah, I've been through quite a few.

I don't have a business card.

Find me on LinkedIn.

You still won't know what I do on there.

And, uh, but before we, we started, we were talking around kind of what's important to talk about or what is important about this and how, how would you, uh, and if I sort of ask you now, you know, kind of what, what feels important to talk about today or what feels important to talk about at the moment?

Um, I think one of the most important things for me, and really one of the missions of LHL is around having more authentic business conversations.

Because in LHL we have people in that community who have done phenomenal things in the world and have worked with some of the biggest clients that you wouldn't even imagine.

And at the same time, I witnessed them feeling an imposter or not feeling completely worthy of something.

Hesitating over whether to do X or Y or Z or whatever it might be.

And I think especially in entrepreneurship, but really for many leaders, and when I say leaders and I say like-hearted leaders, my whole thing with Like-hearted Leaders is that if you have a heart, you can be a leader.

So it doesn't mean you have to be running a team because we are all leaders in some capacity.

We're all leading our own life.

And it doesn't necessarily mean you've gotta run a business to be in there.

And so I've worked with, um, very successful entrepreneurs and business leaders.

and behind the scenes, they are still struggling as much as anybody else.

And from the outside I could never compete with them.

I'm never gonna be as good as them.

I'm not worthy enough to do X, Y, and Z.

But I'm saying that once you get those insights, which I've been fortunate to see, you then might, Oh actually, okay, well we're all just trying our best.

We, none of us really know the answers.

We are just putting stuff out there and seeing if it lands and if it doesn't and we're having failures.

But I feel, especially with social media, it's the highlight reel of everybody's life.

And you see the business coaches on social media.

, uh, putting out this or saying they're running their six K businesses or six figure businesses or launching this program.

You don't see, They say they launched a program, but only one person signed up and said they scrapped it.

They don't share that post, do they?

They share the other post.

And so it feels important to me that we are able to have a deeper conversation with those people around.

Again, there's somebody else in the community, she's completely at an early age, got herself financially free.

And you look at her and you think, Wow, she's sorted.

She's, But then I write these emails, like I said to you, this newsletter I do for LHL every Wednesday, and she replies to me and I've written something and she like, Oh, I just wanna thank you so much because I didn't think, I think it thought it was just me feeling like that, or I had this great conversation within the community.

I didn't think I'd ever be able to be in a space where I could have that conversation.

Um, and it feels really important to me because like I said, with my background and being a solicitor and not being able to speak, especially I just think it's tiring to be really false all the time and inauthentic.

And so if we can create spaces where we can be more honest about what we're going through.

And actually it's quite interesting.

Last week in the community, one of the members brought up an idea and the idea was that we had a session where we were all radically honest about our financial situation, what income we had coming in.

Because people shut down around that, around money.

And in my head when he said it, I thought, Okay, if you can have that conversation anywhere, you can have it in LHL.

However, there's still that, hmm, can we even open it that far?

And I'm curious, and I dunno if it's gonna happen, but it's about breaking down barriers.

It's about having empathy for each other.

And then with ourselves, cuz that's really kind of feeling like kind of care for yourself, isn't it?

Definitely.

And I think we can be too hard on ourselves and I think we can think that everybody else knows what they're doing and it's just us.

And if you have a conversation with somebody and you open up a little bit more and you signal a little bit of, if you show a bit more vulnerability, it creates that opportunity for that other person to open up a little bit deeper too.

And this is the thing about networking.

So yes, I run, I'm CEO of this and I do this, and I've got 5,000 people under me, da da da.

How do you connect with that person where you're on some other space?

And just because I don't have a team of 50 underneath me, does that make me any less worthy to have a conversation with you wherever you are in your journey?

And I worked with a CEO once of a multimillion pound business, and he had coaching from me.

And I got to know him well.

And I said to him, I don't understand.

Why did you choose to have coaching from me?

Because I said, You could choose anybody to have coaching with.

Why did you coach with me?

And he said, You know what Claire?

He said, I run this business.

And he said, Everybody wants a piece of me.

And he said, And at the same time, I've got questions and I've got things I want to know the answers to.

And that might be had I update my profile on, on Twitter, or it might be some other thing.

He says, I can't ask anybody else.

He says, but you, to me, I feel safe enough to have that conversation with you and get the answers to the things I really want the answer to.

And, and I feel stupid for not knowing, but I can have that conversation with you.

And I, And it kind of stuck with me what he said about that.

And I thought, that is super interesting.

And I, I feel there's a lot of lost leaders out there who feel, because they're leading it, they should know the answers.

And what, why should they know the answers?

Why should anybody?

I mean, we all have our own experiences and it, and we just get stuck in this ego of needing to know, thinking we should know everything.

Or looking like we know everything.

