What happens when life-changing events force you to re-evaluate everything?

In this episode, I sit down with John Merriman, founder of Crown Lane Studio in South London. We talk about the river accident that changed the course of his life, the values behind Crown Lane, and how life-changing events can reshape what matters most.

John also speaks very openly about losing his wife Ruth, what grief changed in him, and how his Christian faith has been tested and sustained through difficult chapters. We explore what people often misunderstand about grief, how suffering can alter the way you see life, and what it means to keep building something rooted in community, care and purpose.

We also talk about suicide, recognising when someone is struggling, and what fostering has taught John about love, responsibility and hope.

Links

Crown Lane Studio: https://crownlanestudio.co.uk

Metronome: https://metronome.life

Hello and welcome to the Lonely Captor, a podcast for people who are doing okay on the surface, but quietly unsure how to live well.

Today's episode is with John Merriman, founder of Crown Lane Studio in South London.

But this conversation goes far beyond music or business.

We talk about the river accident that changed the course of his life, what losing his wife Ruth changed in him, how grief, faith can sit alongside each other and, and what building a life of community, care and purpose can look like after deep loss.

This is a conversation about grief, faith, resilience, and choosing to keep your heart open.

If you're new here, please do follow or subscribe wherever you're listening.

It really helps the show reach more people who might need these discussions.

Let's get into the conversation.

John I want to start off today talking about Crowning Studio.

It's.

It's where we are today.

It's where I've hosted this podcast since it started.

So it feels like the home of this podcast, really.

Can you begin by telling me the story of the river accident that led to this becoming a thing?

The river accident is a story I don't tell very often and most of the team who work here won't know it.

And it's very much a, a trigger of a lot of change in my life that all happened around the same time.

And those changes would definitely not have happened had it not been for the river accident.

And that included the birth of my first child and the birth of this business as well, which happened around a few months of each other.

And the, the river accident was, was so significant in that it was such a near death occurrence that I didn't think I'd survive.

And it made me review every part of my life.

And so that's kind of where my journey begins on this.

It was a horrible, horrible, stormy night in Reading.

I've been visiting my cousin and we were driving back and we were crossing the Hampshire Berkshire border and the road had been solid, not moving because a full size electrical pylon thing had fallen across a major road and so we couldn't get past it.

We had to find a different route and traffic, one by one was sitting in traffic and then eventually doing a U turn and going back the other way.

We got relatively near the front and we saw a policewoman who said there is a shortcut to where you're going, which is down through a valley and up the other side.

It's just a little country lane.

We took this road and what we were unaware of was that a river had burst Its banks so spectacularly that the sign that said forward in, let's say, 100 yards, it was actually already submerged in water.

Water.

And our car just plunged straight in.

And I was with my wife, we had no children.

And we slowly started to rotate and realized we were floating.

We had no control anymore whatsoever.

And Lily Allen was still playing on the radio.

The heaters were still sort of whooshing out air.

And everything was half very normal and everything else was very not normal.

And it was.

It was a freezing cold night.

It was New Year's Eve eve.

So right in the middle of winter.

Yeah, this is now 19, 20 years ago.

And it was that survival instinct that meant that I got out, my wife got out, I dived into the water to swim because it was just so broad on both sides.

There was.

There was no way to land both sides because the river burst its banks so, so wide across fields.

In fact, if you Google Headley Ford and it will come up as the picture of that.

That era, of how big it is, just across fields.

So I eventually managed to climb up some kind of grassy bank that would have been a field.

And Ruth was on the roof of the car and she threw the phone to me on the land.

And I caught it.

My phone was drenched.

Cause I'd been in the river swimming.

And from the roof of the car to me, we had a brief conversation which was a lot of desperation about calling emergency services, which we did understand.

The car was going down and down and down.

And had it not been for a tree that had fallen into the river, which stopped the progress of the car, meaning I could climb along the tree and pull my wife off onto dry land.

I don't know what would have happened next because very soon afterwards the car was gone.

And that was one of those moments where we just both thought, life is very short, very precious.

And like a lot of other guests that you've had on, it's those moments that sort of change everything where you go.

I'm not sure that what I am doing right now is the thing that I am here on this planet to do for the rest of my life.

And I, very soon after that, as a Christian, I pray quite a lot.

And I was praying and had a number of people say the same thing to me in different contexts.

So there's a kid who was nine at the time in Zimbabwe who just said, I think it's time to open a new door in your life, just randomly.

And one of my colleagues at the school I was teaching at said, you're Made for more than teaching, I think, John, not more as in that teaching is less good than doing this, I can tell you.

It certainly pays more, but it was definitely a new fresh calling.

One of the kids that I was teaching says, so you don't love us anymore?

What's going on?

And there were lots of other little signs that were like, I think maybe something needs to change.

Yeah.

So I handed him my notice and I thought, I'm such a good teacher, I'm going to be.

They're going to be like, no, don't leave.

The head just said, you've got a student teacher with you, haven't you?

And I said, yeah, yeah.

And she said, is she any good?

I said, stella's brilliant, she's really good.

And she said, can you send her in, please?

And Stella got my job within five minutes of me handing my notice in.

And she worked there for many years afterwards.

And the department just got better and better.

And sometimes I think we think we are irreplaceable where we are.

We cannot possibly move on and we have this inflated ego and this sort of pride in, look at all I've achieved.

And I was part of the school going from being a school where no boys sang at all to being a singing the Year Sevens coming in.

Just thought it was totally normal that you all sing every lesson.

And then gradually that went through the whole school over a series of years and things like that.

And we had a drumming group that got to play at the Albert hall and we built this music department up, started new courses, ran a level music, music tech.

And I just thought this is, you know, they'll say don't go.

But no, it was actually a better decision for the school to let me go and begin my next chapter and for them to begin theirs and to a new opportunity for Stella when she took on doing all the things I was doing and far more.

Yeah, it's funny how that talking about feeling like we're irreplaceable.

I always think that when I look at people who overwork themselves and like work on weekends and work on lates and nights for a company that at the end of the day, if they left would just replace them just like that, within five minutes.

Did you know you were going to come and start something like this at that point when you were leaving?

Was that already in your mind?

So this was.

My father, who is someone who comes up a lot when I'm doing presentations at universities, my father had taken a Huge risk.

He retired early and he put his money into property, and he'd always worked in property.

And he invested in this unit that we're in now, which at the time was a car rental business that had just gone bust.

So it had a garage at the back that held about 10 cars, which we now converted a flat above, which then was their sort of waiting room and office.

And then downstairs was the lobby where you came and got the keys for your car that you were renting.

And that had come up at auction.

Yeah.

And I didn't open a studio, but had the space and concepts for it.

But it was way before then.

It was in an art class when I was at school and I was drawing.

We had this amazing art teacher who just used to smoke in the corner of the room.

And he was so inspiring because we would ask whatever idea we had.

So I want to be able to paint this or I want to draw this.

And he had little scraps of gorgeous light parchment.

And he would just get his brush out and he'd go, right, what you need to do is this.

And so he'd draw us or paint us a stimulus to get us going.

And that model of sort of saying this is how it could look was then what took me to go, okay, so this is what my studio, bearing in mind.

