Episode 201 · 2 June 2025 · 54:54
How to bounce back when work & life falls apart (our true story)
How to bounce back when work & life falls apart (our true story)
0:000:00
Tip: click any timestamp below to jump there and keep playing.
Enjoying the show? Subscribe for free
Chapters & timestamps
Click any timestamp to jump the player to that moment.
The backstory: Why there was no Thursday episode
Tip 1: Acknowledge the shock
Tip 2: Prioritise immediate actions
Tip 3: Stay flexible
Tip 4: Lean on your support network
Tip 5: Focus on what you can control
Tip 6: Don't be afraid to break commitments
Tip 7: Self-compassion matters
Tip 8: Look for silver linings
Bonus tip: Small habits now, big shocks later
Show notes
How to Bounce Back When Work & Life Falls Apart (Our True Story)
This Week in Work — Al Elliott and Leanne Elliott (Chartered Occupational Psychologist) share their real-life story of having to leave Bosnia & Herzegovina within 48 hours — and the eight practical tips (plus a bonus) that helped them stay calm, adapt fast, and keep moving forward. No theory, no sugarcoating — just honest insights from a genuine gut-punch moment.
🧰 The 8 Tips (Plus a Bonus)
1. Acknowledge the shock. Accept it, don't bury it. Al and Leanne gave themselves about an hour to sit in the reality of "this is actually really bad" before moving into action mode.
2. Prioritise immediate actions. What must be done today? Not this week, not this month — today. They identified urgent tasks and worked through them in order of true importance.
3. Stay flexible. Let go of perfect plans. Some priorities need to happen exactly as planned; others need to bend. Flexibility isn't weakness — it's survival.
4. Lean on your support network. Don't try to do it alone. Friends in Bosnia, power of attorney, people who could manage the process in their absence — none of it happened in isolation.
5. Focus on what you can control. Chunk it down. Make a to-do list and a "won't-do" list. Narrowing your focus keeps you steady when everything else is chaos.
6. Don't be afraid to break commitments. Boundaries over burnout. They cancelled soundchecks and interviews with honest, relationship-protecting emails — and the responses were overwhelmingly supportive.
7. Self-compassion matters. Stress is real and human. "We're both gonna be stressed, we're both gonna be grumpy, we're both gonna be devastated" — naming it out loud made it manageable.
8. Look for silver linings. Find growth in the chaos. It sounds cheesy, but it works. The unexpected Yorkshire grumpy couple, the unplanned moments — they're all part of the story now.
Bonus: Small habits now make big shocks easier later. The reflective practice they'd built over years is what subconsciously kicked in when it mattered most.
🎧 About This Episode
This isn't a theoretical episode. Al and Leanne are living this right now — the shock hasn't fully processed, the grief isn't linear, and they're still paying rent on a place they had to leave. But that's exactly why these tips land differently.
Whether you're an employee receiving a bombshell, a leader delivering one, or just someone navigating unexpected change, there's something here for you.
💬 Connect With Al & Leanne
- Truth, Lies & Work on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/truthlieswork
- Al on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/thisisalelliott
- Leanne on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/meetleanne
- Email: hello@truthliesandwork.com
- Book a call: savvycal.com/meetleanne/chat
🧠 Mental Health Support
If this episode resonates because you're going through something similar, please reach out:
- Mind UK: mind.org.uk/information-support
- Samaritans (UK): Call 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org
- Mental Health at Work: mentalhealthatwork.org.uk
- International support: findahelpline.com
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
Expand full transcript
Al ElliottWhat would you do if you had 48 hours to pack up your home, vacate your office, and essentially get out of the country? This is the country you call home. Would you panic? Would you embrace the challenge? Would you even believe it's happening? On Wednesday, we were told exactly this. We were told we had to leave Bosnia and we had 2 days to do it.
Leanne ElliottToday we'll tell you what happened, how we responded, And why building your resilience every day is critical to managing the most unexpected moments in life. This is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. We'll be back with the whole sorry story After this quick word from our sponsors. HubSpot's Inbound Event 2025 is bringing together the brightest minds in business, AI, and entrepreneurship. We're talking Amy Poehler, the genius behind ChatGPT, Dario Mordei, and Sean Evans from Hot Ones, because apparently even hot sauce interviews can teach us about business strategy.
Al ElliottYeah, September 3rd until September 5th in San Francisco. And no, this isn't just another one of those conferences where you pretend to take notes. While secretly checking your phone. This is 3 full days of actionable insights that you can actually use to grow your business.
Leanne ElliottWhat I love about this is the focus on practical application. We enjoy applied science here. You're not just sitting through fluffy keynotes, you're getting tactical breakout sessions, networking with people who are actually building things, and learning from entrepreneurs who figured out how to thrive in this AI-powered world.
Al ElliottPlus, come on, you're in San Francisco, the global headquarters of let's disrupt everything and see what happens. It's the perfect place to meet your next co-founder, investor, or just someone who gets why you're obsessed with optimizing your customer acquisition funnel.
Leanne ElliottHead to inbound.com/register to see the range of tickets, including VIP options. Fancy, fancy, fancy, fancy. Trust us, your future self will thank you for actually investing in learning something useful. Guess what, Al?
Al ElliottWhat?
Leanne ElliottWe're going to be there.
Al ElliottNo, we're not. I am.
Leanne ElliottI'm manifesting.
Al ElliottOh, okay. Yeah, we're— yeah, you can come and meet us there. There you go. That's the reason to, to go and book your ticket today. VIP experience will no doubt include us. I'd imagine they'd invite us to the VIP area. So go and visit inbound.com/register to get your ticket today. Okay, welcome back. We're talking today about resilience and when plans fail. Now, we've all been in situations in work where Something hasn't gone our way. Uh, hopefully a lot of people have not experienced something catastrophic. And I just wanna say at the beginning as well, Lee, I think it's important to, to make this clear that we, we call Bosnia and Herzegovina our home. We've been there, you know, a length of time. We were, we'll tell you why we were asked to leave in a second. It's nothing nefarious or weird, but there are people in the world who have to leave their country for much more serious reasons. And so, Whilst this was very traumatic for us and it taught us quite a few lessons and we learned quite a bit about our own resilience, just want to be clear, we're not likening ourselves to those families who unfortunately have to leave a country due to war or political regime or change or something like that.
