Leadership Reflections: Tiny Habits, Bold Leadership. Inside the DO Lectures with Mike Coulter, on how a Copywriter learned to Design Better Behaviour and help Others to a Happier Life with 'Tiny Habits'

You can hear a whole philosophy of change hidden inside one simple move: Put the bike where you can see it. That is the kind of practical, human behaviour design we get into with Mike Coulter, a lifelong Creative who’s worked across advertising, helped shape projects at the DO Lectures, and now teaches tools for building 'Tiny Habits' that actually stick.

We start with the stories that made Mike: Growing up in Yorkshire, learning his dad’s rule for a good job, cutting his teeth at a local newspaper, then spotting the world of advertising and chasing it hard. Along the way we talk about the craft behind great creative work, why the best ideas often arrive away from the desk, and how places like Cornwall’s Camel Trail and the Atlantic can become thinking environments that support focus, calm, and better decisions.

Then we go deep on BJ Fogg, Stanford, the Tiny Habits Method, and what changed for Mike when he stopped trying to “motivate himself” and started making behaviours easier to do. We explore behaviour matching, prompts, ability, and the ethics of influence, plus why so many products win by serving people who already want the outcome. If you care about habit formation, productivity, mental health, marketing psychology, or simply building a healthier routine without burnout, you’ll leave with clear takeaways you can test immediately.

Find more of Mike’s work at https://www.habitualise.com, and if you enjoy the conversation, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s the tiniest habit you’re willing to start today?

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Transcript

Welcome And Meet Mike Coulter

Chris Grimes 0:07

Welcome to another episode of The Good Listening to Each O. Your life and times with me crystal times. The storytelling shows features with clearings. They're all good questions that comes to get asked, and all good stories comes to be told. And all my guests have two things in common. They're all creative individuals and all with an interesting story to tell. There are some lovely storytelling metaphors. Welcome to the Good Listening2 show. I used to think comfortably. Then we shall begin. Boom, we're in, and Mike Coulter has just said, gosh, that's just like Thunderbirds, because it counts down from five, four. And here we are, live in the Good Listening to show. I'm Chris Grimes, Watch Your Story. Very enigmatically and profoundly and wonderfully, I have Mike Coulter in the show. I'm excited to talk to you because you are manifesto man, because that's one of your great expertise. And if I may also call you Wingman as well, because you are a co-collaborator with the wonderful and enigmatic, similarly, David Hyatt. So you are the creative director of the Do Lectures. You're also a presenter with your own flagship show within Do Radio. But also you have Tiny Habits Business Class, which is something we're going to talk about as well, at your wonderful website, which is called habitualize.com. This is just where I'm blowing some happy smoke at you, Mike. So, Mike, you're looking great, great shirt, popping off for the visuals, but also you're sat for those watching in front of one of the most iconic calendars known to man, which is the Sendell calendar. Yeah. Which you inform me sells out very regularly because it you've almost got to get in the queue to get one.

Mike Coulter 2:12

Yeah.

Chris Grimes 2:12

Reminds me of a cricket scoreboard. Yes. And it's also got the font, which I think is extra beautiful, that is is the same font as the New York Subway.

Mike Coulter 2:23

That's about that's about right. Yeah. Um, but this uh my wife asked me one of the what I want for Christmas, and actually, no, actually, I saw these calendars that have been they were designed in 1966 by an Italian designer in New York, and the Italian designer also designed the New York subway signage, which may or may not be the same phone. I'm not even sure, I'm not sure about that. And it's the only calendar in the world in the uh Museum of Modern Art. Oh, that'll be interesting to have. And then I'd have to mess about over 12 months in the set that I shoot, you know, video conversation like this in all my Zoom calls. I can just leave it as it is. So I think send I'll send out something like that. And they do indeed sell out, and uh yeah, I love it. I I I I love its simplicity. I like that whole era, the idea of um Charles and Ray Eames were the great designers in America at the time, and um it was also an era that as a very, very young man, you know, it's the madmen era of advertising, and and that's one of the things that shaped me. And we will be talking about that in the show, Chris, about how um advertising shaped me. And it was 1960s advertising, the great Volkswagen ads, Doldein, Burnbach, you know, the whole Madison Avenue thing. So well, I'll be touching on that today. So I'll be I'll be unpacking that a little bit later.