I was 14, 15.

This is what my studio one day could look like.

And I painted in that.

I drew in that art class.

It's a pencil drawing, a studio which.

Other than it having a reception desk, which we don't have, and a.

It had, like, a spider plant in the corner that I'd drawn.

Other than those things, it is incredibly similar to what we now have.

It was slightly wider.

This is quite a long, thin building where all the rooms are one after the other.

My perception when I was 14 was of this big, wide unit.

But I think that river accident was the thing that took that dream I'd had as a child and made me go, no, I want to see that come to fruition.

That grew and grew and grew.

And I. I didn't know what I was doing.

And customer number one.

Invoice 000.

I was very ambitious.

I had five zeros and then a one.

He is someone I still know.

He was someone I put down as being incredibly brave.

He stepped foot into a business that had never had a customer and he risked everything.

But little did I know as I opened one of the doors of the studio and I said, do you want to come in here?

He said, do you mind if I open that door?

And I was like, yeah, of course.

And he said, this is the first door in a public building I've opened because I've just come out of prison and every door in prison is open for me.

And I thought, I think this business is going to be something far greater than what I thought it would be.

Right from customer number one.

Yeah.

That's such a. Yeah.

Beautiful story.

And you could still get a spider plant as well.

Maybe that's tomorrow.

Yeah, we've got here.

Yeah.

I'll see if I can pop out and get one later.

The.

The story of the incident you went through and how it then reshapes your view of the world is something that, like I've seen across a lot of the conversations that I've had.

And it almost seems like you have to go through something major in life to see that, to see beyond it and to change your perspective.

Do you think that is the case or do you think that just through hearing stories people can change their perspective?

I've noticed that in a lot of your episodes and particularly you did a summary one which was like five things that have come up a lot.

And one of them is that people have all had this thing.

I think so.

I mean I read the Bible a lot and all through the Old Testament you think, why have these people not learned that when they all died back then or they were all hungry back then or they all had these plagues come back then or these things happen.

Why didn't they learn them from the past?

But we just don't.

As much as I want my sons not to make the same mistakes I made, I sat there Yesterday with my 18 year old and was going through some things that I just thought, oh man, I just wish he could take what I learned.

And my now fiance is going through a similar thing with her kids.

She's like, I don't know why they didn't learn from my mistakes.

And I've told them all through their childhood.

But I think there's something in human nature that we are all deeply flawed and we all naturally veer towards the things that aren't always that helpful to us.

And safety is one of those things that we think is the most important thing.

And in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it is like number one.

But sometimes we rest in that place for too long.

And being safe is a good thing.

There are people who are in vulnerable or abusive situations, which means that they can't do anything else because that safety isn't there.

However, if safety becomes our goal and that's the only thing rather than the foundation for doing things, I think we will always make that mistake.

And it does take that trigger to wake us up and go, oh, my word, why have I not done this thing yet?

And it's so easy to look retrospectively.

You know, I look now and we've got 15 on the team here and an intern who's just one of the best things that's ever happened here.

And I think I could never have imagined that.

Yet for somebody walking in, they'll just go, oh, yeah, that's a business that exists.

Yeah, but before it did.

It's very hard to.

To see those things happen.

And it does take something quite big to.

To wake us up, I think, and make those bold decisions.

Chris Williamson, the host of Modern Wisdom Podcast, has this idea about unteachable lessons.

And it's exactly this sort of thing.

It's like there are certain things that you get told again and again and again as a kid, as an adult, and you only learn them when you get them.

Stuff like, money can't buy you happiness, fame won't make you happy.

It's only once you get there, you go, well, that that person's famous.

But they're saying they're not happy.

But there must be something else.

Once I'm there, it'll be different.

But then if you get there, it's like you realize, and it's that.

That idea that you just.

You almost have to go through certain things to get there.

Yeah, My.

My first wife, Ruth, had this brilliant saying.

She said, be content in your tent.

And her little phrase, that didn't really make much sense, but it was, you'll be the same happy in inverted commas, whether we live in a castle or whether we live in a tent.

And until we're content in a tent, we're not going to be content anywhere.

And that relationship with money has stayed with me my whole life, that it doesn't matter how much I get Whether.

And I would want to think that I'm a good steward of having a lot of money, and therefore, if I did have a lot, I would do good stuff with it, or if I had little, then I would still be the same level of joy that I am today.

Yeah, yeah.

But, yeah, that's a hard lesson to learn.

It is, absolutely.

And it's the comparison that we've got, especially nowadays, it's everywhere is people are showing you their highlights of their life, that maybe they've just leased something out for the day and you think, oh, they own all this stuff.

And it's like, it's amazing.

But yeah, it's totally true.

You need to be content in where you are and then look forward if you want to get something else for the right reasons.

But tell me a little bit about what you had envisioned at the start, you said, what it's become now and the things that have happened.

It's interesting to see because maybe you didn't know where it was going to end up, but the studio has obviously a lot of values in sustainability, community, accessibility, being the three that when I spoke to Lawrence before on the podcast, he spoke about a bit.

But.

Oh, I'm glad.

So that Lawrence is a member of my team that haven't listened to that episode.

And I'm glad that one of my team would know the values.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you haven't listened to it, go and listen to it.

Lawrence Bradshaw.

But when did those enter?

Was that always something that you wanted to instill from the very start?

Was that something that maybe after that first occurrence with the guys just come out of prison, that was something you.

Wanted to bring in that I know that they all grew instinctively and organically.

And this is something that I've seen with businesses that grow too fast is that they try and like going to a library, pick some values off a shelf and go, right, these are our values.

They seem good.

Or I've seen another company that I aspire to be, and therefore they are going to be my values, and maybe I'll become that one day.

I know that organic growth is the best way a business or a relationship can grow.

Organic growth here meant not coming in with values that I'm going to try and shoehorn everything into.

It meant, who am I?

Who am I truly?

What can I bring to the world that nobody else can?

And as I do that, let's work out what values they are.

And so over the 19 years of running this studio, at the beginning, I don't think I had any Values that were other than as a Christian, as a human, as someone who has been a teacher, who cares deeply for people.

I've got the value of being kind, I guess, but that's not what you can run a business off particularly.

But being true to myself meant that these values were able to come to the surface.

And looking out for glimmers in the right people that I've hired over the years has brought about what those values are.

I'd know when I didn't have those values.

I know that with accessibility, I know that the building costs to put an accessible toilet in here were ludicrous.

So I put a small.

Initially I put a small toilet in because there was no government legislation at that time that said I had to.

And so I decided I'm not in a wheelchair, I don't need to put an accessible toilet in.

Who needs one of those anyway?

I'll save.

It was probably about five or six thousand pounds, which at the time was a lot of money and so still is.

And I didn't want to pay it, so I didn't.

It took a year after that for someone to come in a wheelchair who then became a very close friend.

It was his birthday at the weekend and I absolutely love him to pieces.

He had to have a guitar developed for him, which means that he can use his arms, which don't operate in the same way that mine do, and he can't walk, so he's in a wheelchair.

And as we became friends, I realized that this idea of removing barriers was something that I'd ignored in my own business.