Leanne ElliottYes, we know we are incredibly privileged to have a strong passport, to be British, to have the resources we need to manage situations like this when they come up. Psychologists distinguish between trauma with a capital T and trauma with a lowercase t. We're definitely talking trauma with a lowercase t here in our situation, as we do most situations in the workplace, normal everyday situations. So, by no means we are comparing ourselves to the millions of people that have been displaced over the past 2 years due to war, climate change, famine. It's really just sharing what happened to us. So, you know, we're human. You know that we too have to use our psychology To work our way through challenges in life, just as you do every day in your life and your work.
Al ElliottYeah. So, the more observant of you will have noticed there was no episode on Thursday. That's because we go back to last Wednesday. We were, uh, just to set the scene, we aren't permanent residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina just yet. Um, we're applying for permanent residency, but we essentially, for the last year, we've been working towards that. So, we had a professional lawyer. I'm gonna use the word professional to put some little rabbit ears around it. We had a lawyer, should we just say, whose sole job was to basically get us our residency. And he went through some steps and then by all accounts just didn't do the rest of it. So we got a note about a week ago from the, what they call the Foreigner's Office, which is essentially immigration control in our house, which was a bit weird. They'd come round to our house. We were actually in Mostar at the time. Um, saying, please call us, we have some questions. Um, and so Leanne called them, um, a couple of days later. I think they left you on the Friday, she called them Monday. And what did they say, Leanne?
Leanne ElliottThey said they just need to see, um, our updated working licence. So, as Al said, we've been going through the process of applying for, uh, long-term residency in Bosnia and Herzegovina for some time. A key step of that is obtaining a working licence. For various reasons that aren't particularly interesting, it took us a little while to get all of that paperwork together. And a little while for that paperwork to be processed in Bosnia. That came through. We have a valid working licence, and that's what they asked for. So, when I spoke to the person at the immigration office, I said, of course, I understand it's been a bit delayed coming to us. I have it now. I'll be in your office tomorrow morning with Al. And we were at 9 o'clock.
Al ElliottSo, we thought it was just a question of handing over the licence. We should have known, really thinking about it, because The license was issued to them, so why would they want to see it again? But anyway, they did. So we went in there, we sat down, all smiles, like, hello, how are you? To be fair, actually, we did wait outside for maybe about 15 minutes before, and we're like, that's strange. Why would they need 15 minutes before they saw us in order to check our licenses? But up until that point, we thought everything was fine. And then the woman said, you've overstayed your tourist visa. Now, in most European countries, you get a 90-day tourist visa, after which you have to leave and you can't reenter for another 90 days.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottWe know that. We've, we, people who followed our other podcast, Sideways Life, we did it for about 7 years. We traveled around the world, usually moving on every 30 to 90 days. So we know how visas work. The difference was this time that we were told that our lawyer had been preparing for permanent residency. We'd got everything we needed to, for permanent residency. This, this working permit was the last piece in the puzzle, and then we could finalize that process. That wasn't really Well, that wasn't the opinion that they took.
Leanne ElliottNo. And we've reflected at depth on the process and the pieces of paperwork that we had and that we didn't. And we were unlucky that we received some bad advice. But anyone will know who has to trust an expert. If it's something that's not in your field, you do your research, you get recommendations, you find someone you, you think can help, who says they can help, that they deliver. certain things for you, you trust them implicitly. And that's probably the mistake that, that we made. The Department of Immigration isn't wrong. We did technically overstay. However, the key mistake we, we made was believing that whilst we were in the process of application for our residency and working permit, we had a right to be in Bosnia and Herzegovina. And that is, that is the loophole that was not, not the case.
Al ElliottNo, unfortunately. So, What we tried to do today is we sat down. This is Thursday's episode, which is probably going to come out Monday. We sat down over the weekend and we obviously cried our eyes out a little bit. We felt very sorry for ourselves. And then we were like, well, hang on a minute, what have we actually learned from this? And we looked back at what we did and we were kind of proud, love, weren't we, about how we dealt with this? And we thought, this is kind of like a really good, interesting way to talk about how resilience at work.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al Elliotthow you could build resilience at work, because this isn't sugarcoated. We're going to tell you exactly, you know, the low points. We're going to tell you the time that I think on Wednesday we sat down and drank about 4 beers in about an hour because we're in so much shock. Um, and, uh, which obviously is not a healthy coping mechanism. I don't recommend that. Um, but, um, yes, we're gonna go through. So we've kind of worked out there are sort of 8 things that we learned about ourselves over this period of time. And I think these 8 are tips in how you can build resilience in your work. And hopefully not something like this never happens to you where you literally are ripped, not literally, but metaphorically are ripped from your workplace and have to go and work abroad. Um, we are, we are, I mean, again, we're incredibly fortunate because it was last minute. Leanne managed to get this beautiful apartment just on the Bay of Kotor. In fact, I'll move out the way and see if the camera will focus on it. If you're on YouTube or Spotify Video, you'll be able to see a beautiful view in a second. Things could be worse. Um, you know, we are, we are lucky, but still, at the same time, this is not where we want to be. This is where a lot of people want to be, but this is not where we want to be. We want to be in our home in, in Herzegovina, um, in our beautiful studio with all our equipment, with all our books, with all our stuff around, with our 2 little dogs being idiots in the back garden. And we're not there.
Leanne ElliottWe're not. I can't say in all honesty that each of the, the tips we're going to give you, we were completely conscious of in the moment. Some we were because we've been in not the exact same situation, but similar situation in the past. And what Al and I are always, always conscious to do is when we've been through an event that feels big, feels like a lot, we sit and reflect and we reflect on The moment, how we reacted, what we did well, what we didn't, what we're proud of, what we'd want to do better in the future. And we've done that consistently, probably over the last 7, 8, 9 years.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottAnd I think it's this reflective practice that has subconsciously embedded these things in our psyche. So when we're faced with this situation, we, we react. Um, so this is our But these are our reflections over our most recent challenge, um, how we reacted to it, what worked. Some were conscious in the moment, others were not. But as I said, this is our reflection and hopefully some tips that we can give you to perhaps help the next time you're in a bit of a pickle.
