Episode 1
Eleanor Snare recorded 04/12/2019
In this initial episode I show off my lack of professionalism by forgetting to turn my mic on and recording in a kitchen (a mistake I will repeat) and on squeaky chairs too (I’ll do that again as well). However, I think the conversation with Eleanor is great and comes through really well. Eleanor is an artist, writer and educator and we discuss everything from outer space to men’s suits.
You can find more from Eleanor at https://eleanorsnare.com/
Also discussed:
Ozwald Boateng - https://ozwaldboateng.co.uk/
Doing Good Leeds – https://doinggoodleeds.org.uk/
Ellen MacArthur Foundation - https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/
Brundtland Report - https://www.are.admin.ch/are/en/home/media/publications/sustainable-development/brundtland-report.html
Transcript
[00:00:38] Working Hours: This episode, however, was recorded back in November, 2019, when everyone in Leeds also seem to have a pretty horrible virus. Fortunately, myself and my first guest Eleanor Snare, were not stricken with this at the time that particular illness. Um, but enough for me for now, I want to try to keep these intros short.
[:[00:01:05] Working Hours: Is your phone on?
[:[00:01:21] Working Hours: 10 o'clock, what time do you need to move to get buses and stuff?
[:[00:01:44] Eleanor: Like, every one of them was holding this slip of paper with their line on and when they get up, it's like, oh, you know, Jane get up. And she's like, Mary and Joseph went to the inn there was no room at the inn. And they're all like petrified and really excited. So yeah, we don't have to go in cause there's so much nativity stuff going on at the moment.
[:[00:02:07] Working Hours: Yeah, well. It adds a bit of a colour to the dark, dark winter scenes. I've been really enjoying it because I haven't been working. Like, last year. I was working and, you know, you're getting up in the dark, you're going home in the dark, you don't really see much of the daylight.
[:[00:02:24] Working Hours: And it's just a slog...
[:[00:02:31] Eleanor: When you have the,
[:[00:02:40] Eleanor: Yeah. When you have the time in the day, but I guess that's, it is because, you know, the morning and then the evening are encroaching, really our, our day, our shift of working should change.
[:[00:03:11] Eleanor: We still work eight hours a day, but she was really, she said, really it's like, if we worked five, you'd probably actually be a lot healthier, happier, because you'd be spending more time resting and doing the things that your body needs during winter. And I'd never really thought of that before, but, um, it's definitely something that I want to look at for next year, is change. You know, change the pattern so that in summer maybe you're able to work a bit longer.
[:[00:03:37] Eleanor: Everything
[:[00:03:39] Working Hours: ...but you know, super innovative, flexible capitalism can't change. When I was in Oz, it would just blow my mind that you'd have like boiling hot place and you've got all these pasty white folk dressing up in suits and getting on buses, getting in cars, doing nine to five.
[:[00:04:05] Eleanor: Yeah. It's bizarre. It's kind of like in Singapore, I guess as well when I was there, it's so humid, but they obviously got huge financial centres and everyone was still wearing suits and stuff like the....
[:[00:04:25] Working Hours: I think...
[:[00:04:27] Working Hours: ...the suit is quite an interesting thing because it's a weird clothing, ‘cause it doesn't seem like a lot of clothing, you look at clothing, we're talking complete nonsense here, but you look at clothing you can see a sort of gradation like, uh, an evolution of them and the suit kind of just appears from nowhere,
[:[00:04:50] Eleanor: The suits got a lot of kind of elements of it, which I guess were quite innovative at the time. So things like buttons, you don't really think about how radical they were or zips. But before that it's like everyone was just tying shit, shit together in rope and things like tailoring or just the fact that you can cut it bespoke.
[:[00:05:24] Working Hours: Yeah, it's had a very good run, it's been over a hundred years for sure.
[:[00:05:39] Eleanor: I remember seeing Michael Caine talking about, he was on a program about Savile Row, which actually are really interesting because they became a co-operative type thing. So years ago, like, um, I think it was in the sixties or seventies, a whole generation of men essentially rejected Savile Row because it was too reminiscent of their fathers and they were kind of rebelling.
[:[00:06:33] Eleanor: But, Michael Caine, in the show was saying that the thing about a good suit is no one would be able to, no one can look at your seat and tell you why it's good. They'll just remember that you were wearing a really good suit. I always really liked that. Um, kind of the subtlety in... You think a suits just a suit, but actually there's so many small variations of what it can look like. We are going off on a tangent, but
[:[00:06:58] Eleanor: It's work-related. Yeah, power suits are from like, a really interesting example of, particularly in work and like how we, if you see someone in a pinstripe suit, anyone can wear a pin-stripe suit but you immediately think, oh, well he clearly works... "He" for a start. Yeah. It's a most serious person who clearly works in finance. It's like, no! It's just... I don't know - he's going to court!
[:[00:07:28] Working Hours: So, uh, we just started recording in the middle of this. I'm not very good at the hosting thing I just kind of ramble on talking nonsense, um...
