Episode 317 · 9 July 2026 · 42:45
He built his company around happiness, but was he happy? With Richard Clarke
Featuring Richard Clarke
He built his company around happiness, but was he happy? With Richard Clarke
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Intro — the founder who did everything 'right'
Richard's origin story — behavioural science meets software
The 5 needs: Safety, Community, Autonomy, Growth, Purpose
interview#happiness#needs#framework
Which need matters most? Richard's controversial pick
interview#happiness#needs#controversial
The misconception of what happiness actually is
interview#happiness#misconception#theory
Autonomy, hybrid work, and the WFH debate
interview#autonomy#hybrid-work#wfh
Why managers don't get it — and how to fix that
interview#managers#leadership#management
Case study: mapping anonymous scores reveals a meeting problem
What Richard tried that didn't work
interview#failure#lessons#experimentation
The Google 20% time myth — busted
interview#google#20-percent-time#myth
The post-exit slump: 'I should be the happiest person on earth'
interview#post-exit#slump#happiness-trap
Where to find Richard
Show notes
He Built His Company Around Happiness, But Was He Happy? — with Richard Clarke
Guest: Richard Clarke — founder of software company Secret Source, behavioural science graduate who built his business around team happiness and successfully exited after a decade.
Richard Clarke did what every founder dreams of. He built a company, spent 10 years growing it, and sold it. So why did he fall into the biggest happiness trap there is?
Richard joins Al and Leanne to open up about the bittersweet reality of exiting a business — the sudden loss of community, the unexpected grief, and how he used his own behavioural science background to climb out of the post-exit slump. He breaks down the 5 essential needs every human requires to be truly happy at work (based on the US Surgeon General's framework), shares a brilliant case study in asking — not guessing — what your team actually needs, and thoroughly busts the famous myth surrounding Google's "20% time."
Top 3 Takeaways
Happiness at work comes down to 5 needs: Safety, Community, Autonomy, Growth, and Purpose. Based on the US Surgeon General's framework, if you can map your team's anonymous scores on these five areas, you'll find issues you never knew existed — often with surprisingly simple fixes.
Ask, don't guess. Richard's case study shows a team that seemed fine on paper was quietly struggling with meeting overload. A simple anonymous survey revealed the problem instantly. You don't know what your team needs until you ask them directly.
Don't pin your happiness on a future event. The exit, the payout, the "one day everything's sorted" — Richard hit that milestone and found himself in the biggest happiness trap there is. The exit checked off safety and autonomy, but stripped away community and belonging. Founders, take note.
More From Richard Clarke
- Free Ebook — the fundamental science of workplace happiness: richardclarke.eu/ebook
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/richardmclarke
- Website: richardclarke.eu
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottRichard Clarke did what every founder dreams of. He built a company, spent 10 years growing it, and sold it. Surely that would make him very happy indeed.
Richard ClarkeI should be the happiest person on the earth, and I fell into the biggest happiness trap that there is. That is, I'll be happy when, and you pin your happiness on some future event. I'll be happy when I get 3 A's in A-level, when I get my degree, when I get the pay rise. So I thought, I'll be happy when, when I exit.
Leanne ElliottThat trap, pinning your happiness on a future event, the exit, the payout, the day everything's sorted. Richard felt the weight lift off his shoulders the day he signed, and in that moment, he felt something else, real grief, the kind you'd feel watching your own kid leave home for good.
Al ElliottRichard spent 10 years studying what actually makes people happy at work, and he turned it into a framework leaders now use to fix unhappy teams. He built his own company around it with team happiness as the number one KPI. Then he sold it and really tested his own framework.
Leanne ElliottToday we're asking, is there really a formula for creating happy workplaces? And if so, where do you even start?
Al ElliottAnd along the way, Richard's gonna bust one of the most repeated myths in making employees happy, Google's famous 20% time. Turns out actual Google employees have never really heard of it.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al, I'm a business owner, and we are here to help you simplify the science of work.