Chris Grimes 3:34

And I'm intrigued to get you on the open road of your copywriting chops and where else you've trained, because I'm I'm also intrigued to talk to you all about the enigmatic professor who is BJ Fogg.

Mike Coulter 3:45

The great BJ Fogg, yes, very influential in my life was BJ, yes. So uh yeah, but lovely to I'm happy to pick up on that.

Chris Grimes 3:52

And that also reminded me of Phileas Fogg, of course, which is around the world in 80 days, which is different, but anyway, I'm just making connections.

Mike Coulter 3:58

Oh, that's and actually, you know, funnily enough, in the in the 1980s, 90s, Phileas Fogg's advertising account was with was with one of the great British agencies called Bartle Bogel Hegerte, and they did some fantastic work then. So it's that it's a real it's totally relevant.

Do Lectures And Do Radio Origins

Chris Grimes 4:12

Wonderful, and the do lectures first came to my attention when I saw uh just the most it just sung to me. You'll notice where I go with my own colour schemes. There was a picture that David Hyatt uploaded of a yellow door standing on its own field in cardigan, and I went, Wowzers, and it sung to me, and then this idea of you cross through the gateway of the door, old me to new you, and I just thought that that's your vibe attracted tribe, is what I'm trying to say.

Mike Coulter 4:42

Yes, David is phenomenally good at that sort of thing, and I you know, we Dave and I both joke that we're both working class lads who never went to university, but actually we did go to the best university. No, we worked in advertising agencies, which was the best university a young creative could go to, you know, in our area. I think it's I think it's changed changed the easier. So, yeah, so Dave's got a very good, I mean, Dave's a brilliant copywriter, but he's also got a very good eye for an image. You know, the the picture tells a thousand words, cliche, and I think that's one of the reasons why they do lectures, particularly the three-day event in July, which for people who don't know what the do lectures is, the mainstay is a three-day live event in July where 20 great speakers come around, come from all around the world to talk in a cow shed to 100 people who want to listen to them. And uh, the ad lib that I always trot out that I pretend that I've thought about on on the fly is you know, well, if you haven't heard of the do lectures, I'd say it's a bit like TED Talks. Then I'd pause for effect and say, but it's on a farm, then I pause it in the far, far west of Wales, it's impossible to get to. And then the final pause he says, and it's the cool people, unlike TED Talks, which is my implicit aside, I suppose, about but yeah, so the the do lectures has been um has been been a huge part of my life for the last last 10 years. And just one final thing about the um the crave direct, but I'm not actually a crave director for do lectures, I'm much more sort of uh menial than that. I I kind of I'm sort of the crave director on special projects and things like that that we do, like manifesto courses and workshops. We wrote a report a few years ago that went down where it was all about side projects. We we take deep dives into subjects.

Chris Grimes 6:19

Yes, side hustles or side quests.

Mike Coulter 6:21

Exactly that, yes, yes, and so yeah, and uh it's been a lot of fun, is a lot of fun.

Chris Grimes 6:26

And one of your current most exciting side quests is do radio. And I know that you co-host with David Three Wins.