Al ElliottYeah. So I think the first thing we, we maybe subconsciously did, I don't think we consciously did this, was allowing us to acknowledge this shock. So it happened like 9 o'clock. We were literally walking into the foreigner's office, 9 o'clock, all smiles, walked out at 25 past 9, and our world had just like collapsed. Um, and also just, I mean, this is gonna sound so privileged, but you know, we were so excited. We, we lived through the winters of Herzegovina and Southern Europe, which are not great. We lived through them so we can have the summer, the July, August, September where we have, we fill the pool and we, we'll We work half days. And of course that sounds so privileged. And some of you may have just pressed stop on this podcast right now, but we work hard for that and we pay for it. So we pay an inflated rent for probably October, November, December, January, February, March, April, so that we can pay the same rent and have this beautiful summer. So our entire summer, which we were so looking forward to, just disappeared. And so what I think we could have done, and in fact perhaps I wanted to do, was go, right, okay, well this is what we're gonna do, this is what we're gonna do. And we could do this, we could do that. But both of us recognized that we needed a good, probably a day, just to acknowledge the fact that this is terrible, get angry about it, um, and allow ourselves to process what's just happened, which sounds a little bit sort of therapy and, you know, a bit wanky, but I think that's really, that was really importantly.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And we didn't have a day to feel that. I think in a, in a, in a different situation, yeah, taking a day, giving yourself time to just absorb that. Um, would be a good thing to do. We didn't have that. We had about an hour to feel that. And we did. We sat, we went to a cafe. I think I'm— I don't think we even spoke for the first 10 minutes because there's so many things that, that rush through your head. And I think one of the things that we did do is verbalize the big stuff.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottUm, so I said things like, this is actually really bad. And I'll be like, yeah, no, it actually is really bad. And we probably didn't get any deeper than that, but just kind of reflecting the, I guess, the headline feeling and knowing we were both on the same page of the devastation, which again sounds dramatic, but when you're told that you have 48 hours to leave everything behind, there's a lot of logistics in that as well. So, yeah, a quick pause to gather your thoughts.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottAnd we probably did have about the maximum of an hour because we'd actually already had an appointment with a new lawyer set up because we didn't really trust our, our other one. And we had an appointment with our accountant that day as well. So we, we had stuff to do. So we took about an hour, talked to each other about headline feelings, paused for a moment, and then very quickly had to prioritize our immediate actions.
Al ElliottYes, I think that's tip number 2, is that we prioritized what was really important in that moment. And there was lots of things, and it's kind of difficult because you have to use your gut instinct in this situation, because you can't sit down and write a list of all the things that are important and then, you know, mark them 1 to 5 and then do a spreadsheet and all that. You just have to go, right, okay, what's important? And things, things which were important at 7 o'clock that morning, like, oh, we've got to make sure we get enough milk in, we're going to make sure we go and get this, we're going to go and get some dog food, suddenly we're like, just Not at all important. So the important things were, okay, right, is there a way we can stay? And at this point, we didn't know that this was— we suspected that this was a final decision, but we didn't know that. So the first thing we did, we went to see our accountant. We explained the situation. Our accountant is a lovely, lovely guy called Velimir in Mostar. He's just, he's just like, I see him as like a brother. He's probably about my age. And he's just looked after us from day one, never tried to screw us over. Went over and explained the situation. He's like, I'm so sorry. This is terrible. This is terrible. Oh, by the way, the background to this is we're buying a parcel of land in Herzegovina. And so that was due to complete the week that, you know, the following week. And of course, we had to be there to sign for it. Otherwise, we lose this piece of land. The purchase has been going through for a while. So he said, right, go and see my friend, the lawyer. This is the one who he recommended to us. And just by happenstance, we had an appointment with him. Like that morning. Um, and so instead of going to see him about buying a plot of land, we went to see him about power of attorney.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And that's where, you know, we, as part of this process, we identified our urgent tasks. At that point, we had 48 hours to leave the country. Otherwise we were gonna have our passports taken off us and be deported. This is the severity of the situation. Yeah. This isn't a, let's just see how it goes over the next week. No, you are getting deported on Friday if you don't voluntarily leave by that day. So, as much as we would've liked to have looked into all of our legal options to to stay, to pick through the holes and mistakes that our former lawyer made. We didn't have time for that. So, at that point, it was, how do we protect what is important to us and what is a big element of our future? As Al said, we're looking to buy a parcel of land to build our home. Um, that— they wanted that. We needed to protect that. So, all of our focus then went on to, right, how do we protect that this will happen?
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottThrough power of attorney, through calling on friends there who can help us manage the process in our absence. And then very quickly on to, right, well, what do we do about the house that we're living in? What do we do about all of our stuff that's in there? What about, you know, our studio? We usually— the studio you normally see is on our house. There's, you know, a lot of stuff in there to potentially move if we had to. So how do we secure our future? How do we secure the house that we're currently in and all the things that we have. Um, and then what next? Where do we go?
Al ElliottAnd I think that that was the important thing was this prioritization because, um, if you're an employee and you go through something like this, then there's obviously the initial shock. And we've already talked about tip 1 is just, you know, allow yourself to be in that shock. But, but then we looked at our studio and we're like, well, we can't take it down because it took me 4 days to put it, put it up. There's so much equipment in there. We literally, if we put that in the car, we couldn't fit anything else in. So we were like, okay, we can't take that. All right. So we made an immediate decision. Then we're like, okay, well, what about our beautiful, you know, all our stuff in our kitchen? And, you know, we've got all, Leanne's got loads of ingredients for cooking amazing stuff. What can you take? Nope. Can't take that. So that thing was, you know, that prioritization was really important. I think if you're an employee, then I think that just allowing yourself time to get over the shock and then prioritizing, okay, what is the absolute essential thing?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottIf you're a leader, rather than sort of going, right, here's, I'm going to drop a bombshell on you guys. You fix it. I'm off out. You know, help them find out what is important to them. Help them find out what is urgent versus what can wait. And also just, just expect that, you know, they're going to be overwhelmed. So I think that was kind of like our tip number 2, which was just identify what's important.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And again, carrying that over to organizational life, it's what is important in this moment, what needs to be protected. In, in this moment and in the next moment, and being fairly, as I said, brutal about what is necessary and what's not. Um, because ultimately they're the things that are going to matter in a week's time when you've got more clarity and the blood is rushing back to your free frontal— frontal cortex— prefrontal cortex after the shock. I'm still in shock, can't get my words out. Um, so yeah, and that's the other thing as well as part of this overwhelming Understanding what's important is, is, and as hard as it is, but because for us, we talk about it a lot and understanding what is happening to your body in that moment, physiologically, your body is going through a lot. It's in its threat state. Your blood is rushing away from your prefrontal cortex, the, the part of your brain that makes all the logical decisions. It's rushing to your amygdala, your emotional brain. You become irrational, you become angry, you become fearful. Um, all of these things are happening and it's knowing that.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliottthat is how you are feeling, but this is how you, you need to think. I think this is something we did subconsciously or unconsciously, but I think this is something that we both felt because in the immediate reflection, like the 3, 4 hours after we'd left Bosnien-Herzegovina, Al and I were talking about how it felt like an out-of-body experience.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottBecause I felt like my body is panicking, my mind has to Take over in this moment. So, I think even just having an awareness of what is happening to you physiologically can help in these, these moments of panic. And then moving on to the third tip, flexibility.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne ElliottStaying flexible. Once you've identified these priorities, there's going to be some that need to happen exactly the way they need to happen. There's others that need to be a bit more flexible. Yeah.