Leanne ElliottRichard Clarke studied behavioural science, built a software company around team happiness as its number one metric, and sold it last year. He now teaches leaders the 5 things every person needs to be happy at work, And today he's telling us exactly what you should do and what you should not do to have a happy workplace. So let's join Richard and Al right after this very short break.
Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot. Because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Richard ClarkeMy name's Richard Clarke. I I studied behavioral science at university, and I've always been fascinated by this concept of happiness. And first, my own personal happiness. And I traveled the world, went to 50-odd countries, worked in many of them looking for this secret. And then in 2014, I founded my first company. It was a software company called Secret Sauce. I figured that the secret to being a successful company would be in the teams, in making a great place to work. And I thought the best way to measure if I was being a good leader was to measure their happiness. So I built a team and our number one KPI was team and client happiness. And I sold that company last year. And nowadays I teach leaders all the things that I've learned over the last 10 years on how to make companies happier places so that your team perform at their best.
Al ElliottNow, a bit of a left-field question here, but you mentioned the word Secret Sauce. I see the play on words with source code, open source, all that kind of thing. Was that intentional when you first started it?
Richard ClarkeOf course. Yeah, yeah, it was. I'd been doing it. I'd been project managing teams in India for many years before that. And this was my own company and I wanted to It was an outsourcing company, basically. We provided teams for other people in the UK. And I've got to give the credit, it wasn't my idea, it was my wife's idea. And we were playing around, we were on holiday and we were playing around with ideas for the company and she came up with it. And so I liked it. Many people have said over the years, it's a great name.
Al ElliottLet's talk about happiness. I sense that you've got a very good idea of what makes people happy, not just fluffy stuff, but you've got some kind of like codification or some framework for it. So should we kick off by what makes people happy and then we'll get into your framework for that?
Richard ClarkeThere are lots of things that make you happy at work, like thousands, thousands of things from whether you get paid a fair salary, whether you get free food, they all do influence your happiness to whether you've got a good boss, whether you've got autonomy, whether you're learning, whether you've got purpose and stuff like that. Thousands thousands of things. And depending on which expert you speak to, they'll categorize it into 3 things, 3 areas, 5 areas, 13 areas, 24 areas. I personally like, there's a US Surgeon General, they did a big study about, they did a report about 3 or 4 years ago, big guide to wellbeing, and they split it into 5 areas.
Al ElliottOkay.
Richard ClarkeAnd I like 5 areas because I can remember 5 and it's big enough to cover most things. So, yeah, there's 5 areas you need to be happy at work. Without going into too much detail, so the first one is safety. So, they call them needs. Everyone needs these things. And if you have, if these needs are fulfilled, then basically you'll have wellbeing and you'll be happier at work. So, The first one is safety. That's your real basic one. You need to feel safe that you're not going to get bullied. You are not going to get hurt, that you're going to get paid at the end of the month, your job's safe. And also psychological safety. I'm sure your listeners all know what psychological safety is, but it's really important to be happy at work. And I feel that you can't really be happy if you don't feel safe at work, you can't really be happy. So that's sort of like your basic level. Then you've got community. You need to feel part of a team that's achieving something that you couldn't achieve yourself. So something you feel part of something bigger. That's the whole belonging thing. You hear a lot about belonging and how belonging is so important. That's the community. Then you've got autonomy. You need to feel that you've got some control over how you work. Like the where you work, when you work, and then in your job, how you work. So, a bit of ownership and you're not being micromanaged. Then you've got opportunities for growth. So, learning, you've got to feel that you're learning and going forward in your career, but not just learning randomly, not just doing a 2-hour training every week, but actually feeling that what you're doing is advancing yourself and your career. And then you've got purpose. You need to feel that your work has meaning and that you're recognized for it. Now, those are your 5 things. Now, everybody's different. So, some people need more purpose in their work. Some people need more community, and it changes through your life as well. So, young people, they need more opportunities for growth, right? That's what's really important for them, and they'll sacrifice other things for it, even salary. But you get a young kid, yeah, autonomy becomes the key because you want to be home to help your partner. You want to be home to see those when they get back from school and stuff like that. So everyone's different, changes through your life, but those 5 basic things, everybody needs a little bit of all of them. So you can't take away any of them from anybody.