[:[00:07:44] Working Hours: Yeah. They talk far too much
[:[00:07:48] Working Hours: Shut up. It's your show, but I didn't come to listen to you. Um, so, uh, let's start with, well, let's start with a silly question.
[:[00:08:00] Eleanor: What did I want to be when I grew up? Um, the thing that I wanted to be most when I grew up and I still want it to be is an astronaut because is
[:[00:08:10] Eleanor: It's space. It's because what I actually want to do is see the earth from space. Um, I think there's something really, you know, every account of every astronaut I've ever read has been, it is life changing.
[:[00:08:54] Eleanor: You know; I want to be a writer or I want to be this. I didn't really have that kind of urge. I was just very much focused on like, just enjoying myself. Yeah. Well as an adult. Um, and I think as I kind of got older, slightly, I realized that I really, really wanted to be a teacher. Um, but I was, um, discouraged from doing that.
[:[00:09:41] Working Hours: Yeah.
[:[00:10:07] Eleanor: So like volunteering, um, private tutoring when I was in university, did work experience at schools, lots of different things like that. I never really kind of went down the path of traditional teaching, like PGCE and things like that. So I really wanted to be a teacher. And then, um, I kind of, as I got, you know, went through college and everything, I just... It's funny looking back, I realized that I just didn't really know. Um, a lot of what I did I just went and did whatever I wanted to do next. So like did an art foundation. Cause I liked it. Went to art college. Cause I liked it. Went to do an MA, ‘cause I thought it'd be good. And it was only when I kind of finally left education that I got, you know, a proper job in inverted commas. As in, a job in an, you know, in an office nine to five.
[:[00:11:20] Working Hours: Yeah. Which is the hard bit.
[:[00:11:25] Eleanor: And, um, it is, uh, I think I've done quite a few different things, which I imagine we'll talk about in a minute um, and they've all kind of coalesced into me understanding a bit more of what I like to do, but even now I still struggle to sort of, to say a job title. I think our obsession with job titles is actually quite um, it's like a red herring because job titles basically can be really meaningless. They can be really useful if the job is well established and clearly kind of delineated in say a particular industry, but for a huge number of people, particularly in creative fields, job titles, just aren't really there.
[:[00:12:16] Working Hours: Or they get too long.
[:[00:12:35] Working Hours: Or you're an odd job man.
[:[00:12:42] Working Hours: I'm a digital bob-a-jobber
[:[00:13:04] Eleanor: Is that like a job? No. Is it an income stream? Yes. So it's like, but am I going to put that on my CV?
[:[00:13:28] Eleanor: They're doing all that. But if you said I sell on Depop, no one is going to say, oh yeah, you've learned all these skills. Whereas actually it's about, that's what I think the job title was kind of a bit, it has a use, but it's not the be all and end all.
[:[00:14:16] Eleanor: Yeah. And that was kind of like there are benefits to that. I think one of the greatest, um, kind of greatest and saddest achievements in a way of things of, you know, neo liberal capitalism is that it does have so many benefits that it's difficult to push against it, because a lot of people do want to do lots of different things and they don't want to be in a cradle to grave job.
[:[00:15:00] Eleanor: And I want to be my own boss. And I said, you know, well, there's no sick pay. There's no HR, there's no holiday pay. There is no maternity leave. There's no paternity leave. Like there's no, you have to be every single member of that company. Sales, Accounts, duh-duh-duh and he was like, oh shit ...
[:[00:15:18] Working Hours: You're working for everybody else
[:[00:15:59] Eleanor: I'm not sure why, but, um, I don't get paid. And if I've got a job that I've booked in that income 's suddenly like, gone. So it's about, you know, learning the financial skills to deal with that. I think one of the interesting things is being self-employed or like the idea of transferable skills. It does offer so many opportunities, but only if you learn how to do that.
[:[00:16:30] Working Hours: Yeah,
[:[00:16:45] Eleanor: So it's almost like you have to learn how to see the opportunities and learn how to transfer things, which is much more about critical thinking and strategy and stuff like that, which doesn't get taught. So it's kind of like one of the myths, I think maybe of kind of a neoliberal capitalist approach to work is that, look at all these opportunities. It's like, yeah, but you haven't taught, I don't know how to approach them because I've never been taught because if I was taught to think strategically and critically and all that stuff, I probably wouldn't want to take part in your bloody economic system. So it's kind of like a bit of a vicious cycle, I think.
[:[00:17:48] Working Hours: But like you said, that's not necessarily the reality, but within that as well, that idea of you just open a business and you're free and therefore you can do what you want. It's like, well, that's ignoring the reality of actually running a business. You know, like you need someone there, who's doing the bureaucracy, all businesses are bureaucracies.
[:[00:18:28] Working Hours: And I think that's a major, major problem for things like trades and small businesses. Like self-employed people, unless they've got an experience within a larger organization or within an established company, you're not necessarily going to have those skills. And even if you're reading them out with a book, you don't know sort of the pitfalls or the ways to improve things.