Al ElliottAnd I think this is, um, this is where also it's going to link into tip 4 as well, because we were like, okay, well, we need to leave and we need to go and find a place for 3 months. Now, if anyone's ever booked anything over on Airbnb, Booking.com, or any of, any of the other platforms for 3 months for July, August, September, you are talking around about €4,000 to €5,000. That's probably about the same in dollar, US dollar, um, per month minimum. And that will get you Likely an apartment. That's not gonna get you a villa with a pool. It's not gonna get you anything like that.
Leanne ElliottIt's not gonna get you a particularly nice apartment.
Al ElliottNo, because those are the months that everyone makes money. Those are the months where they're a grand a week to rent out. And then you're also, our, our plan was, well, we'd go and find somewhere for 3 months. You, where, where is there somewhere that's decent in the world or in Europe, Southern Europe really? Where is someone decent that is still available? On the 30th of May for 3 months over June, July, August that is going to be nice and within budget. You know, that's just criteria. So we originally thought that's the perfect plan. We'll go and find that. And then we were like, this isn't going to happen. So we started splitting it down. Leanne found 2 weeks in Montenegro because it was very, very short notice, like literally 3 days. I think it was 2 days. Um, we got, Leanne managed to get a really, really good price on this.
Leanne ElliottWell, there was a little step before that, wasn't there, in terms of, as you said, leaning into, um, Tip 4, which is to very much leverage your support network. Everything we know about resilience, everything we know about happiness, everything we know about our wellbeing, it's made so much better if we have positive, effective relationships in our life with friends, with family, with colleagues. And it was at that point when we realised this was a really hard problem to solve. And as well, it's understanding where are the quick wins. We get the things sorted. Bobby needed to go to the vet, so we did that quickly.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottThis was a bigger problem to solve. So, we looked at our support network. Who do we know? As Al said, we've travelled frequently for the past 10 years. Who do we know in our network who might be able to help? Wherever we stayed previously, we might be able to go back. And that's when we remembered we have a lovely friend in Bulgaria who has rental houses. So, we contacted him. Initially looking for a couple of months to give us some time to be closer to Bosnia-Herzegovina should we need to be near to sign paperwork and, and whatever else, um, in Croatia, in Montenegro, we cannot re-enter Bosnia. Um, and that's when we secured the 2 months for July and August with a friend. Um, so that's kind of the big problem. So then it's like, okay, well then let's look at the flexibility we have in terms of that first month. That's why we managed to get a pretty decent place for a decent price, because we booked it the day before we checked in for 2 weeks. Um, And I think as well is once you get over that initial panic of checking in with people who have your back, is they share that shock with you, they share that anger with you, that fear with you. And that in itself really does help to dilute the feelings because somebody else, particularly in a short timescale, it's almost like, right, I've offloaded the anger to a couple of my girlfriends, so they're going to be angry for me for the next 45 minutes.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne Elliott45, um, 48 hours whilst we, um, get things in place. That's really helpful as well, to let other people in. It's not a sign of weakness. The people that love you and have your back are going to share the things you're feeling. They're not going to challenge you. They're not going to go, oh, why didn't you know? And how did that happen? And, and also with a, you know, a good litmus test in terms of, of who the people who really do have your back are in those moments.
Al ElliottYeah, good point. So that tip number 3 is staying flexible with plans. And so if you're part of a team or an employee, then I think the key is that there are going to be constraints already thrown at you by the problem, by the disruption, by this bombshell that's been dropped on you. So just don't assume that nothing else can't be done. So don't say, well, we can't do this because that won't happen. Go, well, could we do that? Is it possible to do X, Y, or Z, even though in the past it hasn't been? Um, and then the sort of tip 4 is to lean on your support network. And, uh, that's what we said. We phoned Nico, um, who's, uh, who's a good friend of us, a crazy Bulgarian guy, amazing guy, just the sweetest, sweetest guy. Um, and he was like, yeah, no problems, ring me at 7 o'clock tonight, we'll sort something out. And he was like, yep, absolutely. So I think for, for, you know, if you're in work, in a traditional work environment, then don't be afraid to go back to mentors. Don't be afraid to go back to previous managers. Don't be afraid to go back to previous teammates and go, This has happened. I really need help. If you listen back about 4 or 5 episodes, we talked about someone queuing up for the photocopier and a study they did, queue up for photocopier, and they're saying, I need to make— can I jump in front of you because I need to make some copies? And then can I jump in front of you because I'm late for a lecture? And both of those got the same sort of response. Like 93% of people said, yeah, of course. Which shows that 93% of people are willing to help you out if you can give them any reason. And if you know someone personally, Then if you are open and brave and tell them what's happened, there's a very good chance that they will help you out.
Leanne ElliottYes. And a good reminder as well for everybody. And particularly when, you know, we talk about personal relationships a lot, professional relationships are also worth cultivating and worth nurturing and checking in with people and helping other people out when they need it as well. Um, it's part of a critical part of of your professional brand. That's what networking is. It's not how many people you know, it's not what they can do for you, it's as much about what you can do for them, because you never know when those relationships will be really important to you. Um, we will be back with a few more tips after this very quick break.
Al ElliottBillion Dollar Moves, hosted by Sarah Chenspellings, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Leanne ElliottJoin venture capitalist and strategist Sarah Chen Spellings, as she asks the hard questions and learns through the triumphs, failures, and hard lessons of the crème de la crème, so you too can make billion-dollar moves in venture, in business, and in life.
Al ElliottMaybe start with episode 124, where you're going to hear how industry giants from Canva to YouTube define leadership.
Leanne ElliottListen to Billion Dollar Moves wherever you get your podcasts.