Mike Coulter 6:32

Thank you. Yeah, three wins. Um Do Radio is a live radio station broadcast 24 hours a day, eight different shows. Uh, so you get three times to listen to it a day, and there's an app and it's archived, you can stream it these days if you wish. But yeah, and and then it's very much like this uh conversation, actually, Chris. So I feel really comfortable with you today. It's very much um you know the old saying about entrepreneurs. Uh, you know, an entrepreneur is somebody that jumps off a cliff and builds the plane on the way down. Well, what's three? Three rad three uh three three wins on do radio is like I'm I'm figuring Dave and I are figuring ourselves out each week as we do this show, and we don't know what each of us is gonna talk about. We know it's always gonna be about either time, money, or mojo. Those are the three stables every single week. We talk about different aspects of time, money, and mojo. But we when we press the door button uh every time we record it, I have no idea what it's gonna talk about.

Chris Grimes 7:24

I just love that time, money, or mojo, as you said, with your ooping. Exactly.

Mike Coulter 7:29

And um the accent there, the northern thing, that's that's something I've I've played on my whole life. The other thing about advertising when I went into it, it was dominated by northern northern in London when I was working in the in the 90s, it was it was dominated by northern working class kids. And we used to play on that, you know, you'd be blunt and uh, you know, no nonsense and all that kind of thing.

Chris Grimes 7:51

So Eki Eki thump, I'd just like to say at that end.

Mike Coulter 7:54

All that, yeah. In fact, when my when my wife and I got married, she's from Lancashire. You know, I'll call them rival families, let's say, are that are two different families, and mine from Yorkshire and not mine from Montage. It was it was, it was a bit Shakespearean. I know Shakespeare comes at the end of the show, but to try and keep harmony at the dinner at the dining table, we we we gave Yorkshire pudding and Lancashire hot pot to all I guess, which kind of was a diplomatic menu, let's call it.

Chris Grimes 8:19

And that's before tea, and we get the schoones versus sconde because.

Mike Coulter 8:22

Oh, yeah. Well, that's well, and now now I live in Cornwall. You've got the Devon and Cornwall thing. Is it cream or jam first on your scones?

The Show Structure And Story Tools

Chris Grimes 8:29

Wonderful. So um, let's get on the open road of the structure of the show. Can't wait to get you on the open road of this. If you've not seen the show before, for those watching and listening, where have you been? I'm about 270 into these monkeys. This is the show in which I invite movers, makers, shakers, mavericks, influencers, and also personal heroes into a clearing or serious happy place of my guests choosing as they all arrive to share with us their stories of distinction and genius. And you'll notice in blowing some happy smoke at you, Mike Coulter, how qualified you are for many, many, many of those Skittles that I knocked down to bring you into the show.

Mike Coulter 9:04

Thank you.

Chris Grimes 9:05

So, uh, yes, it's going to involve a clearing a tree, a lovely juicy storytelling exercise called 54321. There's going to be some alchemy, some gold, a couple of random squirrels, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare, a golden baton, and a cake. That's absolutely all to play for. So any questions before I get you on the open road of this, Mike Coulter? Let's get rolling, uh, Chris. Looking forward to it. Thank you. Welcome aboard, sir. So, first of all, your clearing. Where is your serious, happy place? Where does Mike Coulter go to get clutter-free, inspirational, and able to think?

Sea Therapy And The Camel Trail

Mike Coulter 9:37

I was kind of torn on this actually. There were two places. The first one was going to be the Atlantic Ocean. One of the reasons that we we live in in Cornwall was, you know, ever since being a very young man, I've I've always enjoyed being in the water. I've always been surfing and stuff like that. And as I'm as I'm getting older, uh, I still surf, but I I body surf now, and it's just a pair of fins and a and a hamplane. And my happy place is that even when it's a crowded day in the lineup, it's paddling another 20 meters back out, further back out, rolling over on my back, looking up at the sky, you know, there's there's a nice gentle swell going. And that's just my happy place. It's it's meditative. There's a lot of research on the psychology of being in seawater and moody. In fact, some around the believe it or not, around the coast of the UK, there's some NHS services help people with depression and low mood by taking them out in the water. And you've you'll you'll have heard a thing about surfers getting stoked and stuff like that. Well, there's a there's a there's this physiological phenomenon whereby being in salt water actually enhances a person's equilibrium and it's all to do with balance in the air. So what I know, sorry. And then I thought, actually, no, but there needs to be a tree near, and you know, other than a log of a tree bouncing up and down in the Atlantic, which won't have many.