[:[00:19:10] Eleanor: Um, but financial literacy is crucial when you work for yourself. I, you know, I was not very good at maths at school. I didn't really engage with it. I found it very, very difficult. And it was only when I actually ran... started my own business that I felt any affinity with, okay, I can look at these numbers, because suddenly it was like applied and also suddenly it was like these numbers matter. You know, these numbers are going to make or break whether I can pay my rent or duh-duh-duh.
[:[00:20:21] Eleanor: But then, but then saying that there's a lot of people working under, like, you know, let's say not illegally, but let's say sort of side of the side of the law and there's, you know, do, do you declare if you're fully employed, like, you know, say a full-time job and you do a bit of freelancing on the side, but you only make a couple of hundred or a couple of grand a year.
[:[00:20:48] Working Hours: Like the paperwork and everything? Well, I mean, the thing is,
[:[00:21:04] Eleanor: And I think that's the systems we have, you know, if we want to have like say an entrepreneurial society or ultra-entrepreneurial culture, we do need to make the running of businesses easier, but that does not mean free market capitalism. That means other things.
[:[00:21:24] Working Hours: I don't think they do want, you know, like you want cheap labour and the people who are at the top, aren't interested in having competition. You know, it's not like they want new companies coming through to threaten their profits. They want new monopolies to start, I would say, but not necessarily new people coming through.
[:[00:22:05] Eleanor: They're not going to put a business case together. It's just going to be a kid creating something in his bedroom or whatever. So I think it's about generation of ideas and kind of harvesting them a bit. Um, but it's, there are a lot of challenges. I sometimes feel quite torn in that, uh, you know, in my heart and how I try and live my life is generally, I'm not... trying to not be in the throes of capitalism all the time. And yet I'm a self-employed person who essentially is entrepreneurial. I make, you know, I, I charge a high rate, like an hourly rate. Um, I make a good profit. And when I, when I do work. Um, there are things I want to do with that profit differently, but it's challenging for me because like I'm benefitin' benefiting quite significantly from a method of working or, uh, a generation of, of a type of economy while at the same time, really vividly seeing all of the problems with it - particularly when I'm teaching students and their expectations of themselves and their expectations of work.
[:[00:23:34] Working Hours: Well, yeah, it's like all that whole sort of schizophrenic thing of, you know, be nice and social to everyone, but also crush all the competition.
[:[00:24:19] Eleanor: If I continue to believe in that, then that is essentially agreeing with this myth of capitalism, that there isn't enough, but I don't believe that. It's this idea of scarcity. The world is not scarce. It... in the same way that people's time, their money, their business is not scarce. So someone can work with me or someone else and it would be equally as good. It would be equally as okay, because there isn't enough for everyone. But, it's really hard, to kind of run a business with that kind of, I don't want to - I think anti-capitalist is probably too strong and I think people would look at me and be like, you're not an anti-capitalist - but, um, run a business in my, with, without trying to adhere... without getting sucked in to that mythology and those ways of working. Because they're just bullshit. But, it's really hard to like to use the use the good bits of like capitalist economy, economic structures, use the good bits or the bits that work effectively and discard the bad bits, it's really difficult to like try and negotiate that.
[:[00:25:36] Working Hours: Well, part, part of it's to do with cost... Right! I'll come back to. Sort of... Let's do... let's cover what you're actually doing then first.
[:[00:25:48] Working Hours: And then I want to kind of go back to what you were saying. Say, uh, if you can also talk a bit about, um, so within your work, what do you think are the kind of destructive things that your job is doing that you can't alleviate, but would like to be? Cause I would imagine with yours, I mean, most of its probably just going to be travel and cause you're not going to be, it's not like you're going and uprooting villages and displacing people and poisoning water or anything.
[:[00:26:26] Eleanor: Um, okay. So I do a variety of different things and all of them are focused on helping people. I... Helping people understand what they really care about in life and living and working, according to those values. Really simply.
[:[00:26:49] Eleanor: Yeah, so a huge range of stuff. So I teach, so I'm a tutor, um, and a big part of what I do, although I teach um, so I teach fashion branding and communication, um, and fashion marketing. Although I teach under that umbrella and a lot of what I'm doing is around individual projects. And what do you really care about and how can you focus on that? And a lot of what I ended up doing and have always ended up doing in my university, tutoring is around pastoral kind of, kind of pastoral adjacent care.
[:[00:27:46] Eleanor: I want to say results. I don't mean financial. It might be like, I worked with someone recently who was doing a Kickstarter for her project and a big thing for her was getting people to support it. Not just because they were her friends, but because they genuinely cared about the project, because that was about what she really valued.
[:[00:28:23] Eleanor: So often people will have like a great logo and a nice website and they won't know what the fuck they stand for. So it's about helping them come back to those values and feel again, more connected and confident in what do I actually care about and how am I going to get there? Because the majority of businesses and people that I work with money is not the driver.
[:[00:29:04] Eleanor: And then, um, I do occasional workshops. So I did a workshop recently for the University of Leeds around embracing change and trying to understand the kind of emotional repercussions of change. Um, and I talk a lot about emotion, mental health. Um, I'm a non-violent communication practitioner. So I talk a bit about that.