Al ElliottWelcome back. Okay, so before the break, we were saying that, um, Essentially, the tips were acknowledge that, acknowledge the shock, uh, then prioritize immediate steps. Then we said stay flexible. And number 2, tip number 4 was lean on your support network. The tip number 5 is really focus on what you can control. And that is difficult. Leanne talked before about this whole idea of threat from a psychological and a physiological point of view. You are, you're being chased by a lion across the savannas of, of Africa. Um, so it's really difficult to do that, but I think it's really important to think about. Okay, this is the entire problem. What can we influence? What can't? Now, what we can't influence is the decision from, you know, the, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We couldn't influence that. Um, but what we could influence was, well, where can we stay in Europe? As you said before, we, we, rather than thinking, well, let's find the neighboring country, we're like, well, where else? Now, to be fair, you know, um, Bulgaria is, I think it's 15 hours, 16 hours drive from Mostar. So it's not exactly, oh, we'll nip down to Bulgaria, but Because we were looking at what we can control, i.e., we don't have to live near Bosnia. That's what led us on to thinking slightly outside the box and ultimately finding the solution.
Leanne ElliottAnd within the financial constraints that we have, being completely honest, if we had tens of thousands of pounds available or we were willing to spend, we could stay in Croatia. We could stay in Montenegro, just 2, 3 hours away from from our home in Mostar, but we don't have that much cash we're willing to spend at the detriment of other things. Like we say, there's other things we're trying to do at the minute. So, it's within the financial budget and constraints that we have as well. And I say that more for, again, as a business, you're going to have constraints, you're going to have financial constraints, you're going to have resource constraints. So, sometimes it's thinking a bit, as Al said, outside the box and being a bit more flexible. Um, in terms of what, what can be.
Al ElliottAnd I'm just sorry to interrupt, just, just for context then, we're still paying rent on our place, um, which we're renting before, as we're buying our house, still paying rent there. So now we've, we've doubling up on rent, you know, so it's, it's not, it's not like we're going, oh, you know, we might have to spend a bit of extra money. No, we have to double up on rent and it's going to be significantly more if, if we lived somewhere like Croatia.
Leanne ElliottSo as you were saying, in terms of focus on what's in your control at this point as well. You know, speed is really important when you're going through this type of shocking change. People don't— people can deal with ambiguity if it doesn't stay around for long. We, we had to figure it out quickly, but I know that if we had a week to have gone through this scenario, we would have equally have got to this point as quickly. Because the ambiguity doesn't, doesn't suit either of us, doesn't suit anybody, but it really doesn't suit us. And we know ourselves and each other well enough to know that it doesn't. So it, it's moving at pace when, when you can within the constraints that you have. One thing that really helped with that as well, and, and in terms of finding calm during that initial period of action, and this is going to sound so basic, but write a to-do list.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottRight. Several. I think we had about 6 going in terms of, right, what do we have to do in terms of the office? What do we need to do in terms of the house, the dogs, the landlord, the lawyer, the this? What do we need to pack? What do we need to bring? What do we make— need to make sure that we have? Having a list just made it feel more controllable. And that's actually the last thing that we did. So we had 2 days to sort all this out. We had to leave on day 3. What we did at the end of day 1 was make this mammoth to-do list. Because it felt like if we could get everything out on paper, then it'll be more manageable. And the psychology knows that this is true as well. So, if you're dealing with emotions or too many thoughts rushing around your head and it's all just unmanageable, writing it on paper, neuroscience has shown us through very sexy MRI imaging, that actually again transfers the energy from our amygdala to our prefrontal cortex. So, it actually helps us process the emotion and generate more Um, coherent thoughts. So that mammoth to-do list might sound simple, but actually it was one of the best things that we did and could have done. Because when we woke up on day 2, we knew exactly what we needed to do. There was no discussion. There was no, oh, what now? We knew exactly what now is. Um, and then having that to-do list, that very granular to-do list, that one step at a time to-do list.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottJust helped us get through that very, very difficult day.
Al ElliottYeah. And basically what we did, we chunked it down. That's basically, that, that's the long and short of it is we took a huge big task, which is move out of our house, our home, our office, take our 2 dogs, go and find somewhere to live and do all that essentially in 48 hours, probably less at that point, probably more like 36 to 24 hours. That's huge. So like Leanne did, she just chunked it down. So she's now got a packing list. She's now got a list for the office. I had a list because I tend to deal with the tech stuff. So I was like, okay, right, I'm going to break down the office, put it together into a— this is the recording studio— put it together and then put it back together in the office, test that everything works. I've got all the cables and then cool, pack it up. So stuff like that. And so I think if you're a leader or a manager and this sort of, you're having some kind of like drama at work, some catastrophe, some crisis, This idea of creating manageable chunks, staying steady and saying, guys, let's just concentrate on one foot in front of another. So, I suppose we did call this originally focus on what you can control, but maybe it is actually more likely just chunking it down into smaller tasks.
Leanne ElliottBut into those tasks that you can control.
Al ElliottYes.
Leanne ElliottYou know, that's, that's the link there. Um, and after having that list, delegate who's responsible for what. And then I decided, right, I'll do this, you'll do that, we'll both do this together and have those check-in moments. And it sounds so cheesy, and there's probably people listening going, you didn't do that. I promise you we did. After about 3 hours on that first day, we sat down with a cup of tea and went, right, let's go through the checklist, let's go through the to-do list. What have we done? Where are we at? Do we need help with anything? Is there anything that actually we realized isn't that important now? Anything that's come up that we need to add to the, to the list? Having those check-in moments has helped us One, check in with each other and make sure we were okay. 2, make sure that we were on track. And 3, make sure that everybody knew what they were doing in this very short period of time to make sure it all got done.
Al ElliottYeah, absolutely. I think what Leanne was saying there is, um, sort of working out what needs to be done and what doesn't need to be done. That was like sort of like tip number 6 was don't be afraid to break commitments. Don't be afraid to make a won't-do list. I come from a family where, uh, if we used to get read the Pied Piper of Hamelin every single night for a bedtime story, and that was like, And the moral of the story is that once a promise has been made, it shall never ever be broken. And so I grew up probably the first 30 years of my life going, I cannot break any single promises. And then I started breaking promises and realizing if you do it in the right way, it's okay. So as I alluded to, certainly I think before actually, we had an interview booked for that Wednesday afternoon with a lovely guy called Geoff. We teased it on the Tuesday episode.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottWe, it was tight, it was short, but we knew Geoff was cool. We'd had a sound check with him. We're like, great, we'll record it on the Wednesday. I'll edit it on the Thursday and then we'll put it out on the Thursday afternoon. We had to cancel it.