And so it was him and his influence on me that made me realize and see the world through completely different eyes.

That I had shut the doors to an entire demographic, let alone one individual who I cared a lot for, that could not access my building.

So we knocked out that toilet after only a year and then rebuilt the above spec bathroom that we now have, where we then crowdfunded to get a ceiling hoist because we again, they're another 7 or 8,000 and then thousands every year in servicing and all the licensing you have to have to have an accessible toilet with a track ceiling hoist.

I am now willing to pay that because of that becoming the value due to the people that have influenced it and then sustainability again.

That was a local councillor who introduced to me probably 15 years ago.

He said, as a business, there are these grants available to you if you were to consider some of these things.

And I'd always cared about the planet.

I'd done like make poverty History marches in Scotland and campaign for things.

Always bought fair trade, always cared about those things.

But as a business, I just kind of had a different hat.

I'm at work.

Right, let's, let's record.

And I never really considered that work, and this is 20 years ago work could be a place that is also sustainable.

And I brought, brought in things that then meant that as a business, we won an award, we won best.

We're in the top 100 small businesses in the UK for our sustainability.

That was the thing that got us there.

We end up at Downing street and had this huge celebration with all these other like minded businesses that now we look back and think the things that got me there were things like having LED lights.

We were just ahead of the curve, or we had, we did all the insulation or we bought meters to, to measure the electricity usage before.

Meters then became something that was an actual thing in every house and business.

A lot of the decisions we made and our procurement processes were all sustainable.

Now they've become part of most businesses.

But at the time there was a lot of greenwashing where people were pretending their businesses were or they were saying things like our product is 100% recyclable.

Well, I mean most things should be because most things have come from the earth and unless you've really mashed things together, you could put that label on an awful lot of things that aren't actually particularly great for the planet or have come from great sources.

So the, the greenwashing at the time and now is really tough.

But the differences that we made in sustainability at the beginning were huge.

So going from incandescent lights to LED lights, we saw like 90% saving in da da da da da da da.

And then we saw in this, by doing this and this and changing energy providers, we had a hundred percent.

All our stats were incredible.

So everything looked great.

We won all the awards, we won all the local awards, we won national awards.

We were up against Legoland for one particular award.

It was just, this is brilliant.

But things move forward and when you've done those major changes, the next change is really difficult and you end up in the marginal gains territory.

So in the room we're in now, all our lights are led, all our walls are insulated.

We've checked the procurement process for every single thing that we've bought and we've made sure everything is as ethical and sustainable as possible.

It's no longer award winning yet we are making more sacrifices and financially paying more for things to make a bigger difference.

But the World has moved.

So sustainability.

That's how that came in.

And community was the value that has kind of undergirded everything that I've ever done.

Yeah, people are way more important.

I. I started the coffee shop seven years ago, which is attached to the studio, and I've still to this day never made a coffee.

Coffee is not my thing.

Community is.

And hiring people who are passionate about coffee, the space and things, that is more important.

So the three values which run across both businesses that are adjacent to each other.

Sustainability, accessibility, and community, in any order.

They're up in different places in different orders because they're all equally important.

Yeah, I think it's really nice.

And like I said, I've been here since I recorded the first episode of this podcast, in this very room, in fact.

And since that day, I've noticed from the front door to the back door, community is a massive thing.

I've always felt at home.

And that's a testament to yourself and everyone that you've hired along the way to implement those.

You spoke about how certain companies sort of just pick values.

This one sounds good.

It sounds like the right thing to say.

What does it take to actually live the values that you've chosen?

Integrity is a personal value that is above everything else.

I have a rock in my garden with the word integrity carved into it.

And that sits in a well.

It sits now in a water feature that I dug in Covid when I had too many days of spare time.

And the boys and I dug this massive.

It's referred to as the moat because it's the whole width of the garden and the only way across is stepping stones.

But on the other side of that is a stone that says integrity.

And only I know where that stone is.

It's not massive, you can hold it in your hand, but that undergirds everything.

So I could not, could not let accessibility slip because for me, it's too important.

I wouldn't have it as a word or a value if it was something that I was just saying or if I got it off a library book.

I couldn't do it.

The same with all of the values Community.

I don't want to be a place that is half arsed with it.

I don't want to be a place that says with this and then doesn't review it.

We do a thing once a month called Future Friday, and that's just with the leadership.

And we go out and we have a sandwich, we'll go out and have a greasy breakfast, something.

And at that we take A different area of the business.

And we go, what if this disappeared?

Or what if this thing moved?

Or what if the world runs out of X?

Or what if people don't want to record podcasts anymore?

Or what if this.

And then we unpack the problem?

Hypothetically, this is what we do.

What if the cash machine, what if the Internet goes and we can't take any cash transactions?

And one of those things that I am going to be bringing up is go through the values.

What if this value didn't exist?

What if community didn't exist at a value?

What would happen?

And we've already started talking about it as leadership.

And Charlotte is very astute and she's the manager of the coffee side of things.

And she realized that there are, when we say community, individuals perceive that very differently.

So those that come to poetry night, which is a sold out monthly, we had to turn people away last month to come and do poetry, which is just amazing.

But those poets, they feel real at home here, but they don't know the community.

That is the.

We've partnered with CEX and we do a Mario Kart night once a month and they really own it as well.

And that space is very much theirs.

I think the community has come from having a blank canvas of a business that doesn't say this is John's place fit with it.

In fact, when I built the coffee shop and this room, I vowed I would never have pictures of famous people on the walls or other artists that have been in.

I won't even let bands put up posters for their, you know, we need a bass player or anything like that.

I want everybody who comes in here to know that this place is just theirs and they can do what they want with it.

So the coffee shop has no art in it.

The walls are completely blank canvases.

They've got picture hanging system that can take several hundred kilograms of art.

And ever since, well, for the last few years, we've got a huge waiting list of artists that want to bring their thing here.

And at the moment we've got quite dark art.

It's very black backgrounds with animals that are sort of roaring or in an intense game of chess and things like that.

Really nice.

It's beautiful.

Yeah.

But had I brought my this is what my community looks like and put that on the wall, that would have silenced the voice of other people.

And even one painting on the wall, in fact in a place, can then say, this is who we are.

And by removing that, communities have been able to form.

And I don't Think it's a singular community.

It's a place that allows and propagates community.

And I think that's what it.

What it means by community.

And that is where I think it would struggle to disappear now.

I think if I disappeared the ethos of the values.

And I'm so encouraged that Lawrence A.

Knew them.

I think there are a lot of people who work for companies that wouldn't know the values of the company, but someone who works here knows them.

But he, he more than lives them.

He.

He pulls me up and on stuff.

In fact, there was some cash that it was a small amount of money from work that I got in my pocket and he kept calling me the embezzler as a result of that.

The accountability that we all have for each other in holding these values really high.

Yeah, it's so interesting to think because I've never.

Maybe it's my own lack of perception, but like the photos and the wall, the posters and stuff like that.

And I've never really wondered why that is, but it totally makes sense.

Like if you start to put that stuff on around, it starts to say, this is who we are.

Absolutely.