Chris Grimes 10:55

Which by the way, would work for me.

Mike Coulter 10:56

Okay. Well, no, I well, I just think it I took it slightly close to home. I mean, literally, slightly close to home, and literally down the road from me. So the beach is about five or six miles from where I live, but even nearer is one of the wonders of the modern world, I think, which is a cycle trail. It's called the Camel Trail. And that without doubt is my happy place. We've lived in we've we lived in Cornwall, we moved to Cornwall 30 years ago, then we couldn't make it work, and we moved and lived in Edinburgh for 17 years, but we came back about 12 years ago, and I've pretty much ridden my bike on the camel trail, certainly every week, but some weeks every day, uh literally thousands and thousands of times, and it's absolutely my happy place. It's an old railway line. Used to be able to get the used to be able to get the train from Paddington to Padstow, pretty much. You had to change at Wade Bridge, but you used to be able to get a train all the way. So there's a there's a there's a paved old train line with no traffic on it, just for cyclists and walkers, and it goes from Bodmin to the Atlantic Ocean and like next stop, the United States, and it's absolutely my happy place. And then in fact, there's lots of wild apple trees along along the trail there. It's about eight, ten meters wide, it's serene, as I say, there's an estuary there, there's wonderful bike life. And over the years, and this is gospel truth, I've done so much of my work there. I actually modeled I'd probably had done more work on that trail that than I have at my desk. You know, on my bike, I have a notepad with me, or in more recent years, um, when I've used technology, like there's a maybe, but there's a dictation dictation that was many dictations called Otter. And I'd actually dictate to it while I was out on the bike, like uh emails I've got to send, or posts for LinkedIn I've got to write, or content for workshops and courses. Then when I get back home, it's all there on the screen, transcribed for me, ready, ready to go. So yeah, my my happy place without doubt is is the canal trail.

Chris Grimes 12:54

Both of those answers, may I say, were delicious. When were you last floating on your back in the Atlantic?

Shaking The Tree Begins

Mike Coulter 13:00

Oh well, fully, I'm getting that age where I've spent more time rehabbing from knee surgery than in the water, and uh hernia operations and all that sort of um overuse injuries and bits and pieces that you know as you get older. Nothing nothing major, everything routine. So I haven't been in the water for weeks, well, actually months, actually, probably probably back end of late autumn last last year. But I but I was on my bike yesterday and I was on my bike the day before, and I was on the bike the day before that. You know, come rain or shine. I'm always uh always trying to find time to to be on my bike if I can, unless I'm traveling.

Chris Grimes 13:34

And if I may ask, next time you are floating on your back, think about this moment in this clearing because I love what you've just positioned for us. It's beautiful storytelling. And I myself was on the camel trail just a few months ago after my son had finished his A levels and I went up, down, up, down, up, down. The weather was appalling, but it was just beautiful, isn't it?

Mike Coulter 13:51

It's so tranquil, even if the weather's appalling. I mean, it's just you know, you go through quarries, there's a little, I don't know if the coffee shop was open halfway down the quarry for you, and at either end, you know, whether whether you're in the pad store, you can get some great fishing chips. It's just classic English locked-in-a-time capsule thing, you know. I mean, it's a million miles from AI. Well, and I uh that's one of the things I love about it.

Chris Grimes 14:16

Oh, what a great answer of itself. A million miles from AI. Just let that float there. Yeah. And now, as you beautifully already positioned, I'm gonna arrive with a tree in your clearing now, which could be the log floating alongside you in the Atlantic, but on the camel trail, I'm now gonna arrive with a tree, and then I'm gonna shake your tree to see which storytelling apples fall out. How'd you like these apples? Yeah, and uh, this is where you've been kind enough to have thought about four things that have shaped you, three things that inspire you, two things that never fail to grab your attention, and when we get there, I'll talk about squirrels. You know, what are your two monsters of distraction, two things that never fail to distract you? And then the one, Mike Coulter, is a quirky or unusual fict about you. We couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us. It's not a memory test, just to reassure the audience, most particularly. So over to you to interpret the shaking of the canopy of your tree as you see fit.