Leanne ElliottYeah, because again, in that, in that moment where workload is high and time is short, and that is a scenario that I know every small business owner listening will be familiar with, it's important to reduce the workload where you can to make the rest manageable. Because if it's not manageable, it's going to break. And at that moment, that moment of crisis, you don't have the luxury of breaking. You don't have time to break. And as Al said, it's communicating that quickly, clearly, honestly, apologetically, um, with the tone of, I'm mortified to have to do this. This is the general reason why. Do you, you know, is that okay? And can we rearrange this for another time? It's making sure that people know this is an extreme circumstance. This isn't business as usual. This isn't how we normally do things.
Al ElliottYeah. So the email I sent to, so we had 3 or 4 soundchecks booked in and 2 or 3 interviews. And this was the email I sent. I said, hi, name. I'm so, so sorry to do this. We've had a bit of a domestic issue. Nothing bad, just really freaking inconvenient. Again, adding a little bit of humor and And brevity, a levity to it. Um, this means we have to spend the next few days sorting that out, so I'm gonna have to cancel our upcoming chat and ask that we reschedule. I'll be in touch early next week with some alternative dates. As I say, I'm devastated and seriously wouldn't reschedule if it wasn't 100% necessary. Please don't lose interest. We really want you on the pod. This person replied, no worries, totally understand. Take care of yourself. Chat next week. And every single person replied in the same way. Every single person was like, I hope you're okay. These things happen. Just let me know. And that was such a lovely thing because we respected their time so much. We didn't just cancel it. We, we had a little bit of an altercation with a, with a guest, um, this week who, in our opinion, kept canceling and rescheduling. And then they got quite arsey when I said, dude, I'm not sure you're for us. Um, but this is the thing. We were like, look, I'm so sorry. And so just, I think it's okay to pause. It's okay to postpone, but Honesty by explaining, I'm not just binning you off. Something's come up. You don't have to tell them what's come up, but something has come up. Wouldn't otherwise do this. So I'm really, really sorry.
Leanne ElliottAnd again, it's protecting those relationships, those relationships that mean a lot to us that we want to continue to, to build on. I've had people who I've been in fairly long-term professional relationships with and got to a point where I'm assuming they're in crisis. I don't know because they never told me. But I just have meeting after meeting, reschedule, cancel, reschedule, cancel. You know, when you do it through automatic link on Zoom, to the point where maybe they did that 4 or 5 times. The last time got canceled and I never heard from them again, despite my, my attempts to check in and follow up. Um, so there's different ways. It's ghosting, essentially. You could ghost these people, but probably not going to serve you in, in the long run. Um, and I guess going on to tip number 7 in terms of these I guess modeling these boundaries, these behaviors, that this is how we normally do things, so we'll be open and honest when we can't do it that way, is setting yourself some boundaries in terms of, of your own ability to feel this and deal with this. Give yourself a break. Be kind to yourself. Know that this is hard. I think one of the things I kept saying all the time was like, this is a lot. Like, this is a lot. And I, I could tell when I was looking at you, Al, when I said that, you'd be like, okay, I know this is— you're starting to feel it now. So let's just take a, take a moment. One thing that Al and I have always done very well, um, but probably more so well since we started working together maybe 3 or 4 years ago, and this is, this is not something we did automatically. We had to learn about setting our own boundaries and checking in and And one thing we, we said to each other at the end of day 1 was, I said to Al, we're gonna be really shitty with each other tomorrow.
Al ElliottHmm.
Leanne ElliottI was like, we're both gonna be stressed. We're both gonna be grumpy. We're both gonna be devastated. We're both gonna be tired. I said, we're gonna, we're gonna be unintentionally mean to each other tomorrow. I said, let's just give ourselves permission to not beat ourselves up if we say something we didn't mean. Try not to take it personally if somebody said something that they didn't mean. Give us each other permission to walk away if it's just getting too much and too heated in that moment. Um, and almost making those, those rules and boundaries ahead of a situation getting even more stressful can be quite useful. Did we stick to them entirely? No, not necessarily. But because we'd had that conversation, we, we had that, that ability to go, so, you know, before when I walked away and it really pissed you off, that was just my attempt to remove myself from that situation because I could feel myself Let's say, oh, right, yeah, okay, I understand. It's that constant dialogue and that kindness to yourself and also kindness to the people you're in this with. And I think particularly any team that's gone through a stressful situation is going to see their teammates react in stressful situations differently. Um, and just give people a break, give them a free pass, you know, if things are particularly stressful. Um, you don't have to pull up people on Every little bit of, of bad behaviour if it is in a very stressful situation.
Al ElliottYeah. So, I think our tip 7 is self-compassion. Just be, be nice to yourself, be nice to your other teammates. I, I think just one other thing I want to add to that is that, um, and I know that I talk a lot about gender right here, but I, I, what I try to do is sympathise with listeners who are maybe my age and my, my gender, um, because We are struggling to learn what the new world is expecting of us, what is acceptable, what's not. And I think for, if you tend to be sort of a, you know, an old, a middle-aged male of a certain age, then you, your temptation is to fix things, to go, well, I'm the fixer. And this, and in a marriage, you know, often that's what happens. This has gone wrong. You know, I've got a puncture. If it's people of my age, they'll go, well, I'll go and fix it for you.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottAnd so it's really difficult cuz you can't be the fixer because you've got just as many skills in this situation as the other person. No, not always, but in this particular situation we did. We both had skills like that. So, you know, not jumping into the, I'm gonna go and save the day because sometimes, like as I learned with Leanne, any particular, even just a smaller problem, she was like, well, I've got this problem. And my instinct is to go, well, why don't we do this? And I've learned with Leanne, I need to stop and go, so tell me the problem again. And she outlines the problem. I go, and what sort of thing, what, what are the ideas of solving this problem? And often she, often all she wanted to do was talk it through. Then she'll just go, okay, no, that's fine. No, I know what I'm going to do. That's fine.
Leanne ElliottAnd equally, I've learned when I can, you know, sometimes start on this, this way of coaching, essentially, if I can feel myself pushing against it, I know that I'm not ready to solve the problem yet. And I'll say something like, oh, do you know what? I was just having a moan. I'm not ready yet. That's usually at that point they'll just give me a hug and we'll, we'll go about our day. Heard, helped, or hugged. That's a key thing. If you can have that kind of conversation with your partner, what do you need in this minute? Do you need to be heard? Do you need to be helped? Or do you need to be hugged?