[:[00:29:44] Eleanor: How do we talk to each other? So kind of a few different things and occasionally sell stuff on eBay. Um, and I also
[:[00:29:53] Eleanor: No I did but... And then, um, me and my sister have this year, we've run a monthly events for creative people, which are kind of mix of personal and professional development and networking. So we had one on mindfulness.
[:[00:30:29] Eleanor: Um, so it's about helping them return to that. So this is why I think, you know, when I'm explaining it, one of the challenges I have, there isn't a job title for this. There is just the things that I do that come under this heading of helping people know, I guess who they are and what they care about and helping them deliver on that in their life and like, not ignore it.
[:[00:30:57] Working Hours: I mean, consultants generally...
[:[00:31:26] Eleanor: Things like running a business, I'm going to need some support and help, like who do I need to work with? So it's quite interesting having this conversation now, and I guess articulating a bit of that, um, experience and I guess sharing with people that, it's not as easy as, like... When I started my freelance business, I was a copywriter because that's what I did at my, when I worked at marketing agencies, I was a copywriter and that was it.
[:[00:32:15] Eleanor: Whereas when you go, so what do you do now? I'm like, well, you know, all those things that you really care about in your life that you don't want to tell him anyone, but you wish were part of your life every day, I help you do that. You know, that's quite, I don't know what that is, but that's, you know, anyway so, it's an interesting discussion to have now. So that's kind of what I do.
[:[00:32:48] Eleanor: um,
[:[00:33:00] Eleanor: I've been self-employed in March, March, 2020 will be five years in terms of this work that I'm doing now. I think it's probably in the last year that I've really felt that this is the direction.
[:[00:33:46] Eleanor: I don't know. I guess when I was. When I was 18 at university, I started doing private tutoring and working with kids, but a lot of sometimes what I was doing was things like supporting them through the 11 plus or through A levels and just trying to help them feel confident. So it's always been something that I've just done, but it's only in the last year that I would say I've gone oh yeah, this is... It's like, I've always done it, but I just decided to tell people about it. Yeah. Um, so I'm kind of a beginner.
[:[00:34:30] Working Hours: And then if you've only just kind of, sort of solidified that in the last year, then to me, it sounds a little bit like you were kind of on your own evolution to that point.
[:[00:35:00] Eleanor: Some people do it when they're 10. I think for me, there was a lot of processes that I had to go through before I got to that point, because it's really hard to be comfortable with what you really care about and want to do in the world. If, for example, you have low self-esteem or you are like a survivor of trauma because there's so many holes that you feel like, well, I can't like we were talking about before, about operating from this place of like feeling scarcity or feeling like the co... you know, in the kind of hippie community it's like abundance, but actually it is abundance. It's feeling like you are coming from a place of just complete wholeness. I wasn't there. I had a lot of like emotional difficulties and a lot of like trauma recovery to do. And it, I wouldn't have been able to get to this point without that.
[:[00:36:27] Eleanor: I would like burst into tears. So if a student emailed me when they were leaving and be like, oh, you know, I really appreciate your help and you really, you know, made a difference. I would just like cry. And there was a point where I stopped crying and it was because I recognized that I was allowed to like, get that feedback.
[:[00:37:07] Eleanor: Why are you allowed to talk to anyone about like, feeling great about yourself?
[:[00:37:12] Eleanor: Yeah, but that's really hard to know when you're like in the pit.
[:[00:37:16] Eleanor: So in terms of, yeah, I think I did take some of my own advice, but probably not in the same way. I think that I, I can't, it was more like it had just been... For all of the people I work with actually, this is, I guess the same for me. It's always been there. It's just, everything else gets in the fucking way. So I had to kind of get like work on all that stuff first. And a lot of the people I do work with have done that bit. So they've done, they've been to therapy, they've done some healing, they've done some kind of trauma work or they they've dealt with them, mental health challenges.
[:[00:38:05] Working Hours: No, it does. Yeah. So I do want to go back to this point. And so like in terms of detrimental impact, like, it's not like I'm just trying to concentrate on the negative because just from your own description there, there's a straight forward positive impact of like, you know, you're positively impacting people's lives.
[:[00:38:35] Eleanor: Like my index is going up.
[:[00:39:21] Eleanor: From like material sustainability perspective? Let's say first of all, um, I don't drive so I, in terms of like, stuff like transport I get the bus, which is always like, there's this weird thing, I think sometimes with the world. A lot of business and work things are not built around environmental sustainability they're built around like speed and pace. So when people like, can you come and do a workshop?
[:[00:40:08] Eleanor: And so I go through a lot of paper and I do personally as well because I'm a big writer and journal. That is something that I feel is quite I'm aware of it. But I also know it isn't as effective if you do it digitally. I don't know what the kind of solution there is apart from continuing to recycle and buying recycled paper and just,
[:[00:40:59] Working Hours: When you've got a piece of paper and write on both sides of it with a pen it's like, is it really more damaging?
[:[00:41:11] Working Hours: It's a strong bond. I would say it's still an immensely powerful technology. I would say it's probably a more like for me personally, I think it's a more powerful technology then than the internet and everything else.