Al ElliottNow I have a question. In the Richard Clarke hierarchy of happiness that we've just created there, Yeah. You did say that they flux, but is there one particular thing that you think is the foundation for it pretty much at any age?
Richard ClarkeI think safety. I think even in your life, I listened to your podcast yesterday actually on financial safety. When people feel that they're financially safe, they They feel better, they feel freer to make different decisions. And I think that's the key one. Everybody needs safety. If you can't afford to pay the rent, if you can't afford to buy the kids, your kids, what they, their clothes they want, it's diff— and nothing else really matters.
Al ElliottSo let's talk about the opposite of struggling to buy your kids money. And I'm not gonna delve into your particular situation, but just generally speaking, I see a lot of founders who exit, and so they're ticking off safety. Yes. Community. Yes. Autonomy. Oh, more than anything, because they've now got half a million or 10 million in the bank and they can do whatever they want. I suspect that people who exit might be struggling for the opportunities for growth and the purpose. What's your thoughts on seeing people do this kind of thing?
Richard ClarkeSo I would disagree with you on the community. So, um, You're a founder, you're in a company, you've got all this great team around you, you feel you're building something, and then suddenly you're by yourself at home and you don't have that team around you and you're not, you're by yourself. That personally, I, that's what I miss more than anything is the community and that sense of belonging to something bigger. But then, yeah, purpose. Yeah. You go through it all. I've talked about this a lot, the purpose, the founders, when they sell their company, they suddenly think, oh, what do I do now? What's— I've got the money, I've got this freedom to do whatever I want, but where do I want to go? And that's quite disorientating. It's quite, yeah, nobody has any sympathy for you, but it's something that I found difficult. I found difficult.
Al ElliottI remember listening to the founder of Yo Sushi, Simon, I want to say Zetecno. Can't remember his surname. Blonde guy.
Richard ClarkeDid some really funny, fun stuff. Yeah.
Leanne ElliottYes.
Al ElliottYes. Didn't he like, didn't he duet with the Blockheads at one point or something? He was just like a ridiculous guy.
Richard ClarkeI don't know. I read a story right at the beginning. Um, he wanted to make his brand seem bigger than it was. So he wanted to put sponsored by or supported by. So he just wrote to the biggest brands he could think of that wouldn't be able to reply in time. So he wrote to Mercedes and Nissan or whatever it was and said, right, I'm gonna put your name on my banner in front of my shop. Let me know if that's not all right. So I thought that was quite a clever thing to do here.
Al ElliottLet's keep with that because the story that he told us when it was at Manchester Business Show and he stood up on stage and he said, basically when he sold it, he went to the cash machine to check his balance. And it said like £10 million or something. And he had to turn around to the person behind him in the queue, go, have a look at this, have a look at this. And he was so excited about it. He wasn't showing off, he was just excited about it. Um, but then obviously founder remorse came in and set in. He's like, what do I do with my life? Let's talk about this idea of having a bit of fun with it then. Yeah. So it, this sounds dangerous to me if I wanna be, have a bit of fun with something at work. in order to either be happy myself or make others happy. That sounds like that could backfire a little bit. Have you got any thoughts on that?
Richard ClarkeI think there's a misconception of what happiness is. So, my theory is that you've got this base level of, well, let's say contentment, right? You wake up in the morning and you think, do you know what? My life's all right. Okay. You don't mind going to work and you're happy with it. And then throughout the day, it It fluctuates above and below that line, right? Have a nice meal, have a nice meeting, get a new client, it goes up. Have something bad, goes below. Which the fun bit, you can keep pushing it up. It's like going and buying new clothes every weekend. Yeah, that will lift those peaks higher and higher and higher, but that doesn't help the contentment. What you need to do is to lift that contentment so that that's higher.
Al ElliottYeah.
Richard ClarkeSo founders focusing on fun, yeah, just do it, definitely. But you can't forget the basics. Otherwise, yeah, people would be miserable at work.