Al ElliottAbsolutely. So tip number 7 was be compassionate with yourself. Um, and if you're a leader, then model this. Don't, you know, be compassionate, be, have, be self-compassionate. I'm not sure that you can be self-compassionate, but you know what I'm trying to say. Because your team will follow. And if they go, you know, he's locked himself in the office, or she locked herself in the office because she wants just an hour to herself, maybe that means I can take an hour to myself. Maybe I can go and have a cup of tea or something, or a cup of coffee, and just go, this is, this is a lot, isn't it? Tip number 8, I think, is just look for silver linings. Um, Lee, what are your thoughts on, on, on this?
Leanne ElliottIt's so important, and it's, oh, it sounds really cheesy and cliché, doesn't it? To look on the bright side. Where's that silver lining? Every cloud. The fact is that this is, this is rooted in positive psychology. This is rooted in, in what we call psychological capital. What's our hope? What's our optimism? And these are key things that build our resilience. So yes, looking for growth or opportunity in a moment when reflecting on it is really positive. Being grateful, being thankful. We've acknowledged multiple times in, in this conversation how grateful we are to have the resources and support network we do, how lucky we are to be British citizens with a strong passport, how lucky and privileged we are that we're talking about a mistake at the immigration office. We're not talking about asylum or displacement. All of these things are really important to, to build a positive mindset, which is really good for our own well-being. It's also really good for our resilience, for our problem solving. And also, from a point of the relationships we've talked about, if you're, you know, if we'd been talking to Nico, our friend in Bulgaria, and gone, this is awful, it's the worst thing that's ever happened, I can't believe it, or, summer is going to be awful, I can't believe this is happening to me, like, um, dude, I've just offered for you to come and stay at my house. Is it that bad? You need to kind of be mindful of, of kind of what you're saying and the emotions you're projecting. Is it going to impact other people as well, particularly those that That want to support you. I think it can also help to shift that mindset as well from, from that place of panic and loss to actually new opportunity and moving on. And again, this takes more time than we've had. We're going to continue to flip-flop back in these conversations over time, and that's okay as well. And particularly if you're doing this with a team, with a partner, It's being mindful that somebody might need to have the same conversation more than once, and that's going to feel really frustrating if you've already dealt with that, if you've already transitioned through that. Somebody who is still talking about it hasn't made that transition yet. That's your sign, that's your signal. They're still, they're still struggling with that transition, with moving on. The key to, to whether this is effective and productive and whether you should indulge it a little bit more. is when you're having this same conversation, are there new bits of information coming to light? Are there new bits of reflection that are coming through? Al and I had a conversation on Sunday, and it probably was been in the 4th, 5th conversation like it we'd had in terms of a certain, um, sequence of events that happened on our lead-up to leaving. And I noticed that we were both coming up with new reflection points. We were going back over, over old ground and being angry over things we'd expressed anger of before, but we were starting to come up with new bits of like processing and in a way acceptance and, and the whole grief model, bargaining and depression. And if somebody's repeating themselves, ask yourself, are they actually repeating themselves or are they bringing new bits of information, new bits of reflection to this conversation? If they are, try and have that patience and hold that space for them because this is part of their processing. If they're not, and they're purely just repeating themselves, then do what Al said before and try and coach them, coach them forward to, to look forward and look back more positively.
Al ElliottYeah. And I think the other thing is like with this whole idea of silver linings, um, you know, um, is that oftentimes you look back on stuff that was like, seemed at the time like a disaster and the best things came of it. Um, It wasn't a disaster, but Leanne and I were in Thailand for 3 months. We did it for like 3 consecutive years. I think we went to Thailand for 3 months, January, February, March.
Leanne ElliottI'm gonna really feel sorry for us now, Al.
Al ElliottI know, I know. I realized that we did, we didn't live in like, you know, massive luxury, but, um, we were working as well. We were working, of course. Yes, yes, yes. Um, but the other thing is that we went to renew our visa. Oh, this is the visa thing, visa story again. I just realized now, went to renew our visa and the visa office was shut and it involved literally a taxi to the ferry, a ferry across to the mainland, then another taxi to the visa office and it was shut. And we were like, well, that's really unlucky because that's been like 4 hours now to get here. So we have to spend another 4 hours getting back. On the way back, we jumped on the back of— in Thailand, they have these van taxis where you just can, you can get 600 people in the back of a van and everyone pays about 2 baht, which is about 20p, and you get home. But it stops off everywhere and drops people off. And this was, we take this beautiful resort and we were like, where's this? This was only like maybe about 10 minutes down the road from us, but where's this?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottEnded up staying there, ended up going there. Grumpy couple in front of us who were from Yorkshire, nothing against Yorkshire, I lived in Yorkshire, but grumpy couple in front of us and they were like, oh, I expected a welcome drink. This is the worst service I've ever had. The receptionist came over to us who were waiting very quietly and said, we've given you a complimentary upgrade. And we suspect that complimentary upgrade was meant for the grumpy Yorkshire couple, but they were grumpy and we weren't. We were just sitting there quietly waiting. And we got this beautiful, beautiful thing for about a third to a quarter the price it should have been, uh, for a week. And so all that came from the fact that the visa office was shut and we got a bit more panicky, like we've only got 3 days to renew our visa.
Leanne ElliottYeah. And there, there'll be all sorts of scenarios that you'll, you'll look through, you know, if this hadn't happened, that wouldn't have happened. I wouldn't have done this. I wouldn't have met this person. There's so many sliding doors moments in life that might take years before you actually realize the connection. But the fact is The important thing is you're constantly looking for that connection, because if it's all just random, it's all just chaos, then we struggle to find meaning, we struggle to find any sense of control, and that's when our psychology can suffer, our mental health can suffer. It's a case of, again, it's rooted in positive psychology and lots of cool research on it, but yeah, positive thinking isn't something anybody does innately. It has to be mindful. It has to be trained. It needs to be intentional. Um, this is where gratitude journaling comes from. This is the root of it all. It's not so you can sit there showing off in Starbucks with your oat milk latte and how awesome you are and balanced you are for journaling. It's to train this mindset. So, when you come to a situation like this, then you have the resilience to deal with it.