Yeah, looking, Yeah, looking like

Is that, That phrase is a beautiful phrase.

Do you use that phrase of lost leaders much?

I don't know if I've used it out loud before.

Maybe I need to trademark it.

I just think there are lost leaders, and it's quite a good phrase as well, isn't It?

Maybe we should start a business on it, Ben.

Mm.

I mean, as, as you're sort of talking about all of those things that kind of reflect on my sort of own experience and I guess the, this thing around kind of vulnerability, even though that is also been a sort of misappropriated little, hasn't it?

Like, you know, you need to kind of show vulnerability on sort of social media or kind of whatever it might be, that, you know, this.

Even that these ideas which talk to our kind of, you know, most kind of rawest, truest parts of ourselves, even those things in a way.

And of course when people are misappropriate, you need to be vulnerable, they're not really talking about those things.

But the need to do that is also like a whole sort of stream of sort of rubbish talk, isn't it?

You need to be vulnerable, blah, blah, blah.

Well, this is the thing.

There's this whole thing around lots of coaches were saying, You need to be authentic on social media.

And I remember writing, it's probably on my social media somewhere like, Authenticity is a way of being.

You can't show up and say, Right, today I'm going to be authentic.

And it's like this vulnerability aspect as well.

I see people saying they're being vulnerable, so go on social media and just be crying to the camera.

And, it's funny, it's like, where's that, where's that line?

Because do we really want to be seeing you crying to camera?

I don't know if we do.

Like, is that connecting with me?

It's like what?

I just remember seeing someone, you know, they'd had some loss in their family and they'd taken a selfie of them and their family all going crying faces and it was like a big loss in their family.

And it really jarred with me.

Because I live a very interesting life.

I have lots of different conversations with really interesting people.

You cannot see any of this.

I go on trips, I do things.

None of that is on my social media.

So if you look at my social media, it looks like I've done nothing for about two months.

That's not the Claire.

Have I cried a million times in the last few months?

A million.

But you know, like I cry a lot, you know, I get happy, I have fun, I do all these things.

I hang out with cool people.

Sometimes I hang out with my children who are really annoying.

Well, sometimes every day I hang out with them.

But you know, like there's all this stuff going on and you can't see it on my social media.

And to say, you gotta go on there and like you never wants to see me crying on there.

Really?

Do you?

I mean, however, if I'm sharing something on social media and there is stuff on my Instagram, I think from a long time ago, and I think I was sharing something and as I said it, it triggered me.

And I just remember my eyes feeling with tears.

That's a different level, I think, where you're actually deeply in it, as opposed to I'm crying and it's so, I think you're so right about that.

And I think we've gotta be careful.

How much do we need to share?

and social media, it's a blessing and a curse at the same time.

I mean, I built my home whole business through Facebook.

I mean, I haven't shared on Facebook now for, for a year or something.

I've gone off Facebook, but my whole network and everything was built through Facebook.

And we feel so much more socially connected because of social media.

And arguably, you know, you and I chatting because we had a conversation through LinkedIn cause you found me, we did meet in real life, which is unusual, but it has been through social media and those kind of avenues.

But at the same time, loneliness and isolation is at insurmountable levels.

And I'm a community builder.

I bring people together.

That's my whole thing.

And last year or so, I have such massive moments of complete feelings of isolation and loneliness.

And you would never think that of me.

You'd think I'm X, Y, and Z, and I'm this and that.

And when we were at that event a few weeks ago, I was speaking and I'm on stage and it looks X, Y, and Z.

But at the same time, I went and hid in my car for an hour and a half.

Cause I was like, I just wanna be on my own for a bit, you know?

So who's having that conversation?

People just making assumptions all the time.

So, um, so love social media, but hate it as well,

Well, you know, I really appreciate the work that you are doing.

You know, that the, that lost news phrase really kind of resonant for me, for me, kind of personally, but I guess also kind of see it in, in you in many ways.

The kind of, in some ways the work that you're doing is about taking that younger Claire, the solicitor, a kind of lost leader in that environment and kind of sort of breathing life into that person, kind of breathing a, a sort of safety and contentment and sort of belief into that person.

It kind of feels a little bit like that's the, the kind of conditions, that's the work that you are doing a little.

Yeah.

And that's what I want to do, I feel.

I think we all have a gift to share.

I think we are all worthy and we all have different experiences to bring to the table.

And I think the more opportunities we can create for people to feel safe enough to share.

Well, I'm interested in this and.

Well, I run something called Creative Breakfast, which came from David Hyatt and the Do Lectures.

And he runs this thing for his team every week, 20 minutes on a Wednesday at 10:00 AM and you come along and you share one thing that has peak interest in the last week.

So it could be a podcast or it could be you want to start running and you've been looking at running shoes or whatever.