Al ElliottSticking with this idea of contentment and happiness, I think there are a lot of people in very boring jobs who would go, if I got paid an all right wage and all I could do was sit all day and scroll Facebook, then I'd be happy at work. But that goes against a lot of the foundations of your framework, doesn't it?
Richard ClarkeI would say they won't be unhappy at work. So they'd be like at the lowest level they could be without burnout or they're just like 4 out of 10. I can just about go to the office. I don't have to pretend I'm ill type stuff. But that's not a great place to be, honestly, is it? You do need to feel that you're actually doing something in the world. You're helping somebody, and you do need to feel that you're part of a team.
Al ElliottLet's go to the other extreme. Those people who say they're only happy when they are head down, working, working, working 80 hours a week. What's your thought? We're not trying to denigrate those people or take away from it, but is that just what they believe makes them happy, or what's the psychology behind that?
Richard ClarkeThat's really interesting. There's a There's a great study by the NHS, right? I think it was the NHS. If it's not, if it's another public health service somewhere in Europe, and they looked at levels of burnout in and compared to overtime. And so they found out that it's, they're not correlated. So, but what is correlated is unsolicited overtime. and burnout. So if you choose to work long hours, you don't tend to get burnt out. If you don't choose, then you do get burnt out. I know I've met lots of people who love working 80 hours a week. Well, whether they can sustain it once they have a small child, I would challenge that having had a small child. But yeah, no, I think they can be happy. It all depends on where you are in your life, what you're what your priorities are. But those who, people who regard working 80 hours as a measure of success, yeah, not sure about those people. I'm always busy, don't have time to do this type thing. Hmm, maybe.
Al ElliottSo there's one other group of people who seem to be quite unique, and they're the people who thrive on things like challenging environments. So whether it be something not quite as life and death like cold calling, but they really enjoy it. To those people who work on North Sea oil rigs, which even the thought scares the hell out of me. Are they just using the same framework you've just developed there? Why are they happy in their work? It sounds terrifying to me.
Richard ClarkeThat's really interesting. So I spent some time with a charity a couple of years ago, and they send people to the frontline to help on the frontline of disaster zones. war zones, right? And they're called out at short notice. They go there if there's been a flood, if there's been, it's like, it's awful, terrible stuff. Um, but they are really, really helping. Okay. And those people, they are really happy at their work for that, for that bit, for the, for the purpose side. But they were struggling in other areas. And what they were struggling with was they felt they had no autonomy because they had to be on call 24 hours. Some people in the work couldn't drink in case they were suddenly called and had to drive somewhere. They couldn't have a night off because just in case they were called. So I think everyone has the same 5 needs, but people have different amounts of needs of those 5 needs.
Al ElliottAutonomy is one of the 5 pillars of your framework.
Richard ClarkeYeah. Yeah. What US Surgeon General's framework.
Al ElliottSorry, the US Surgeon General framework, which we are now calling the, what are we calling it? The Clarke Hierarchy of Happiness, I think.
Richard ClarkeThat's right. Yeah.
Al ElliottYeah.
Richard ClarkeThat's what we are calling it. It's got an acronym as well.
Al ElliottYeah. I did just double-check that wasn't rude, the acronym.
Richard ClarkeYeah.
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottYeah. Um, with, with this framework, autonomy's a big one.
Richard ClarkeYeah.
Al ElliottYet when we were all forced to work from home, then we had autonomy over our lives. Some of us didn't have to work at all because we were furloughed. Yet that seems some of the unhappiest time for some people. So how are we reconciling this? How do we allow enough autonomy to go and do what you want, But not so much you feel lonely.