Dad’s Rule For Loving Work

Mike Coulter 15:11

I have to start, um, as many people I'm sure have before would do with my parents. And uh particularly my particularly my dad, my uh I grew up in a very amazing loving home. Um, I'd say I grew up in Yorkshire, although my dad was a Scouser, and my mum was uh from Sunderland, so she was not exactly a Jordi. I think they call Macham if you're from Sunderland. So mom from Sunderland, so and it was at a time when I guess it was after the Second World War, before they had me, I was I was born in the 50s, but there wasn't so much work in Liverpool or in the Northeast, and the textile factories in Halifax were recruiting from all over the place. So mom and dad met, and dad'd been in the army, met there. And I'll I'll I'll I'll concentrate on my dad because the particular story I want to tell my dad that I think absolutely shaped me. So I'm 15, 16, or whatever, I was lucky enough to, I don't know if you have the 11 plus the you probably had the 11 plus for 20 years, but uh I passed my 11 plus and uh went to a grammar school, which is unusual for people in my family. I wasn't very academic at all. But I did okay at school, but more in sports and stuff like that than the more academic stuff. But you know, when you're at school and you start talking to the careers advisor about what you're gonna do when you leave, and I kind of knew I wasn't gonna go to university, I just didn't speak to them and we didn't have the money anyway. But I had the conversation with my dad about being um what I was gonna do for a job, and bear in my mind I was I was very poor at all the classic standard academic pastimes or teachings, but my dad was really insistent that I go and work in a bank. I was awful at maths, I was just I just hated it and I was terrible at it. And my dad knew that, but it didn't bother him. He said, No, I think you should go and work in a bank. And here's what I there's a sort of an inkling that my dad was, I said, Scouser, funny mine, he loved, he loved sport, he was a very kind man. I knew he loved me, although he never said it, but he didn't do that sort of thing. Again, I said, Dad, you know, and I know I'm rubbish at last white. He said, Yeah, I know. He says, Don't worry about it. I said, Why I said, listen, banks at that time, all over, all over the UK, I think, certainly, certainly in England, I think, banks used to close on Wednesday afternoons. You only worked a half day on Wednesday. But banks in Halifax and other cities in the towns are around uh certainly around Yorkshire, but in Halifax, maybe they were 14, 15, I don't know how many banks they were double figures banks. They all had a football team, and there's a football league for just for the banks played each other every Wednesday afternoon at football. My dad couldn't believe there was a job where you were paid to play football every Wednesday afternoon. So I sort of picked the bones out of it, unpacked it. What he meant was, and what he really meant was get a job where you can bunk off and play football on a Wednesday afternoon and get paid for it. So I didn't get a job in a bank, and my first job that like ever like most people, my first one or two jobs weren't where I landed, where my path took me.

Speaker 1 18:24

Yes.