[:[00:41:28] Eleanor: It's more effective and it's more effective to achieve the things that my, I want to achieve with the people I work with and they want to achieve. So that's a thing. Something that I have recognized that I do, but I probably would never have like couched it in the language of, of like detriment or effect is I w... You know, if someone come, approaches me to work with me, I'd normally go on a kind of intuitive level of like, do I want to work with them or not?
[:[00:42:13] Eleanor: And like, I've worked for, you know, when I was working full time, I was working for like, you know, massive financial companies some of who were directly responsible for the 2008 banking crisis. I was working with gambling firms. We even had some like, not, you know, I don't think pornography is bad. I think there's some fucking bad pornography though, were working with people like that.
[:[00:42:56] Eleanor: And I went, I don't want to work with you. And at the time it was just like, this is a bad feeling. But I think what I recognize now is
[:[00:43:11] Eleanor: Yeah, and also like it's ju..., all the big research groups like, um, Mintel and McKinsey, everyone has been talking about for years and Harvard Business Review for years has been the importance of values and the importance of a meaningful reason to have a business and that's why people buy things. Or, but so, people buying because of necessity, but when it's like over the kind of the necessity level, the choices around, do I care about this? And do I feel affinity with it? If... this guy was making products for kids like saying, oh, well, what's your goal. Oh well I want to make a million pounds.
[:[00:44:00] Working Hours: Would have been better off saying I want to make a million children happy.
[:[00:44:57] Eleanor: Um,
[:[00:45:11] Eleanor: yeah, I can't tell until I've met them and I've read about them and I've like had some sort of interaction with it.
[:[00:45:37] Eleanor: I have some issues around teaching fashion and fashion marketing, because fashion is the second biggest, you know, it's the second biggest polluter in the world as an industry only behind oil. It's incredibly wasteful. Um, it's just ultimately very depressing. And the idea of like it being sustainable, there being a movement towards sustainable purchasing, is essentially a fallacy.
[:[00:46:12] Working Hours: As long as you've got advertising you're just not going to get rid of consumerism. It's a straightforward, nonstop, propaganda barrage of like consume, consume, consume
[:[00:46:27] Eleanor: Like, I get what to do. Because, I think the best marketing comes from empathy. It comes from like understanding the person you're talking to and facilitating whatever it is that they want to achieve in their life, or providing them with something that says that they achieved the thing.
[:[00:46:46] Eleanor: Yeah. So, I get it. So it's just unfortunate that I'm kind of good at something or understand something, which I also recognize to be hugely problematic. Um, so in the work that I do with students often, what I'm doing or, or really getting them to think about, is the kind of ethical and moral quandaries that come up, with some of the work that they may be required to do and how they can negotiate and navigate that.
[:[00:47:37] Eleanor: How are you going to deal with that? But that is, that can be difficult sometimes.
[:[00:47:43] Eleanor: I know of it, but I don't know a huge amount of stuff about it.
[:[00:48:13] Eleanor: It's astonishing
[:[00:48:29] Working Hours: And it's the most ideological. So much is just off the table, it's just, you can't do it because communism, whatever, or it threatened somebody's profits. And it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous that we can't have, a more mixed economy that we can't live in a sensible way. I just find it very odd.
[:[00:49:03] Eleanor: Um, in terms of like governmental legislation, I'm always going to vote for, um, policies, which I believe are kind of for the good of the many, not the few. But, one of the challenges I think is that most of us feel that is hard to deli... like to create that on an individual level. And if you know, or you're reading about sustainability, it gets to the point where you realize. I think it was George Monbiot who said like, don't take long haul flights and become vegetarian, everything else is basically just like, who fucking cares until we legislate on big companies.
[:[00:50:02] Eleanor: So a lot of what I'm trying to do is saying to people don't think that you have to have this special, fancy job. Don't think that you have to earn all this money. Don't think you have to buy a fucking Audi and duh-duh-duh-duh. What, if you really care about adventure, that is something that's so crucial to who you are and your soul, just do that.
[:[00:50:41] Eleanor: That's an achievement. That to me is working towards that kind of greater sustainable project. A big part of, well, not a big part, but like I did a chunk of research around human sustainability and how we can develop that in university education. So there's the kind of from the Brundtland Report, there's economic, social, environmental, and then there's human. But people kind of don't talk about human a lot because it's about, they talk about human capital, which I feel a bit like ergh about
[:[00:51:12] Eleanor: Human Resources, but in terms of capital it's about what do I know, what skills do I have my level of education?
[:[00:51:41] Eleanor: So it's kind of on the same. It's got some of the similar problems in a way as environmental sustainability and that people can't conceive of that, the timeframe in which we need to be operating. But for me, that's where I kind of, I feel like there's a real opportunity to create more sustainable societies by working in that area of sustainable development. Is, how can we educate people and equip people so they have internal resources that help them develop and progress through life? Because the more internal resources you have and the more resilience, power, the feeling that you are okay, the less you will be looking externally to be made okay. Which means that less, for me, it means less consumerism, less materialism, less focused on like social approval.