And it's interesting because I run it every Wednesday at 10, and the conversations are super rich and you, you learn something you'd never have that would never have come into your world because somebody else happened to be looking at it and they say, Oh, I was looking at this about cryptocurrency or something that I would not have looked at.

And then you're, Oh, that's interesting.

And then it just takes you in a different way and it helps you stay curious and it opens up your world.

Because otherwise we are buying the same books.

Consuming the same podcasts, uh, having the same conversations with our network.

And then how does that allow an opportunity for growth where if someone comes along and says, Oh, I was looking at this today.

Oh, that's interesting, and it takes you down the new rabbit warren.

So it, again, it's just about holding that space and setting that intention.

Okay, we're gonna have 20 minutes.

I keep it always 20 minutes, so it's not anything else.

Okay.

What we're gonna talk about today?

Yeah.

I, If there was a, a, a kind of parting wish gift sort of invitation to, uh, anyone listening, what would, what would it be?

Every time I finish, Like-hearted Leaders, I always say take something for yourself from today's session, but also see what you can do for another member of LHL.

And if you've listened to this today, what could you do right now for someone, not because you want something back from them, but because it might help them.

For example, this is easy, so if you use LinkedIn or you've got a connection on LinkedIn, go to the LinkedIn and give them a recommendation, not because you want them to give you a recommendation, but because you genuinely want to say, I'm so appreciative to so and so.

They did this, it stood out, or, I love this.

And one, I personally find it super fun to do it absolutely throws people off course.

They're like, What?

I've got new business out of doing that.

Not because I was trying to look the new business, but because people are just shocked that someone actually has bothered to go and do it.

And that in a way shocking the fact that people are shocked by the fact that people are sort of giving.

And there's, I can't remember what the example was.

I think I read it actually, how someone had gone and paid somebody else's.

And, uh, they didn't know about it.

And, and it's just a tiny little thing like that that just passes on.

Or leaving a Starbucks gift card and paying for people's coffees.

There's such a massive ripple effect with that.

Like, what could you do today that would, Why don't next time you, if you go to Starbucks later say, I'll pay for the next person's coffee or, or you know, whatever.

It's like, I love stuff like that.

It's like, that's what makes life exciting.

All those things.

It's gonna cost you an extra three pounds to do that.

The recommendation's gonna cost you nothing.

But if you did it for somebody, you might not get back to something from them, but you will get something back from somewhere else.

Something else will happen.

Ripples of gift, gift, gift.

Ripples.

Ripples of

Gift ripples.

I know sometimes I surprise myself, and this is the funny thing, it's like being a solicitor, I would just been so, I talk to you and I'm not being assessed on this at all.

I mean, you might be assessing me thinking I'm never inviting her back, but like I just feel this stuff.

I get so excited, naturally get excited and I have to shut myself up.

And that's a gift in itself.

And I think, yeah, if you, if you listen to this and you hate what you do, how can you change that?

That's whatever thing I'd say.

How can you change it?

Cause I could still be in that solicitor's office and I'd be on tons more money by now.

Cause I'd probably be a partner.

I'd be a misery gut, so I would so yeah, don't be misery.

Yeah.

How can you change it?

That is a really powerful place to end.

Thanks Kate.

So where, where can, where be the, that person who just listened and they know they want to change something, uh, they've kind of feel that inner lost leader, where can they find you?

Well, I'm everywhere.

My, my children said they went, Mummy, are you famous?

Cause we Googled you at school.

I was like, No, I'm not famous.

So Claire Perry dash Louise will find me on LinkedIn.

it'll find me in Google to be honest.

Like-hearted Leaders if that resonates.

Um, it's works as a referraled community actually.

But if you have listened and you resonate with anything I say and you fancy coming along to that, you can book a call on there and we can have a chat, see if you're a right fit for it.

So yeah, just Claire Perry-Louise.

Google it, I'm famous, my children say, so

We'll take your children's word.

And we'll include all, we'll include all the links anyway to all of those things.

But, um, yeah, no, I thank you.

I really appreciate you sharing and I appreciate the way to do like, you know, we've spoken about it before.

It's really resonant for me as part of my kind of own journey to get better at and be more practic and be more comfortable sharing what's kind of important to me.

So I think all of the work that you do feels really, really important.

And so kind of really appreciative of that.

Thank you, Ben.

Take care.

Thank you for listening.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Claire.

Lots of beautiful insight in there.

If you think anybody else you know, would benefit from hearing that, if that would help anyone you know think about the world in a slightly different way, please feel free to share.

And if you're interested generally in what we're doing with the podcast, search up buddhaontheboard.com.

You'll find the link to Peripheral Thinking there.

That is the home of everything podcast related.

We hope you enjoyed it, and look forward to you joining us next time.

Thank you.