Al ElliottSo, we'll recap those 8 tips now. Um, but just sort of like, it almost like as a bonus tip, if you can prepare for something like this, almost like, so for example, if you've got all your stuff, all your documents everywhere, just take an evening and scan them all into Dropbox or Google Drive or something. So you've just got a virtual copy. If you've got, uh, if your documents for your project are spread out over different hard drives or different people, see if you can just get a copy of them, just spend an hour getting them all together into one place so that if this person goes off sick for a long time. You don't have to worry about whether you're going to get that file or recreate it or anything like that. So, I mean, I know that this has been slightly abstract because this is not really— it is a work problem for us, but it's not your traditional work problem. But I think there's so much you can learn from this. I'll just quickly go through the 8 tips that we wrote down. The first one was acknowledge the shock. Just allow yourself to acknowledge that something pretty bad That's happened. Like Leanne says, this is a lot, isn't it?
Leanne ElliottAnd allow yourself to go back to that once the immediate crisis is over.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottBecause that shock is going to take a while to process. We haven't fully processed that yet. No, that's going to take us a few weeks yet. So be willing to go back to that.
Al ElliottAnd also, just like Leanne says, those 5 stages of grieving, you know, you, you, they're not, they're not linear. You go back and so I woke up this morning really angry at a very particular person who I'm not going to name. Because they did something which was, which we felt was very unacceptable in, in our moment of need. But then, you know, that's fine. That will fade. Tip number 2 was to prioritize the immediate actions. See what you can do right now.
Leanne ElliottTip number 3 is stay flexible beyond those immediate and concrete actions. Appreciate that things might change and keep your mind open to options and possibilities, which leads us nicely into tip 4. Rely on your social network, your professional network, your friends, your family, everyone who loves you will want to help you in this moment. And be prepared, sadly, that also in this moment, you might find some people that perhaps aren't as good of friends as you hoped they were.
Al ElliottAbsolutely. Tip number 5, focus on what you can control. Chunk it down. Make a, make a won't-do list. It's fine. Uh, which then also tip number 6 is don't be afraid to break commitments. If you do it, if you do it with grace and you do it politely and you give enough of a reason, remember the photocopier, you don't have to give a very valid reason. You need to give a reason. Then 93% of people will send you a lovely message going, it's fine. I hope you're okay.
Leanne ElliottAnd tip 7, be kind to yourself. This is going to be a really stressful situation. Give yourself a break. Give other people around you going through the same stress a break, don't beat yourself up. And leaders, know that these feelings can spread, so be kind to yourself and be kind to everyone else because that means they'll try and do the same. And finally, look for the silver linings. Try that reflective practice in terms of what you learn, what opportunities could be presented, how grateful you are for what you do have in your life. It will help you in that moment in processing what has happened. And in processing what has happened, and it'll help you in the future to have the resilience to bounce back when you need to again.
Al ElliottSo, there you go. That's our story. Quite a dramatic story. Not the most dramatic story in the world right now. There are people who are— we are fully aware there are people who've got much worse lives than ours. Um, and, um, as I said, Kotor Bay in Montenegro is not the worst place to spend a couple of weeks. Uh, but still, it's not where we want to be. Um, so I think the main thing is that just, you know, you're going to come across problems. Resilience is how you fix them. And more importantly, as a manager, a leader, or a business owner, by helping your teams and your managers to build resilience, that's how your organization is going to thrive. Because that's when, let's be honest, when what? When did any company go from 0 to $10 million with no challenges? It's never happened. And usually there's, there's usually at least 10 to 20 to 30 points along the way where it's like kind of all or nothing. You have to put all your chips in, and that is the time— sorry, I just banged on the table for emphasis, and I think I might have just nudged the camera— but that is the time when your team's resilience is going to save your company.
Leanne ElliottI think all of this can be summed up as well by a keyword that I think we used a couple of times, but maybe not enough, is empathy. Empathy with others. Um, you know, there's a thing, you know, with particularly when we talk about mental health, Particularly people that might look more privileged or have more money. Oh, it's all right for them. What are they moaning about? They've got a mansion with, you know, X number of staff and they're famous and they've got their own business. And, you know, you might be looking at your business owner and leader going, it's all right for them. They've got all the money. As a business owner, you might be going, it's all right for them. They just show up and they get a paycheck. The fact is everyone has their own struggles. Everyone has their own perspective on things in, in the different elements of life and work that impact us. Positively and negatively. Um, so yeah, some empathy in, in these situations is always a good thing too.
Al Elliott100%. If you've got a story like this, we'd love to hear it. We're— we will be back on LinkedIn very shortly.
Leanne ElliottYeah, that got on my to-don't list very quickly, not gonna lie.
Al ElliottExactly, exactly. So we'll be back on, uh, on LinkedIn very shortly, but, um, just tag us into something if you know of a story. If you've, you know, if you've, if, if, if you've got any— if you know something that happened in your workplace that, uh, that was tough and you're able to talk about it, Then you can email us directly if you want us to have a chat about it. If you just want to just have a one-to-one chat, then check the show notes. There's always a link to book a call with Leanne or I. And mainly, big thank you to you if you've stuck with this and you've been like, I'm wondering where the— why there is no Thursday episode. There's probably a very good reason. Yes, looking at you, the likes of Jeremy, some of our biggest fans, Rita, who've gone, well, there probably is a reason why. There was a reason why. And you didn't, um, You didn't bust out proverbial chops.
Leanne ElliottAnd thank you to all of our friends and family and colleagues and contacts. Um, you've really helped us through these past few days. I can't even tell you how grateful Al and I are for each and every one of you. Thank you so, so much. And a final word, don't think that we went through this process as cool and calmly as we have made out. We went through this process, but it was a bit more Um, panicked and emotional. And did I break down into, into really ugly crying tears for about 20 minutes? Yes, I did. But then I picked myself up and got back on my to-do list and carried on. So like, like we've said, be kind to yourself.
Al ElliottYes, we're back on Thursday with an episode, as you can imagine, not yet planned out completely. But, um, if we can get things back, back in the diary, then we'll, we'll bring you a guest. Otherwise, Leanne and I've had a couple of ideas we've been pondering that we would love to talk to you about and, uh, and get your opinion on.
Leanne ElliottYeah, so we'll see you on Thursday in some form or shape, and we will of course be back next Tuesday, our constant companion this week in work, with our news roundup, our hot take, and our world-famous weekly workplace surgery where I answer all of your questions, um, if I can.
Al ElliottAnd she always can. See you soon, guys. Bye-bye.