[:[00:52:55] Eleanor: Every single person. Some people can't be vegetarian because they got anaemia or whatever, right? But, every single person can go right, I'm going to equip myself and do the work that I need to do to feel okay with who I am. So I stop looking externally for these validations. That doesn't mean you don't buy clothes.
[:[00:53:32] Eleanor: I'm one of those terrible lefty university teachers.
[:[00:54:22] Eleanor: So I, like, I sometimes think about this myself as well, because you know, the majority of people I've worked with tend to be middle class.
[:[00:55:03] Working Hours: There should be a social baseline
[:[00:55:18] Eleanor: So at the moment, because there's not a social baseline, there's a huge number of people who aren't feeling capable of kind of looking within and going, what do I need to do? And how do, like, as I said, creating that, those resources for themselves, recognizing they have those resources.
[:[00:55:38] Eleanor: Yeah.
[:[00:56:04] Eleanor: So for example, therapy on the NHS. Predominantly the therapy that's provided on the NHS is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which is great. It's not talking therapy, it's not, not psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis however and talking therapy helps you get to like deep root problems. Which you kind of have to deal with that shit before you can change your behaviour.
[:[00:56:51] Eleanor: So again, that's, I think part of it is just giving people time and not, I try not to get sucked into that myth of like, well, if you have this, you're basically, you can't do any of this stuff. Which I think we accidentally can end up doing. We can say, oh, well, if someone, if someone is poor or if someone is suffering with depression or if someone is doing that suddenly they can't do any of that stuff.
[:[00:57:39] Eleanor: Because otherwise people, you know, so you were having a really shitty time with anxiety. And everyone's like, you need to do self-care. And it's like, every moment that you spend with yourself, it's like a fucking hurricane. And it's really stressful,
[:[00:57:53] Eleanor: I'm doing it wrong!
[:[00:57:59] Working Hours: I smell too much to go and smell good!
[:[00:58:06] Working Hours: And it's a very intense smell.
[:[00:58:21] Eleanor: So actually is it self-care actually for that person is more about breathing techniques or it's more about being in nature or it's more about, I don't know, just sitting quietly or putting on a nice outfit, which sounds so minor.
[:[00:58:38] Eleanor: And it's kind of, we do that online.
[:[00:59:00] Eleanor: So I don't have, at the moment, I would like to work with more people from more diverse backgrounds to help them do the things that they want to do. At the moment I don't know how to do that and something that I want to do is work out how, because I think that, I don't think that what I'm doing is just, you know, the methods that only white women can use.
[:[00:59:34] Working Hours: Um, are you familiar with the, uh, email newsletter Doing Good Leeds?
[:[00:59:41] Working Hours: Yeah. Get on them. Um, because they're quite good for linking you to other things and you might want to be advertising yourself on there
[:[00:59:49] Eleanor: And like, I'd like... Something that I would like to do. It's not, I think one of the challenges of being self-employed is you kind of take this hit where if you haven't got a lot of work on you, can't offer a lot of stuff for free and you get into this weird, like glitchy situation where like, everyone has to make sure they're not, you know, fix the holes in the boat first.
[:[01:00:56] Working Hours: Yeah.
[:[01:01:23] Eleanor: And it, it's a challenge. It's a challenge with some of those things. And I think it's, uh, I would like to, to change that and that's maybe a, a next step for me.
[:[01:02:02] Eleanor: No. But, that's about, you know, when I, um, was working full time when I got like a pay rise in my very, very last job, um, I started saving. And then when I became, self-employed a lot of people who are self-employed don't save because, um, as a society, we're not very good at saving because we don't because we have short-termism because of capitalism. It's like, that's always, but I have always been brought up to be very like, to think long term. So both of my parents are very, very kind of strategic, like almost logical people as a child, not great as an adult really helpful.
[:[01:03:08] Eleanor: So a lot of people don't save enough for tax because, um, they just assume that it will be fine. So because of that, I built up quite a big pot of money, of savings that had various emotional attachments, which I then really struggled with because it was like, I'm not allowed that money, blahdy, blahdy, blah. All that shit.
[:[01:03:47] Eleanor: So like when I used to do copywriting jobs, I'd regularly get copywriting jobs that were like four grand, you know, for huge swathes of content. You don't really get that with the people I'm working with. So like coaching, I try and do flat fee at the moment because so many people charge huge amount of money for it.
[:[01:04:10] Working Hours: Yeah, you don't want to under-price yourself because then you seem cheap and what you're offering seems of less value.
[:[01:04:42] Eleanor: So I need to make sure that I'm going right, well, I'll charge this much because then I know actually I can't do any other work for that day but I try and I try and charge that but I've never really had that thing of like, saying no is a problem. And I'm also, apparently I was known for a while as like the one who doesn't do mates rates. And think it's because,
[:[01:05:09] Eleanor: This is the thing.