So.

So you founded this is it 19 years now.

Yeah.

Coming up.

Yeah.

So 19 years ago.

And that was with your late wife?

Yeah, she passed away seven years ago.

What did that change for you in the running of this place and in yourself, in your general life?

Ruth Death changed everything.

It changed my ability to function.

It changed how the business ran, it changed how I parented, it changed how I was a foster dad.

It changed how I could be a friend that only ever wanted to give and turn into a friend that had to receive, turned into someone who liked to run something and everything.

And I, at the time I was volunteering, I was running Merton Borough of Culture.

I was chair of Merton Chamber of Commerce, heading up Merton Arts and Culture Group, cag I think it was called, Culture and Arts Group.

And I had to turn into somebody who had to be a full time carer and then bereaved.

And that changed everything.

This place, I relied heavily entirely on one of the team at the time, Bill.

And Bill Sherrington stepped up and kept the place going through all of those years.

He did things that he would never have accepted to do before and he made sure they happened.

He kept everything working and held the ship afloat during a horrendously difficult time while Ruth was having.

She had 65 nights in hospital with chemo for lymphoma.

And I was then trying to look after two young Boys, both at primary school at the time.

And it was all, it was all just too much.

But my character meant that I couldn't show it.

And so it was only the people that knew me the best that dived in and helped and really got there.

There are a lot of people on the edges who would say, let me know what I can do.

But for anyone who's around someone who's grieving or struggling, the phrase let me know what I can do adds another burden to the pile of things you're trying to deal with.

And I've heard a guest say that before on your show and that's something that I found one of the hardest things when people said that because it was like they were saying, I don't know how to help you.

And that just put more weight on me to say, you're really struggling, actually, rather than, oh great, I've got another lifeline.

So that period changed everything here.

The, the business went from being very busy and a family run business where it was just Ruth and me and Bill at the time, who was working very much part time as a freelancer.

He now spends more time here as he retired a couple of years ago.

But now he's just here he comes for coffee, does our mastering and just loves the studio environment and it's a very different, very sunny place now, but the different eras of it for him.

He's seen us through an awful lot and a lot of gratitude goes to him for holding things together.

In fact, I do a How do a course.

It's not course, it's a one off session at quite a few universities where I talk about running a business and I talk about these are six people that you need around you when you want to start a business.

And I sort of embody the roles in specific people and ask them to look for that person.

So if they don't have a dad who's as generous and kind and as risk taking as my dad, they need to find somebody who will be that person to walk alongside them.

And Bill is somebody that I.

He's not a visionary and he would definitely say that.

In fact, I used to run a thing called Love Morden, which was for this town and it went for several years.

We'd organize street parties and big events, firework displays in the middle of town.

And I'd say, bill, why won't you be a part?

And he'd just say, because I don't love Morden.

And I was like, but can't you see that I get why it's Disgusting.

It's horrible.

It looks grotty.

But if we can do this, we can generate something that will be better.

And he's like, nah.

And I like that in him.

And you do need people around you who aren't the visionaries, who will just obediently hold something together once you've created it.

And if everyone's visionaries, everything will start and nothing will carry on, which means everything will stop.

Yeah.

I was going to ask what people get wrong about grief, but you sort of touched on that point of view when people say, is there anything I can do?

And like you said, I've spoken to people who have grieves, people who are sort of grief experts.

And like you say, it's that extra burden you're putting on that person because rather than just saying that and in that moment, you cannot think about anything else.

You can't think.

I can't even think about what needs doing.

So it's like a stress because then it makes you realize that you can't work out what you need done.

So instead, I remember someone was saying that when they were grieving, one of their friends just said, right, I'm coming over.

And they just came over and they just cooked them, like batch cooked for the next week and just put it all in, like Tupperware, put it in the fridge.

I was like, that's all your meals done now.

And they just came over and they were just there.

So just doing something like that and.

Or just saying, right, what do you need from the shop?

I'm going to the shop, get some stuff for you, stuff like that.

What do you think are the most helpful things in those times?

The two sides of grief are the person who's grieving and everyone else around.

And I think for the person who's grieving, you can't see the grief that everyone else is going through as well.

And for example, in my instance, when my wife Ruth died, the siblings, her siblings, I think, are the forgotten people in a grief journey.

And I think at the time, I almost expected them to be supportive.

Where are they?

You know?

And I couldn't see through their eyes that their grief is almost harder than mine.

In that I know everyone's different, but I have my children.

And even the day that Ruth died, it was the day before my son's birthday and we'd already planned a party for that day.

So she died in the early hours of the morning, and I let my boys know, and they'd been with her the night before.

But on the day they still came to their kids drumming group.

They still did everything that they.

Because they were children.

And it was really important that they saw modeled in me someone who could grieve but could also live.

And they.

And that was my grief journey.

I'm not saying that everyone should do that.

Their journey and their coping helped me cope as well.

And so our little bubble at home was actually, despite the pain, despite how many tears were shed, our house was a joyful place.

And I think for everybody else around, so those on the outside, for the people who are grieving, at the core of it, as I was, it's very difficult to remember the pain that those people around you are also in that are helping.

So when anyone does the slightest thing that is close to you, it's very easy to forget the pain that they're doing it through.

I had one friend who said, because I was quite vocal with everything at the time, I had one friend who said, oh, I've heard that you don't like the phrase, if there's anything I can do.

And what he'd done was one of the most beautiful things that I will never forget.

Luke got Chessington World of Adventures passes for me and the two boys for the year.

And he'd even got.

He'd gone onto Facebook and found pictures of us that look like they could be the passport pictures enough.

And because he's a graphic designer, he'd sort of tidied them up a little bit and sent them off.

So we.

We even had the passes made and sent to us.

And that gift was one of the most beautiful things.

It gave us so many days of joy.

And then my.

I wasn't to know at the time that my foster daughter moved back in because she was in the middle of a traumatic situation herself.

So in the middle of my grief, I had that happen, which meant we could also all go to Chessington, which I could never have afforded.

And those little things that people did, they.

They really helped.

And yes, if the phrase if there's anything I can do to help could be banned, I would ban that.

Certainly there's then for the person on the other side.

So the person who's at the core of the grief, As a Christian God was my number one, and my number two is my wife and my number three is my kids.

And I've always had that hierarchy.

And so my foundation did not disappear.

And I would advise anybody to not rely on their other person as the foundation upon which they build their life.

And when that person then dies, as in every relationship, 50% of people will experience the grief of the other person because one of you will go first.

Unless it's a very tragic accident where you both go, that knowledge of what your life is built upon, that is unchanging, that will still be there on the other side of something like that.

That is where I was able to still stand through that grief journey.

To know that without my wife, the trauma, I mean, that was tragic, it was horrendous.

And one interesting thing that my then 12 year old said is he said, I really hate it that mama's name is associated with trauma.

And so he said, can we never use this situation as one that's had trauma?

Because she would never have wanted to bring trauma on my life.

And I was, I feel quite emotional saying it now because I remember being so taken aback by the wisdom of someone so young, straight after their mother's death.

And when people would have said, oh, that must have been really traumatic for you, you and him just going, no, I will not own that phrase associated with my mum.