Richard ClarkeSo I, this is the whole like work from home versus hybrid versus remote, which is, which is best. And honestly, every day, just because of who I follow and stuff, every day I'll get a different report saying which is better and why hybrid is better than remote, why remote's better than office, why office is better than all of them type thing. Before the pandemic, our team were really close. We used to come into the office 4 or 5 times a week. We used to go out every Thursday. We used to go to the cinema often on the weekend. And they were very close. The team was really, really close. Then came the pandemic. We had to work from home in Spain. We were at home for, well, it was February, March through to at least September. We weren't allowed, October, we weren't even allowed back into the office. And then even after that, People didn't, they only sort of dripped into the office once a week. And I felt that we never ever, we didn't regain that community. Now they've, we've asked our team a number of times, would you like to come back to the office? And they say, no, we like the autonomy. We like the remote work. Now, all the studies show that Being a remote worker isn't great for your mental health, but also all the studies show that if you give someone something, they value it more than if they never had it in the first place. So if you take remote working away from them, they feel like they're losing a lot more than they're gaining by going back to the office. And also people are very good at, they're not very good at valuing long-term benefit over short-term benefit. So they don't They don't see that. For me, the whole work from home, I think it's some people are better, work better from home and can handle it. Some people can't. Some people like a bit of mixture. I prefer hybrid. It's a funny one. I think it's give and take in that one. You get more autonomy, but you lose community, and that will benefit some people but won't benefit others. So.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Richard ClarkeAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking.
Al ElliottAnd you're not gonna say which. Fel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Richard ClarkeSeamless, seamless.
Al ElliottTell us about your latest episode, Phil.
Richard ClarkeWe've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Richard ClarkeIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Richard ClarkeI am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
Richard ClarkeDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out. Keep that in. I wanna hear your views on this. This isn't necessarily me asking you how to fix it. Just if I was asking your advice on this, imagine that there is a manager, or I am a manager. I'm at work and I'm not particularly happy, but because I'm a good manager and a good guy, I want to make my team happy. So I'm not particularly happy myself. I don't have those 5 ticks on the framework, but I really want my team to be happy. Is this even possible?
Richard ClarkeYes. Yeah, I think it is. Yeah, it's difficult. It's difficult. I come across this a lot. Like, I will give talks and someone will come up to me afterwards and they go, I really want to make my team happy, but my boss is a right Insert word of choice. And so what they tend to do, what I've seen is people do, is they try to shield their team from the boss. So they take everything, which makes them unhappy, but they get some satisfaction of making their team happy. So it's all about the secret. It's not actually that difficult. The secret is, you know, those 5 things. Yeah. You then ask your team, how do they feel about those 5 things? Which one are they missing? And then you just provide it for them. If your team say, look, we are missing autonomy because you keep scheduling meetings and I don't know when I'm working, stop scheduling meetings. All right? Don't give them a bottle of wine to say thanks. Just stop scheduling meetings. It's really that simple.
Al ElliottYou know what? It's so funny when you said it's really that simple. And I was like, yeah, it really is, isn't it? Yeah, it really, really is. So why, why are we overcomplicating this then as managers and leaders? What are your thoughts?
Richard ClarkeDo you know what? From speaking to lots of managers, they just don't understand it. Um, I, I'm just thinking about 20 30 years ago, I'd wake up in the morning and I'd go, I don't feel very good. But you didn't know why it was, right? You didn't know why it was because you didn't know about eating healthily. This was the '80s. So, this is Pop-Tarts and Maggi noodles. And I didn't know that 8 hours sleep was really that important. But once you learn about good food and the importance of sleep and the importance of what exercise to do. If you wake up in the morning, you can go, oh yeah, I feel a bit rubbish today because I didn't sleep. I went to bed at 2 o'clock in the morning, or because I ate that terrible McDonald's at 11 o'clock last night or whatever. And what I found from leaders is that they go, oh, Right. So it is that simple. They just don't understand what the 5 needs are. They read the blogs, oh yeah, I've got to give them autonomy. I can't micromanage. They've got to learn something and they've got to have purpose, whatever that means. They know all these things. They hear all these words just coming in, but there's so much of it. They don't know which one they have to do or when they have to do it or who it's for or how to do it. And so what I found is that leaders, once they understand these 5 things and they just get it in their head, when someone comes to them and goes, look, I'm really not happy. And they go, why aren't you happy? And then they tell them, they go, you are not learning enough, are you? Right. How about we fix it doing this? Or how would you want that? And then, so just having that knowledge really helps. And I don't think many leaders have that knowledge.