Mike Coulter 18:24

But but I knew I wanted something that would shape me as a working class kid in a way that another thing that another thing my dad said was um, and you'll have heard this before, always get a job, and this this back, this this also supports his theory why I should join a bank and because I could play football. Always get a job where at the end of the week you think you should have paid them for the week. So that is without doubt the most fundamental life-shaping thing that happened to the earliest thing I can remember, because it's what led me ultimately to have a fairly long and reasonably successful, but very satisfying career in advertising. Advertising, particularly if you work in the creative department, you are literally paid to daydream, paid to play. You can can I say arse about on the show, you can arse about and get paid for it. In fact, when I used to I work for a really well-respected, again back to my ideas on the camel trail on the bike, most of my ideas come somewhere other than the I still work hard at desk. I know about deep work and cranking stuff out, but a lot of my stuff, a lot of my creative ideas, don't come sat in sat at a desk, they come out out and about, and hence the camel trail thing. But uh, years later, I was working in an advertising agency in Edinburgh, and no one could ever find me at my desk there because I'd just go wandering around Edinburgh with the brief and try to come back with the idea. And it got to the stage where, in reception, what the creative directors, as a bit of a joke, mounted an A1 or AO map of Edinburgh City and put it in reception with map pins with sightings of Mike, because Mike been sighted anyway, and you could see where Mike had been sighted all that week. That was the my first thing that really the shaking the tree, the first thing that really shaped me was my dad and his um encouragement to get a job that you loved, where you think that you should be paid them and you and you could, you know, not be watching the clock or the check-in and check-out and things like that. And as a consequence of that, I've never really worked nine to five. I've I've I've always had this kind of career where I know this sounds a bit dangerous in terms of burnout, in terms of the pressure and and and the stress that we can all be under in our jobs, but I've never made a massive distinction between my how I earn my living and other areas of my life. That said, I do have a motto, and you'd expect for me, it's to do with advertising and slogans. I don't know if you remember, Chris, years ago, the the confectionary bar, which is still going Mars bars, yeah, had a slogan, and the slogan was, and I think it's the first advertising slogan I can remember actually, the slogan was a Mars a day helps you work, rest, and play. And I think that's the most wonderful motto or Venn diagram for life, that balance of work, rest, play. Advertising, I used to do all of those at the same time. I'd be working on something, but I'd be really chilled about it. And I'd actually been, it was a playful way to earn a living.

Chris Grimes 21:28

Great stuff, yes.

Mike Coulter 21:29

So that's so many. So that led me to the that led me to the the second shake of the tree, thing that shame me, which is advertising, which I can unpack if you if you wish. I can go straight into it if you want to.

Chris Grimes 21:39

Yeah, sure.

Newspaper Lessons In Copy And Sales

Mike Coulter 21:40

So where I landed, then so not getting a job at the bank as a teenager, where did I go when I left school? Well, I got a job again, quite fundamental to me, working for a local newspaper. And I went in 17, went behind me as total trainee, but the joy of it was. Was uh I was there about three years, I think. The joy of it was I'd work in every single department there. I'd I work everything from one of the jobs I loved, and I did this for free. I didn't actually get paid, I was paid to work for the newspaper. But on a Saturday night at like 20 to 5, the sports department was absolutely packed because they had what was called the Green Final. There's one as one as a daily newspaper, evening newspaper, the Halifax Evening Courier coming out. Every Saturday night, they would publish what was called the Green Final, which was a sports paper, all the horse racing results from over Britain, all the football results, local Halifax Town Report. And it was amazing because at 20 to 5, when the final whistle went to the football, it all kicked off, and everyone everyone had to file their copy and sign up, and then it had to be set in hot metal, then it had to be printed.

Chris Grimes 22:54

Yeah.

Mike Coulter 22:55

And my job, or I worked with the guy who did the job, and when they all when the bundles of green filers came off, they were thrown in the back of a van, the courier delivery van. And we used to go around all the news agents that stayed open late around Halifax and all the pubs. Pubs used to take bundles of newspapers because a lot of people used to like a pint and read the sports paper at you know, whenever the papers got there, 6, 6:30 in the evening.

Chris Grimes 23:16

I can smell the print, I can see it was magic.