He didn't say it like that, but that's what he meant.

And that has really stayed with me as well, that I know that's not what Ruth would have wanted for us.

I remember her saying very clearly, I want you to grieve for me.

And boy did we, and have we and do we still.

And even last summer we, we took our ashes to the beach and had her whole extended family on the beach and her mum, who didn't want to join us right on the waterside, stood right up on the key and took the most beautiful picture of all of the family with their arms around each other with Bruce ashes going into the sea.

And those moments of grief, to live them well is really important.

It's not to ignore them, it's to walk them.

And there's the verse that Coolio nabbed from Psalm 23 is, as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the word in that that I really love, that gets missed is the word walked.

And for a lot of people, they sit in the valley.

And grief is one of those places where it's very easy to sit.

And I had someone else who's very wise, he's said to me, and he works for Deloitte, so he gets all these top business coaches and all the healthcare that comes with a job like that.

And his coach told him during grief that you don't have to reach up and grab every cloud, you can let some clouds pass by.

And it's a similar thing to as long as you're still walking.

It doesn't mean you're not grieving or you're not honoring the person that you are still moving and walking through that valley.

On that as well.

You say that some people sit in it.

Absolutely.

But I think some people also sprint through it.

They go too fast.

Yes.

And even though I sprint through the valley of the shadow of death, it's also not.

Yeah, it doesn't.

It doesn't roll with the tongue as well.

But you.

Some people will just try and like, shut stuff off and it's very.

It's such a difficult time.

And to just sit with the emotions and still live your life can be such a difficult thing.

And I think so many people try and just try and just move past it way too quick and then that comes back to bite them.

I mean that.

We see that a lot.

People sort of fall back and it's because of something happened years ago.

I met.

I met at a thing called Widowed and Young, which is if you've lost someone and you're under 50, you can join this thing called Widowed and Young.

And it's capital letters, not a dating site.

And I went to it three months after I'd lost Ruth and oh my word.

I met a woman who is a lady, like a lord and lady who had lost her lord, in effect.

I imagine.

Yeah.

If that's how it works.

And she was just desperate to be back in a relationship straight away.

And she was doing that sprinting thing.

She was.

And the room was full of people who were recently bereaved and were desperate to refind somebody and to run back in and to take all of that mess into a new relationship.

And how.

Why.

It's.

Cause it's so difficult.

It's so difficult to sit and to feel things and process them the right way, I think.

And you can understand people are scared to do it.

It's uncomfortable.

You spoke about grief and how you've grieved and you still grieve.

How has the shape of grief changed for you over the seven years?

One thing it hasn't done is made me want to read any books on grief.

And I've been given a lot of them.

I recently gave them all to a charity shop and didn't feel any sense of sadness of not looking at other people's grief journeys.

There are a number of times where I've shared a bit of my story, you know, even in a social context.

And someone said, oh, you got to read the book by da da da da da da.

I don't really.

That was their journey.

And that book was probably a big part of their healing.

And for me, my healing was a lot to do.

With only two months after Ruth dying going, there's an empty shop unit at the front of my studio.

Let's build a welcoming coffee space that embodies everything that I tried to do in the privacy of a studio.

Let's make that public.

And that was my grieving journey.

I don't need anyone else to.

To experience that in the way that I need to tell that story, unless they want to hear it.

So I.

My.

My grieving journey has been very, very different now than it was at the beginning.

But it's not been a grieving journey that I've tried to follow anyone else's advice on it or to follow anyone else's root.

And I think sometimes there's one of the analogies is that the grief stays the same size.

You just get bigger around it.

And I guess to a point that's true, or time is a healer.

And I guess to a point that is all true as well.

But I think the pain of suddenly, like if I smell a perfume that Ruth had that feeling, the pain, it's got me now because of the depth of grief which came from the depth of love, which I don't think will ever change.

But it's definitely more manageable in that I know that my boys and I have walked this valley for a very long time.

And we have walked it well and we've walked it together and we've learned a lot and we've.

We've also let a lot of people in, the right people to walk with us.

And that has been helpful for them and for us.

And I. I see the relationship I have with my parents now is very different where I have had to let them help me a lot more.

And that's a really hard thing to do when you get a lot of your sort of, ah, affirmation, whether people admit it or not, from being able to help others or do things for others.

Yeah.

And I think I've learned to accept that over the time.

And that has changed me.

It's got rid of all the journey has shaved off a lot of the pride that I had.

Yeah.

And I've definitely seen the yes, I can achieve everything disappear for me and realize that here, this business would work without me.

Lawrence has got this.

Charlotte has got this.

They run this place better than I could.

Their skill set is better than mine is for doing the things they do.

And.

And that reality is not one I would have had the other side.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people think for grief and for other things, that there is an end point to it and that one day it will be gone.

And I spoke to Mary Howe recently on the podcast, who's a US Air Force veteran, and we were talking about the phrase letting go.

And she was like, I don't think you can ever let go, because where do you let it go to?

It's still in there.

And that, like you said about the perfume, there's always going to be something that brings you back.

It's the important part is that you processed it so that when it does come back, you can look at it and go, okay, we've dealt with that.

I know it's reminding me of, it's okay.

And then it can move on.

And there's so many things in life that do bring you back to a moment.

And again, speaking to Lawrence, he said this phrase, and it's right at the end of the podcast.

But it was so nice.

He said, music as a time machine.

I don't know if you ever heard him say that, I'm sure.

And he was saying about how certain songs take you back to a really specific moment, and you can describe everything in that moment, like what everyone's wearing, the type of weather it was, and anything.

And there are things like the smell of a perfume, a location, just going to a place, or seeing something that triggers that memory.

But I think that's the importance of processing it correctly, because that's.

Those are the times when if you haven't done that and if you have sprinted through the valley, it comes back to bite you.

You've mentioned Christianity quite a lot throughout.

Obviously, faith is a big part, and you spoke about the hierarchy there.

Did going through that experience of grief deepen your faith or test it or both.

Very easy to talk about other people and hard to talk about yourself in this, because I'm at the moment supporting is too strong a term.

But walking with somebody who's given up on their faith because of grief, so they've lost their wife, and he's like, chuck it all.

And.

And seeing that compared to what happened on my journey has helped me to see what happened during my journey.

And what it was was a strengthening of what my foundation was.

Interestingly, I never used to read the Bible that much.

I was very lazy, and I thought I knew what I believed just because we're a Christian country.

I was brought up in a Christian family.

I kind of knew which way the wind blows on most things based on I.

What I think I know or what the opinions of others were, what it did during that season was meant that I just went back to the Bible and I started to read the bits of it that I maybe hadn't read before.

And I had one friend who really encouraged me to do that.

And that friend would phone me every day and would send me a bit of the Bible, just said, just read a bit of this today.

And it was the sort of grounding that.

That gave me through the year, first year, second year, third year of grief that meant that I was beginning to read the Bible every day.

And seeing that.

Not that I was less significant, but seeing that the world was a massive, massive place that I had absolute significance in, and my significance, but under God was something that then helped me to understand.

Well, Ruth was.

Wasn't perfect.