Al ElliottRichard, let's imagine that I have a company, I have a number of employees. I know they're not happy. I can tell from the surveys. I can just tell by looking at their faces they're not happy. I say to you, Richard, come in, fix this for me. Talk me through practically what steps you're going to take to fix this for me.
Richard ClarkeOkay. Let's talk about a company that I visited, um, in October last year. Okay. Their team weren't unhappy, but they wanted to make them happier. They knew that they weren't doing enough and they didn't know what they had to be doing. So firstly, it's, I spoke to the leaders, right? And they said, why do we need you? What can you do? And I said, well, the most important thing you can learn is that you as leaders have the power to make a difference and to make your team happier. If there's one thing I want you to learn, it's that you can do something, right? It's not out of your control. And they said, okay, great. Show us how to do that. And I said, well, I'll need your team. So we had a day with their team, with the leaders of their team and the whole team. And we sat in a room, there were 30 of us. And the first thing that we do is I teach them the 5 areas, give them some stories. I go, okay, so this is what makes me happy. Okay, I'm getting, I'm understanding it. And then what we do is we send out like an employee engagement survey, like really, really similar, 25 questions, 5 questions for each need. Okay. Do you feel you're given freedom to work the way you want to? Do you have a clear idea of how to get a promotion? Things like that. And they all link to a specific need. They're all done anonymously, and then they are presented on a big screen, on a spreadsheet to everyone in the room as an average. And then the leaders will see how their team is feeling, right? And so this is, for example, this company, they saw on the autonomy level, Their team were marking really low. And the manager said to me, I do not understand that. Okay. I give my team loads of autonomy. I trust them. I don't micromanage. I don't think that's true. So we said, right, okay, explain. So then we got the team to explain Why they'd put that. Now, this requires a certain level of psychological safety. So this team had a very high level of psychological safety, so they could, they felt they could share it. If you don't do it, you can do it anonymously. You can ask that question and then they fill it on and it comes up on the board and nobody knows who's filled it in. But what they meant was they come into work in the morning. And their managers would then just schedule meetings with their team throughout the day. Okay. And they said, we have no control of, we don't, when we arrive in the morning, we have no idea when we're going to work because you schedule in a meeting from 11 till 11:30. Then I go, okay. And then I have my lunch and then you schedule in. So I'd never get, I'd never know when I'm going to get 2 hours or 3 hours to actually do my work. And it's infuriating. And they said, well, yeah, but we need to speak to you. And they go, but we can't work because you keep scheduling things. And they said, well, what do you suggest? And they said, well, stop scheduling in meetings. We said, we can't do that because we need to meet with you. And they go, well, let's have, give us half the day. So they agreed as a team between the managers and the workers that there would be no scheduled meetings between 10 And 2 o'clock. All right. So then people could have lunch when they wanted because it was originally between 12 and 2. And then some people said, but I have lunch at 12. So that would only mean— so they scheduled it between 10 and 2. And the interesting thing happened was that they had almost 50% less meetings after that because the managers, because then it was slightly more difficult to schedule in meetings around their own schedule, probably with their managers, they started writing emails instead or sending a message in Slack. So one, it made the team happier, and two, they got less meetings as a bonus. So that's what we do. Very simple. Find out what their needs are and then fix those needs. Once people listen to it, they go, Oh, it's really, it's that simple. I don't have to give purpose to them or have to increase. Yes, you do, but only if they need it because a lot of businesses, a lot of founders, they, a lot of people already have purpose in their work. They already feel they're giving something. So you don't need to focus on that if people already feel they're giving a meaning.
Al ElliottAny other tips or things that you've found during your consultancy days or even your business owning days that would really make a difference?