[:[01:05:27] Eleanor: And you're like expensive. But not in a, like, you're too expensive, just in a way of like, oh, you're so it's like a luxury handbag. Yeah. And I thought, well, all right. Yeah, fine. I'll take that. But it's like too many self-employed people start by undercharging. Like you can always lower your prices, but also people don't, they offer the price. Like one of the best bits of advice I got, I think my first freelance job was, if you tell them the price and they don't blink, you're not charging enough.
[:[01:06:20] Eleanor: So as I progressed through my freelance, I get paid more. But I've never really had a problem with saying no, because it's not, it's not worth it. And like, it's not like I've got loads and loads of cash. I think I'm in a better financial situation than a lot of my peers because of the way that I've chosen to live my life and the things that I don't have and the way that I, my, my mind operates in terms of strategic, like save for the future things.
[:[01:07:16] Working Hours: There are. Um, but you know, they're not necessarily going to be better ones.
[:[01:07:26] Working Hours: Well I, I, I think that it goes back to your earlier point, because I do think that's very interesting in terms of, so me not working at the moment, um like, it's been fantastic.
[:[01:08:09] Working Hours: And it's just really nice. But the thing is, it makes a massive difference of having some resources. So I got some tax back from earlier in the year, which gave me enough cash to kind of not have to bother working, but as I'm running out of that cash, I'm now getting back to the position of, well, there is stuff that I kind of have to pay for.
[:[01:08:59] Working Hours: Um, but you only feel that, you're only in that position when you're, when you're out of cash. Um, as well, uh, I remember reading this article a few years back talking about, you know, all the sort of bands and things in the 20th century that came out of working class culture. It's like, well a lot of that was enabled by the fact that you had benefits, you know, you could survive without you know, working some zero hours’ contracts.
[:[01:09:42] Working Hours: If you haven't got the space to think or to breathe you you you haven't got the space to create
[:[01:09:56] Eleanor: ...a lot of...
[:[01:10:14] Eleanor: So for me, like students have asked me, oh, do I have to work a shitty job after uni just to do this, that and the other and I, I'm always saying, I wish I could tell you no.
[:[01:10:24] Working Hours: You don't have to,
[:[01:10:26] Working Hours: You're very likely to.
[:[01:10:42] Eleanor: It's going to "force" me, is what your words were. It's gonna force me to take this job, et cetera, et cetera. And what happens is we get this myopic thing of like, well, I'm going to do this job. If you're in any way inclined to like, um, as I definitely am, mental health kind of malaise and depression, you go, well, this is it.
[:[01:11:19] Eleanor: And I'm talking like 20 years, at least. If not 50. We would go, do you know what I am going to take this job for six months and I'm not going to enjoy it. But what I'm going to do is at the end of every day, I'm going to make sure that I do this, this and this. I'm going to make sure that I do this in my job.
[:[01:11:52] Eleanor: Not always, but often because I was learning loads of stuff. I love learning, or I was getting to interact with customers and some of them, I hated and some of them, I was like, I'm really finding this useful to learn how to talk to people. Um, and then when I was working full time, again, some terrible clients, some terrible colleagues.
[:[01:12:26] Eleanor: But because I think we don't have that like 20 year, 50 year, not even like plan, in like this really structured way, but even of kind of vision of who, like our life. We think that whatever is happening right now, is it.
[:[01:12:42] Eleanor: And it's actually like, yeah, you probably, uh, maybe you're at a point now where you're like, okay, so I need to take on a job, but you, you, maybe one of the reasons you're so happy now is because you're doing stuff that you really fucking care about.
[:[01:12:58] Working Hours: I'm not doing stuff that I really don't care about than doing stuff that I really do care about.
[:[01:13:03] Working Hours: I think that's a more important thing to me. It's more important to me to not be wasting my time on some mindless rubbish, which is generally what society wants us to do.
[:[01:13:27] Eleanor: So if that's coming from, so many people feel like that. I've felt like that. Was one of the reasons I left full-time work.
[:[01:13:35] Eleanor: Yeah. So your co, so that's your minus one. Is like working for someone else, generating all the cash for them doing mindless shit. So you're right now, you're at zero, which is, I'm not doing that, but we spend so much of our time trying to not be at minus one and just be at zero. That we're just, all right.
[:[01:14:12] Eleanor: And then I choose it based on that, because a lot of people are much more educated and skilled and motivated than they currently think they are, because they've been led to believe that they're not good enough. By systemic issues, by individuals, by families, by teachers, but actually, you know, you're an incredibly intelligent articulate person who really cares about work.
[:[01:15:13] Eleanor: It doesn't mean just because I said yes to everything doesn't mean, I've said yes, like orgasm yes. It's just, yes. Okay. I need that. Or I need this or whatever, but I don't think we do that. We don't have this like vision of what we think our life could be like, and I'm not, you know, I think when people talk about that, it's like not being you don't, it's not about being a millionaire or like having a fancy house.
[:[01:15:58] Eleanor: And I know like, yeah, it is a lot of words. And I think that sometimes it's hard, ‘cause I think is anyone fucking listening to me? But when people, when I work with people to do this, and really going into the nitty-gritty and they say, well, I can't do that. My, a client I worked with recently, her goal was to go to New York on an independent trip just for like four days, which seems like, oh, surely could just book a plane.