She was just another human who I loved very, very much.

Probably too much, but she also was significant.

And her life, however short it was, was also of great significance.

And my boys are who they are.

As a result of them, the teenage girls that she was an ambassador for and walked alongside during some of their most difficult years, they are forever changed for it.

The one boy who was about to commit suicide that she walked through, his life was forever changed.

And her life was of such significance.

And her faith is the thing.

I remember, in fact, the day before she died, I was praying with her and I just said, thank God.

We pray that there'd be no more fear and that Ruth would feel at peace.

And she opened her eye and she said, stop praying for yourself.

I'm not scared.

And her level of faith, right up to the end, I know, was one of the things that has carried me through these years since, because it was like a crocodile eye when she opened it, like one eye just flung open.

And she looked at me, she was like, hey, don't put that on me.

That's not where I'm at.

And she was, you know, 20 hours from death at that point.

So, yeah, my faith is hugely deepened as a result of that.

And that is also thanks to the people around me and that one person who sent me those verses every night.

At the time, she was just a friend.

And she phoned me every single evening to check I was okay.

And we chatted.

And at that time, my foster daughter had moved back in.

All life was chaos.

I'd lost my wife, had no one running my businesses.

I had no one parenting my kids.

Well, I was trying my best, but I was grieving.

My foster daughter moved back in.

I hate animals.

In A house, and she brought her cat.

And my life was chaos.

And suddenly this person was helping me.

And that person then became, to cut a long story short, my now fiance.

It's something that not everyone will understand, I suppose, because not everyone has a faith.

Do you think there's a replacement for faith that people who aren't don't have a religion can follow in that sort of scenario?

I think a lot of people try, and I know the government loves this.

A lot of people try and sum everything up in one sort of thing.

And I know in pshe, in schools and religious education, there's a lot of your truth is your truth, and therefore you hold onto your truth.

And I know that I wouldn't be true to myself to then say, well, what I believe is one of many things.

I have to know that from the experiences I've had, from the testimony I've got from the miracles I've seen, that I know that when it says in the book of John, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to, Father, except through me, which is in John.

As painful as that is to even say in this room on a podcast, not knowing what the people listening to this believe.

As someone who's a Christian, I see so many Christians water that down and just don't mention it.

And then they'll just say, okay, no, Christian is about just being a nice person or, yeah, build.

Build your life on whatever gives you purpose.

And as a Christian, it's of paramount importance that I know what my faith is built on.

For somebody else who's not, I would say deeply look into that and ask in the quiet place, what is my life built on?

And I would never point somebody in any direction.

I would say, in the quiet place, you'll know.

This is just crossed my mind because obviously you spoke about the hierarchy you had and that in that time when you lost sort of the second part of it, you had something still to go to.

I'm just wondering, like, what other people would have.

Whether they've done enough internal work that might just be faith disguised in a way, faith in who they are and what they live for without actually putting a label on it, I suppose, and whether the people have that.

On the topic of grief, and obviously the studio has been running for almost 20 years now, and Ruth isn't the only grief that the studio's known.

You mentioned that one of the People working here took their own life.

Yeah.

How did that affect you and the wider community that you'd built here?

He'd come from being a gang member in Morden and someone who had seen the other side of life.

He turned his life around completely.

Completely.

And I won't share his story, but his story is profound.

That pain was a grief that was too much.

It was too much for me, for my wife, for the family here.

He was also about to be, a week later, godparent to my youngest.

He was a huge part of his children's life and his wife was, at the time, pregnant.

So the journey was a hard one for him up to that point.

And when he took his own life, that meant the loss here was great as well.

In fact, he'd just stopped working here soon before as well.

The pain was so much.

But what came out of it has been quite beautiful.

We recorded a charity single at his wife's request with raps done by his siblings, and we raised a lot of money for Young Minds, a mental health charity for young people.

He was incredibly gifted as a rapper himself and he'd worked on quite a few projects here and one of our clients had him working very closely with him for a number of years.

And so I think the grief, though, was one of the things that hit Ruth, and Ruth was never the same after that.

That really affected her and I think there was an element of that.

We felt like we should have been able to do something, we should have been able to save him.

We should have been able to be there.

And it was that morning when his wife phoned and said, did he come and stay at yours?

Is he with you?

That we're like, no.

And we went, then went to try and find him.

That was one of those moments where we thought, why couldn't we have done something?

So, yes, that.

That did change everything for us.

It was.

It was tough.

And in fact, I met his daughter yesterday and seeing the joy that she now has and lives in is just amazing.

She's now in her 20s and has walked that grief journey as well.

And I know her mom has done a phenomenal job job of guiding two, then three children through a life without a father.

Yeah, and it's.

It's been really hard to.

To watch that.

But she's.

She's a great mum and that's been good to see.

Yeah.

That feeling of, like, could I have done more?

Is such a difficult thing when it comes to the topic of, like, suicide.

I volunteered For a year for the Samaritans phone lines.

And the biggest thing that I learned in that time was that what the Samaritans do is they never give advice.

And what us as human beings do, as people who love other people, is try and give people advice.

If someone comes to us with a problem and they're struggling, we want to give them the answer.

We want to try and help them get out of it naturally.

So the biggest thing that I had to learn was trying to change that instinct to go.

This is what I think you should do from an outside perspective who doesn't understand the entirety of that person's journey to instead go, what do you think you should do?

Talk out loud about it and just venture through their own mind with them.

And the reason for that is because if you had the answer, even if it was the perfect answer for that person and you gave them the answer, there's no power in that because you've given them the answer, you haven't let them find their way out and get out of it.

So you have to let that person find the way, the route out.

You can't just give it.

And that's where the power is, is by reflecting back and asking the questions, to let them find their own answers.

And it's a difficult thing, like you say, when someone does eventually go and still take their own life, because you think, could I have done something?

Could I have changed something?

But, yeah, we offer a free listening service here once a month across both businesses called Space to Talk.

And there are some chaplains, like Prison chapl, but they work in the third space in society.

So clubs, music industry, they never offer advice, they just listen.

And some weeks I just think, I wish more people would come and experience this.

And other weeks I'm just so pleased that there aren't as many people, because it means they can spend this time with people that are so valuable just listening and letting people come to that place of understanding of themselves, where they go, ah, right.

And yet they probably wanted to say all the way through, this is what you need to do.

But I hadn't realized Samaritans never give advice.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, it's this same sort of thing.

And so many people call up about.

So much of it stems from loneliness.

So even just having someone to listen, even if you don't have to be at the extreme end of the mental health crisis to.

To use it or to come here and be listened to, but it's just having someone who's willing to listen and Let you.

I always say when people are struggling like just try and get it out of your head whether that's spoken to someone, whether it's on paper, whether it's recording on your phone, if you can speak it out in whichever way is right for you, it gets it out of there and you can start to like I like to write stuff down if I've yeah, I get overwhelmed with like if I've got a list of stuff to do and I'm like oh my God, I need to do that.

Oh I still need to do that and that.

Oh and then I'm going away the next day so I've not got any time and I write, let's like write a list of everything that's in my mind and when I look at it I'm like like there's really not that much and I can probably work through that in a day if I actually just go through it but it's when it's in there because they keep just going everywhere.