Richard ClarkeThere's so many things we've done. There was one time when we, our team, this was with our team and we did our, and we did this exercise with our team every 6, 9 months. We'd all get together, they'd fill it in and then we'd analyze it. And one year it was just, they said, look, we don't, We don't feel we have any purpose in our work. We don't feel that our work has any meaning. And so we communicated this to our clients because we were an outsourcing company. We provided like 5, 7 developers to companies in the UK, and therefore it was difficult for us as a company to give them meaning because they'd have to understand the meaning from the final client. So we spoke to the clients and one of them All they did was they said, okay, thank you very much. And they went off and they spoke to all of their clients and they said, what's one thing that José has done in the last couple of months that's really made a difference? Right. And record, just record me a little video. And then since then, every month in their monthly meeting, they show I'll say a little video from one of their clients saying, you adding this feature has saved me X hours or made this so much easier. And ever since then, he's still with us, by the way, 10 and a half years later. With us, it's not my company anymore, but anyway, he's still at Secret Sauce. And yeah, he's never said he doesn't feel meaning in his work anymore. So just little things like that.
Al ElliottI want to make you a little more uncomfortable by saying it didn't work. So tell us all the things that you tried that just didn't work.
Richard ClarkeI was obsessed when we started the company. I just wanted to try everything, right? So anything that I saw in any blogs, anything from Silicon Valley, I just tried it in our company. And so Morning Pictionary. During COVID That didn't go, that was, didn't really go down well. The Britney Spears dance-a-thon that we did during COVID to get everyone up out of their chairs. Yeah, that one didn't go down very well either. Lots of silly things like that. But the, probably the best one was Google's 20% time, right? So, you know, at Google, Apparently all the staff get 20% of their time to work on their own projects. And if it works well, it becomes a Google product. Our team at the time, we saw it and we talked to our team. They said, oh yeah, yeah, that'd be great. We could work on that. And so we introduced Google's 20% time. We said Fridays, you can go and work on your own projects. 3 weeks later, we abandoned the whole thing. Because most of the team had no ideas. So they didn't know what to work on and they felt really, gave them a lot of stress trying to think of something that would be useful. And those that did have ideas didn't really like working by themselves. So they didn't do them because they preferred to work with their team on the actual clients' projects. However, from that, they did say, do you know what? We really enjoyed not having meetings on Friday. So, we then worked with our clients to say, right, no meetings on Friday. And they didn't have any meetings. And they said, do you know what? Also, we did like finishing early. So, from that experiment, we got to no meeting Friday, which then became half-day no meeting Friday. And, um, And that, and that, and that's, that's stuck. That's steady for years. Yeah.
Al ElliottThat's really cool. And you're right, because Gmail, I think, came out of a 20%. Um, and 20%, it kind of ticks. I'm looking at them all now. It ticks all the boxes. Purpose, learning, autonomy. Uh, it didn't community. Uh-huh. I see now. So looking back at it, doing a postmortem on that, what we're saying is you kind of, you've got 4 out of the 5, but you didn't have the community. Is that what you're saying?
Richard ClarkeYou were, for our team. Yeah, that was true.
Al ElliottYeah.
Richard ClarkeNow, this is going to be a bit controversial. About 6 months ago, I met some ex-Google employees, right? 2 of them very, pretty high up when they left. And I said to them, I met them separately at different events, and I said to them, tell me about this 20% time. One of them said, what? What's 20% time? Never heard of it. The second one said, yeah, I think I have heard of it. I think the IT team do it. Yeah. And the third one said he knew about it when he arrived at the company, but nobody mentioned it. So, after 3 months, he said to his manager, yeah, when do I get to do my 20% time? And he said, oh yeah, Saturdays. I don't think it's everything it's cracked up to be. But they did say that Google was amazing at other things. So they did, um, they did balance it out with other things.
Al ElliottI want to ask you about what it's like to be a founder who exits. Now, I know that there's probably a lot of things you can't actually answer or talk about. I don't know whether you're in earnouts and I'm not interested necessarily in whether you're in earnouts at this point. But for the majority of founders out there, it feels like you've done what they want to do. You've built a company, you've had a whale of a time building it. You sold your company, you exited your company. That's what we're all striving for. So we think you must be the happiest person on the earth. What's the reality of that situation?