[:[01:16:46] Working Hours: She wanted something of her own
[:[01:17:17] Eleanor: So recognizing your own self-worth and that you have skills and something to offer and being okay with wanting better. That's quite hard for a lot of people.
[:[01:17:33] Eleanor: but you're so, you know, you're so deserving
[:[01:17:38] Eleanor: And that's like
[:[01:17:40] Eleanor: And that voice and that head movement you just did, which is kind of like slightly looking down. You know, that's the voice of so many parents, so many teachers.
[:[01:17:50] Eleanor: And it's just
[:[01:17:52] Eleanor: And it's just not true. Because what most people want is not this kind of extraordinary, you know, most people don't want power or money.
[:[01:18:15] Eleanor: Yeah. And what happens,
[:[01:18:17] Eleanor: What happens is we look in the mirror and we don't respect ourselves, we dismiss ourselves. We say, you know, there's, it's like people, who've got these amazing hobbies that they don't tell anyone about. Or like these fantastic accomplishments that they have achieved or these, and I've done that before. I just won't. I did, I was a keynote speaker for a conference. I didn't fucking tell anyone. It's not like I'm perfect. I'm just like, got all my shit sorted.
[:[01:19:01] Working Hours: No, no, no, no. Again I think it's an interesting point, but isn't that about? Uh, I need to start reading more because my language acquisition skills are pretty terrible at the moment. Um, it, isn't that about setting the person though, as well? It's not just about training them in, you know, a bunch of mantras or affirmations, of like, no, I am really worth it and I can go out and win, and but like they need to be embedded within a context of that, of people going, no, you are worth it and I think that's,
[:[01:19:41] Working Hours: that's the hard thing to build surely.
[:[01:19:43] Working Hours: You can build it within an individual, but then the individual then has to build that network out. Like our society very definitely does not contribute. It does not create an environment for that. Even if you're in a loving, supportive family, like, you're going to go into friendship groups. So like, I can't.
[:[01:20:24] Eleanor: So when someone... I used to be in a friendship group when I was at uni and someone once said to me, you should be really careful about, you know, telling people about all the stuff you're doing, because it makes them feel really bad. So what do I do?
[:[01:20:38] Eleanor: So the key is there though is that you are the change.
[:[01:21:05] Eleanor: So when they're not in that network, they still feel supported and resourced. And it has a huge impact. It's like a system, right? So you can't change one bit in the system without the rest of the system changing. And I've definitely found when I have started to be that person of, I, I 'm okay. I can. I am resourced.
[:[01:21:34] Working Hours: Because you believe that they believe it?
[:[01:21:49] Eleanor: And I don't think it should be the person who is. If you had a pyramid and less like kind of the one at the bottom is feeling the shittiest. It shouldn't be them. It's too much pressure on that person to come up to that. If they're at the minus one, it's too much pressure at them to be like, plus one. But if someone's at zero and they can move to that plus one, or they can become slightly more resourced or feel more confident, there's got to be someone in that group to be that first person. Like, sometimes in a business context, I talk about like being the Canary in the cage, you are the one who goes in and says, Hey, guess what?
[:[01:22:52] Eleanor: And it is tiring, like nonviolent communication, it's tiring to be that person who says, when this happens, I feel this because of this need that I have der-der-der. It is tiring. Or like what I'm teaching it's tiring to be the one in the room who's saying let's connect with each other supportively.
[:[01:23:30] Working Hours: So why, if, if we're prepared to put the energy and investment into something that makes the majority of us miserable and poor. Why can't we put the energy and investment into something that actually improves our lives
[:[01:23:43] Working Hours: and makes things better for us,
[:[01:23:44] Working Hours: Why can't we haven't return to community that isn't just let's nosy about what next door is doing and judge them like, let's go and help 'em out
[:[01:23:54] Eleanor: I think one of the reasons that we are willing to put the energy into bullshit, like the disc... the thing of the getting on the bus and the office and the blah, is because it is a model that is very clearly delineated. That we understand. That our parents live through, that we see. Whereas the model of, like one of my clients I'm working with at the moment we went through the process of, do you act... Who have you had in your life who set a goal for themselves been successful and been proud and the number was zero.
[:[01:24:40] Eleanor: So it's, essentially although it's depressing and miserable. It is easier to fit into a template than it is to make this new blueprint. But I completely agree if you're willing to put that energy in and to be drowned in that misery, um, miserable experience. If you take that energy and switch it into, okay, actually, how could I? You know, next time my friend says to me, oh, I'm starting a new project or I got promotion, instead of feeling really fucking envious and cutting her down for it. How could I say, I'm so proud of you? I really support you. I love what you've done. I'd love to hear about it and use that energy of being supported to know that your friend will then return that back to you, because they will.
[:[01:25:47] Eleanor: It's not just give, give, give. It's about like being that whole complete abundant individual.
[:[01:26:17] Working Hours: That's it for now, episode two is already available and more episodes will be dropping shortly. Okay. Everyone take care and be safe.