In terms of mental health, do you think we are getting better at recognizing when people aren't struggling or do you think it's something that we still need to work on?

I think on the surface we are.

I know the training in schools is improved.

At my boys school they have guys coming in regularly to make sure that the kids as a whole year group are trained in looking out for stuff.

We never had that at school.

I know that the adverts around the place for support are far more so I think we are, we're more aware of it and able to talk about it more.

I don't know whether we are more resilient to cope with it though.

And I, I joke with my kids in a loving way about how little resilience the society now has for most things and how easily broken people are and how careful the next generation above has to be with their words when they are nurt younger people in always encouraging, always saying things and I think primary schools are now going back on this thankfully but going, going for maybe a period of well over a decade they were removing the winners and second place and third place in primary school.

So my, my youngest was coming out the other side of it but my old one they just got stickers for different things.

They weren't really aware of what they were for.

They didn't have people who came first and second and the brutal is that they will come out the other side of that and enter a world that you don't win stickers just willy nilly There will be Somebody who will get the job and there will be somebody who doesn't.

And you may be the person that does, or you might be the person that doesn't.

And if we're not preparing people for that, it doesn't matter how much mental health training we have, how many posters, how many helplines, if we bred a generation that cannot be resilient or know the pain of.

And I point the finger at myself, I, as a teacher, I used to be a teacher, I was a high school teacher and I never liked to tell people off.

I found that very difficult.

I like to have them back and have a conversation and I was, I intentionally didn't wear shoes when I taught.

I wanted to be show that I had my defenses down.

I'm not a going to attack you.

But what that did in my parenting is that I've been very passive in the sense that they, gosh, they know where they stand on things.

But if they overstep the mark, I haven't brought in the discipline that I know that I perhaps should have done.

And that's me falling into the same thing of just going.

I'm not preparing my kids for the world that is brutal.

And they will be if they steal, if they lie, if they do something in a workplace, they will lose their job over it.

And if I've just shown grace and kindness endlessly, I haven't prepared my children and so their mental health is going to be in a ridiculous state when that hits them like a truck for my 18 year old in a matter of months time.

Yeah, it's so true.

There's certain changes that I've heard about like that not having winners and stuff.

And it's, it's preparing them for something that doesn't exist.

So you've got to be able to prepare them for the brutality of life, like you said, even though it's difficult.

One of the.

Is that phrase, the brutality of life.

When my foster daughter first moved in, she used to pick up my youngest, chuck him across the room and said he needs to experience the full brutality of life.

And I'll be like, yeah, I'd like him to still have his limbs.

Yeah, I'd like him one piece.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's true though.

Like there is certain things and there's ways to do it obviously.

And I'm not a parent, so it's not my place to say.

But, but there are certain.

Oh, you can still say, I think people are scared.

Yeah, you see, you see some parents, don't you, who are way too soft and they just don't know what to do.

And then some.

Which are obviously going to be too harsh.

And it's somewhere in the balance of that.

And it's.

You're doing work, you're working.

You're still trying to like parent being a parent.

And it's such a different.

It's such a difficult thing to do.

So that's why it's a.

Such not.

I'm not going to say too much about it, but yeah, you've got to be able to prepare.

It's.

It's.

It's unfair on them not to.

That's the way to look at it, I think, is we look at it and go, oh, well, I don't want to upset them now, but you're going to upset them later in life if you don't upset them now by saying some.

Something that's true.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Holding your word as a parent is something that.

I've sometimes caused me problems because I will always hold my word.

And so if I say if you do that, then this, that consequence will hold.

And they know that.

My boys know that.

And it's always funny when their friends are over because they know that, particularly when they were younger and a kid would then play up a little bit more, they would just look around at me with like this look of horror, like, you don't understand.

Dad's about to let rip if he said he will.

And that's holding your word is something that.

Of all the parenting failures I've had, I would say that's definitely a success of being measured in what I'm gonna hand out as a point of discipline or a threat of discipline.

But then carrying it through always is.

Is really important, I think, to, to threaten, you know, I'm never going to bring you here again when that's going to actually jeopardize yourself as well as a parent.

And you're never going to carry it through.

So then they know that that's never going to happen.

It's empty words that have caused more damage to the kid.

Like you say that you've kicked the problem down the road and then they're going to face it somewhere else.

And then when you do say something that you are going to hold to, they're still not going to be like, oh, it's just saying that thing.

Well, then it's confusing for them.

It is, yeah.

You've spoke about fostering, so you've got a foster daughter who has also just had a baby.

So congratulations, foster granddad.

Foster granddad.

So talk to me about that.

How did you get into fostering?

We never wanted children.

Little ones.

I in particular only ever wanted teenagers.

I worked in a secondary school.

I'd run youth groups.

I'd worked in that sphere forever.

That was the people.

That was the age group.

I knew.

I didn't know the sit on your bottoms age and wiping and that.

I never wanted that.

Didn't.

Didn't.

I just.

I couldn't imagine me as a dad of that.

I could imagine my dad being a dad of teenagers.

And so I always wanted to foster and encouraged Ruth.

Let's do it one day.

And it came to this point where it was of course we have to.

The kids were young.

We need to foster.

It's gonna be the thing that we do.

And we did the training and funnily enough on it, considering we then got a teenage girl.

I was taken to one side and said my level of sarcasm was such that they could never place a teenage girl with us and I had to have a special one to made it just for me.

Little how to not be sarcastic, particularly around girls training session and answered questions that the obvious answer was a very witty quick response and answer it with care and compassion.

And the ironic thing was when we then got a foster daughter at the age of 15 and nurtured her through her GCSEs and then A level and then degree and then she went off into the world fell apart.

She came back.

Covid came a couple of weeks later.

She came just for two weeks then not part of the fostering but through just this was home.

So she then came and lived with us as my daughter.

She is now my daughter.

The only thing that helped me survive that was my sarcasm and my ability to when she chucked my kid across the room be able to be brutal back to her.

There was nothing that could have prepared me for that more than being able to be my true self.

And as understanding as I know Merton Council were in trying to make sure that I was always kind.

I think you could be kind and sarcastic at the same time.

And as a survival tool with fostering man, you've got to be hard.

You've got to be resilient to a lot of pain.

And it's one of the best decisions I made.

And there's one person that I really hope has become a foster carer and that is on the day that Ruth was taken to the hospice and she only lived for a few hours there before passing away.

The the ambulance driver that picked her up from Home.

So she was home until the day she died.

The ambulance driver said, was just asking us questions on the way, and one of them was sort of about children.

I said, yeah, we've got two and a foster daughter.

And he said, I've always wanted to do that, that.

And Ruth couldn't speak at that stage, but she grabbed my hand and I said, ruth squeezing my hand.

And I think what she's saying is, go for it, do it.

And she kept squeezing my hand afterwards.

And I know she was in full agreement.

I said, she's squeezing my hand still.

And he was laughing.

I said, so you've got to.

You've got to hold us to that.

And he was like, I think I will.

I think this is the thing.

So I really hope he has.

Fostering is life changing.