Richard ClarkeI should be the happiest person on the earth, and I fell into the biggest happiness trap that there is, and that is I'll be happy when, and you pin your happiness on some future event. I'll be happy when I get 3 A's in A-level, when I get my degree, when I get the pay rise. So, I thought, I'll be happy when, when I exit, because then everything will be sorted. I don't have to worry about this. I don't have to worry about that. And it is great. Yeah. That day when it's everything signed and You feel a big weight lifted off your shoulders because you're no longer responsible for 30, 40, 50 people. However, at exactly the same time, you have this deep sense of loss of, oh, that's my baby. I suppose my daughter's just left for a gap year and she just headed off to Peru. And that feeling when she walked through customs at the airport was a very similar feeling to the day I signed, like, oh, they've gone. Now I don't have any more control of this. And this is, this is really sad for me. Um, and also, what's, what's next? I sort of had planned that I was going to do more speaking and I was going to do Um, more consultancy, teach people what I've learned over the years. And I had to, I thought that was going to solve everything. And in a way it does, but I'm doing it alone. It's not as good as doing it with other people. Um, so it's sort of bittersweet. I'm getting, I'm, I've been, uh, alone. I've been, uh, by myself now for whatever, 3, 4 months, and I'm slowly adapting to this new reality. I do my own, I'm a happiness geek. So, I do my own happiness check-ins. So, like, I assess myself. So, about a month afterwards, I thought, do you know what? I am unhappy. Now I'm not as happy as I used to be with my work. Why is this? And I went through the 5 areas and I looked at it and I realized I don't have, I had a purpose. I want to make, I want to teach people how to be happier at work. I really, really strongly feel that. And I have autonomy, but it was community. I had no, I didn't feel part of a community and I didn't feel that I was part, I belonged to something that was achieving something bigger. So, I took a positive step. I now work with a local charity and I'm helping that local charity one day a week. I'm now working with other people in person, speaking to them, really speaking to them so I can see their face, not through a Zoom call. And we're doing stuff together. And that at the moment is solving that area. So yeah, selling a company is great, but it's— nobody has any sympathy for me. So, but, um, uh, it's, it's, there are areas that I wasn't ready, I wasn't prepared for.
Al ElliottWhat a phenomenal place to leave it. Thank you so much for your honesty. Thank you for your, uh, for your knowledge. Uh, if people want to book you to speak or to consult, where's the best place for them to go?
Richard ClarkeSo if Any of this has resonated with you and you want to learn more, I have written a short ebook. It's like 20 pages long and it gives you the basics of the science of happiness and what you need to do. And you can find that on my website. That's richardclarke.eu. And just go there and it's a click of the button at the top. You can download the ebook, or if you wait a bit, a popup should come up and you just put your email in and then you'll get it. That's richardclarke.eu. Um, yeah, and then you can find me on LinkedIn. If you, if you search, I did this yesterday, Richard Clarke happy, um, then I, you'll find me. So yeah, love to chat to you. If you're interested, please reach out on LinkedIn. I'd love to chat, help you out. Yeah, share my knowledge.
Leanne ElliottThat was Richard Clarke. And if you're a founder dreaming of the exit, that conversation should probably scare you a little bit, but in a good way. Richard didn't sugarcoat it. Selling didn't fix what he thought it would. It just moved the goalposts. So here's what to actually do with that.
Al ElliottFirst of all, Richard identifies the 5 needs: safety, community, autonomy, growth, and purpose. Richard's simplest fix at his own company wasn't some grand initiative. It was asking one team what was missing and cutting meetings between 10 and 2. That's the whole model.
Leanne ElliottSecond, don't assume you already know which need is missing. Richard was certain his team had autonomy covered. They told him otherwise. So ask, don't guess.
Al ElliottAnd third, and this one's for founders, but also really generally for everyone, don't pin your happiness on one event. Richard hit every milestone and still lost something real. The team, the community, the daily, we're in this together. If you're building towards a sale, build the thing that replaces that before you need it.
Leanne ElliottRichard's put together a short ebook on the science of happiness at work. Find it at his website, RichardClarke.eu/ebook, and you can find him on LinkedIn too. Search for Richard Clarke Happy. Remember, Clarke is with an E at the end, C-L-A-R-K-E. Of course, all the links are in the show notes.
Al ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work. We'll see you next week.