Riddle me this, riddle me that. With a rat-a-tat-tat, my name's Zack. What's your name? Forget about it. It's the 18th of January. Yes, it is. Because you are quite artistic, aren't you? Well, you might be saying it wrong. Marcus Raylis today, Jack. Are you ready? I you like it. I like that guy. Pass through this brief patch of time in harmony with nature.

and come to your final resting place gracefully, just as a ripened olive might drop praising the earth that nourished it and grateful to the tree that gave it growth. Wow. Did you say grateful or grateful? Very clever. I love that one. I think that's a really beautiful one. And what I take from that is how do you how are you grateful for all the different phases, all the different passages of time that you get to? And I think

As salespeople, what we're often guilty of is only being grateful for the wins for meeting quota for the results at the end. But actually there's so much growth and so much learning in the tougher times. And even when you look back on some of the tougher times, think, something happened there. There was actually change there and that change led to some growth. And I don't think you'll mind talking about it. a of personal story of the business in the first year, but our quick growth came from, we had one.

substantial client. And you worked with them. They said, look, we want to have five people in this full time. It's gotten higher. Five people. They're a full time client. And like a lot of businesses at the time, they had some venture capital backing and there was some pressure from shareholders after working with us for a set amount of time. They suddenly decided, you know what? We've got a bit of money that we are. We're to pull the plug on this for the time being. And we're left thinking, wow, I've got

Five people here that are working on this account. I've got myself, I've got the office, I've got, all these different things. And we could have easily at that point gone, this doesn't work. I was talking to your business the other week, their biggest client left in the pandemic, whole agency closed down. So there's no way we could possibly recover from that. There's nothing we could do. So I think from memory, we had about two months maybe to fill the deficit. So it was a bit of a buffer time, two months to fill.

five people full-time five days a week, you know, it's a big ask. I think sometimes the, it's the blinders when you're focusing on one thing, that's all you kind of see. So that when you remove those blinders and you're put under pressure to think of other options and you start to think like what else is out there and what could happen, you start to be creative. And it's only then that actually like,

The first instance when they came on board, that was the making of us as an agency. When they left, that was also the making of us as an agency because that gave us, okay, this is the room to actually grow and how do we grow and be sustainable? businesses will have seen this with one monster client. If they pull, like you say, it can end everything. But what it did was it refocused us on...

what the initial business was, what the initial, went back to basics and we started to understand what can we do? And I think there's definitely something about that in times like hard times that you work together, but having that gratitude, it's very, very hard to have gratitude in those moments because you're up late, you're thinking about everything, you're working. And I'm not necessarily up late worrying, but you're always trying to, is there another outcome? Can I think of something? Can I come up with?

solution, what can I do? But having those moments of gratitude in the hardest times, you learn something. You learn something about yourself, about the business, and you're kind of building up that scar tissue as well that makes you stronger. One of my things that I do, and we used to have it on the wall when I talked to you about gratitude, is you know angel numbers. So you look at a clock and it's like 1717, 1111. Life's good.

I created this habit because gratitude becomes a habit, right? And you've got to remember to be grateful when it's hard. That's why so many people, gratitude journal in the mornings or in the evenings, because it's a chance to say, this is it. And I was doing journaling, but I thought, actually, I keep looking down at my clock and I see these angel numbers all the time. So every time I see that, I'm just going to shout at the top of my voice, life's good mother. As just as like a reminder to say, you're alive, your life's good.

You get into work with friends and you're getting to do exciting things. It's very easy to let our negative bias focus on the bad things in life. But actually if we can inject just a little bit of gratitude, we'll learn so much from it. It's the difference between I have to do this and I get to do this. Cause a lot of people would want to be where you are right now. And if you're looking to keep yourself humble on that, there's people who've been where you are.

and done more. They've had your same baggage, your same circumstances, actually been able to achieve more. So yeah, I think it's just so, so important. And that moment there of growth for us as a business wasn't our only one. And actually all the big milestones of it gets a bit excited, a bit chaotic for a bit. But what you come out with on the other end is you've got to that slightly different level and it's not like you can go back.

I've got to a different level, the infrastructure is different, there's rules in place where you couldn't go back to that place now. You've had to grow so much. So whenever we've hit those now, I've just embraced them. The evidence is there that, it gets a bit rocky here, but there's something good on the other side. And I also think that when you look back, if I was to ask you about holidays you've had, right, and tell me stories, you'd probably tell me about the things that went wrong and the stupid things that happened.

You're not going to tell me, it was great. We went to a clubhouse till four in the morning and we danced with bottles of vodka. That's boring. Actually, the good stuff in life comes from like the things that went wrong, the funny stories, the humor, the memories. And it's only with reflection and hindsight that you can look back and be like, that actually was a moment. That was actually quite funny that we missed our flight and we were there stuck in Portugal for three days or whatever it is.

In the moment it's not. it's about how do you have that kind of future lens of gratitude of like, I know that one day I'll probably laugh about this. So I'm not going to get beat up about it now. Yeah. Nice. Really nice. Really lovely. Really lovely. Actually. Beautiful. I've been Jack Frimston. I've been Zach Thompson. Remember you will die. It's dear 29 in the big brother hoose.