It is one of the best decisions I've made.

I have.

I haven't fostered again.

And my new fiance, I don't think will be in a position, but she's been a midwife for years.

She's got three adult kids of her own.

I think maybe my days of fostering are done, but I think the way I will look after teenagers will carry on, but in a different way.

But I would encourage anybody who's compassionate, who's got a room, who cares and is flexible and has a good sense of humor to go through it, even if just for a season of your life.

Yeah.

Even if it's before you've had kids to learn how to do it.

The training is incredible.

The training is like listening to this kind of podcast.

It's.

These are really good things to say.

These are really bad things to say.

These are really good journeys to help someone walk on.

These are really bad paths.

There's a lot about emotional intelligence and emotions on it.

And the training ground is through.

Merton Council in particular, was just phenomenal.

Yeah, phenomenal.

Hopefully, if there's someone listening who's maybe thought about it, it's the little.

Little push they needed to go.

And actually action sounds very rewarding.

Have you considered it?

I've not, no.

But I haven't got kids.

So you don't need them?

Well, no, but I think.

I think, yeah, I think on the spot questions.

Yeah.

The tables have turned.

Yeah.

No, we.

I think we all have a child of our own.

That's awesome.

But, yeah, we'll see.

Yeah.

What matters with everything we've spoken about, looking back over the last 10, 20 years, maybe what matters more to you now than it did then?

I have two words that came out of grief.

And they're words that then have been a rock for me.

They are joy and courage, even when I haven't enjoyed things to find the joy in it.

We have admin days here where we find real joy in it.

That has been really, really key.

And to realize with the staff here, the easiest barometer of working out what's wrong with a member of the team team is joy and courage.

Are they bringing joy?

Are they enjoying work?

Are they courageous in the decisions they're making?

Are they discouraged?

Are they being a discouragement to others?

And are those two words together what they're living?

Are they living joy and courage on the team?

And it's a very quick barometer for me to go, ah, this person's being a discouragement to others.

They don't mean to be just something about their character or something about the way that they are carrying themselves.

And we can address that.

So I'd say the biggest thing that's changed to me is that things have become a lot more simple.

I'm definitely less hands on.

And I think that's this.

I've heard that in, in quite a few of your guests that as they've progressed in, in the business or things they're involved in, they've.

They've less hands on than they were.

And I think in some instances that's sad.

I think for, for very good teachers, they end up as head teachers, which means that they don't see children.

This is an ironic thing of moving up, but I think if you're moving up in the right way and you're still contact with the right people, then those things are really crucial.

And as I've moved up, I've realized if I'm not bringing joy here, if I'm coming in and people feel threatened by my arrival or that I'm going to pick on something and I'm going to not make this a place that they enjoy working or I'm going to discourage them.

By my words.

I need to address that in myself.

And the team are very good at saying to me as well, well, I walked in the other day and I said to Charlotte, oh, we really need to address sandwiches, we need a new sandwich choice.

And she just said, I can't cope with this conversation right now.

And I was so encouraged by how quickly that wasn't seen as a criticism to me.

I wasn't like, oh, okay.

Or like she felt safe enough to say that on the shop floor for me to go, I get that, I get that.

I'm sorry for doing that.

That Is anything I can do to help you right now?

And she was like, no, no, no.

But can we chat at lunchtime?

Yeah, we chatted at lunchtime.

Oh, my word.

That conversation completely explained why me talking about a tuna sandwich was completely the inappropriate thing to do at that moment.

And we ended the day with joy and courage.

Like, we made some really brave decisions that day for the business.

It's very easy to slip into being a boss who just comes in and brings discouragement without meaning to.

Yeah.

And to not have a workforce, to enjoy coming to work.

They're the words that have changed the most.

Yeah.

That starts with you and people who are in leadership positions, people who.

You've got to live what you're asking other people to do.

And that's the first step.

And the last episode that came out on the.

When recording this was My Reflections on Recent Lessons of Leadership.

Yeah, that's the one I was listening to recently.

Yeah.

And it's.

It starts with you, internal leadership, Mary Howe, again, that conversation, we spoke about that.

And you've got to live what you're asking people to do.

And if you are saying, these are our values, this is what I'm expecting of you, but then you don't live by them.

It's like what we were saying about.

About when you're confusing your kids, it's like you're confusing the people around you because they're like, well, he's saying that thing, but he's not doing it.

So do we just not do it as well?

And that's when you start to breed, like.

Yeah, a workplace of just.

Oh, it's just the values.

There's nothing.

So, yeah, it all starts with you.

If someone's listening right now to this podcast, listen to the conversation.

Everything we've spoken about, about.

Maybe they're in a chapter of grief or uncertainty in their life right now.

What's one thing that you'd want them to know?

I'm gonna.

I'm gonna rest on the joy and courage.

I've got something else, but I.

You said one thing, and rather than confusing what I'm talking about, let's stay on that.

Joy and courage were two words that came out of listening during that period of grief to where.

Where.

How am I going to get through this?

And I would.

I would say not necessarily those words.

And in fact, the leadership training course that I ran here with, with the team, I called it Joy and Courage when I ran it the first time.

And then I realized, no, they're my words.

They're not the values of this place, they're who I am.

I can't impose them on other people.

I can run my business using them, but they're definitely not the values of the business.

They are mine.

And.

And for anybody who's going through something, or even if you just like a juncture in your life and you think, what am I doing?

Where am I going to have some words that you hold onto no matter what.

And that going back to Ruth saying, be content in your tent, what are the things that are you at your core when you're in your neutral?

Are you an angry person?

If so, get on with dealing with that so that you can enjoy the rest of your life from here.

If you are your default currently anxious, find out what that thing is you're anxious about or that's triggering a sense of anxiety and begin to work on that so that your resting default neutral place is one that can be, for me, joy and courage, but for you, whatever it is that you are hoping that you will have for your life.

That's beautiful, beautiful insight, John.

The way I like to finish my episodes, as you may well know, is I like to ask my guests to leave a question for the listener.

So I like to have conversations about what I've listened to on podcasts and take away the conversation and keep it going beyond that.

So if you could ask a question or, sorry, if you could give the listener a question right now to go away and ask someone else, whether it's family member, friend, stranger, what question would that be to start a conversation?

You've had this one before, but what's stopping you?

Do the thing that you're scared to do.

That's a good question.

I love it.

John, thank you so much for coming on.

I appreciate it.

If people want to find out more about Crown Lane or yourself, where can they do that?

It's very easy with the Internet for as long as we've got that.

Crown Lane is a little town, Morden.

Crown Lane is the road in the middle of it.

We named the studio that@crownanestudio.co.uk website and we've got the coffee shop at the front where all the events happen.

Metronome.life.

You can find out about me nowhere on Listen to this podcast again and you'll know more about me.

Lovely.

Thanks so much.

Really appreciate the time today.

If you're listening and you haven't already, please do subscribe or follow the show wherever you're listening or watching.

It really, really helps the show grow.

And if you enjoy this conversation.

Do share it with someone who you think would find some value from it as well.

Well.

But lastly, from me.

Thank you for listening.

Stay curious and I will see you in the next one.