Mike Coulter 23:23

Yeah, but the the but the day job was um I'd I'd I'd spend a few weeks working in the photography retouching department where where all the photographs were retouched, or I'd spend some time working in the newsroom, or I'd spend some time working in telesales with the telesales girls and stuff like that. So I learned everything about newspapers, and um the two things that stick me. One is the newspaper do what were called advertising features, and it'd be really, you know, really kind of low-stake stuff, like a new pub would be refurbished. And so the people at the paper said, we can make it we can make a lot of money on advertising revenue here. How? Okay, well, we'll write an article about the pub, and then we'll put ads all around the article in a full page, and we'll sell an ad to the people who did the plumbing at the pub, we'll sell an ad to the people who did the carpets and the curtains at the pub, we'll sell an ad to the people who did the security of the pub, you know. And then it was right, who's gonna write the copy for it? Mike, you're gonna write the copy for this pub. So go to the pub, speak to the landlord, find the history. Why did he do it? Have a drink while you're there, which was great. Then get the list of all the suppliers, then hit the phones and learn how to sell. Learn how to sell someone in you then the only line was that you know the oh Mike called from the Halifax scene in career. We do an advertising feature on the golden line that you that you did the plumbing, that or you did the carpets for. And the brewery are really pleased with your work, and they'd say, I would say something like, and the brewery, I'm sure you'd like to support them by taking an ad. The implication being if you don't take an ad, you won't get the carpet or the curtains or the plumbing job, the next pub that's refurbished, you know. So advertising pressure sales and all that, anyhow. So I did all that.

Chris Grimes 25:04

And I'm loving the human Mars bar through line. This is work and play and work best and play. Yeah, we were brilliant to have around, you can tell because you were engaged, you were interested, you were just good to have around, and you wanted to get stuck in with it.

Mike Coulter 25:17

Yeah, that's that's the thing I learned from one of the most important things I learned from BJ Fogg, but for any of us to do anything, if there is already intrinsic motivation within you to do the thing, yes, it's much more likely to happen. So if somebody said to me, Mike, well, there's some amazing research has come out. If you eat a if you eat chocolate every day, you'll lose half a stone, or you'd be as strong as an ox, or whatever it is, you know. I wouldn't need any motivation to eat that chocolate. But if someone said, Mike, it's a new research. I said, if you eat a pound of raw broccoli every day, you'd be as strong as an ox and you'll lose, right? That's never going to happen with me. It's never going to happen because I'd not motivated to do the thing. And you look at most successful Silicon Valley products and services and apps on the phone, they target people who already want to do the thing.

Speaker 1 26:06

Yes.

Mike Coulter 26:06

Kids already want to keep in touch with other kids on the phone. Yeah. Business people already want to scope out what other competitors or what potential employees or what their own company is saying on LinkedIn or whatever. They already want to do the thing. Yes. And I'll maybe talk a little bit more about later, but just let me get back to the courier. So I'll just wrap on the the um shaking the tree at the courier and the and what shape me. So I'd been at the courier two or three years, and then um I used to see people my age, guys and girls, every Thursday. I'd see four or five of them, four or five of them, come into reception at the newspaper, and they all had big, big brown paper parcels under their arms. And they were really cool, these kids. And I thought, I like the look of them. She's she looks nice, he looks really smart, he looks clever as the five and stuff. And then I see them in town in the trendy bars or clubs and stuff like that on a Saturday night, and they all have plenty of cash, and all the guys seem to be driving capris and all that, and they're all dressed like they should be in, you know, fashion magazine. And I say the receptionists say, These people who come in, these kids like me with these big prams, who are they? Shell they they work for the thing called advertising agencies. There's actually a thing called advertising agencies where products like department stores and car companies pay advertising agencies to have these creative ideas. Like you have when you're selling your little crappy pub refurbishment ads, but they do these big campaigns, and these they're just bringing the artwork in for the full-page ads for the car dealership or the department store or whatever and things like that. I thought, oh God, what I thought I thought newspapers did all that. No, no, there are specialist people that do advertising, and that was it. I was off to the races, and then I just wanted a job in I want to leave the newspaper and get a job in advertising. It took me, I I actually couldn't get a job at the I couldn't get a job in advertising from the get-go, but what I did do was for two years, uh it was two, no, it wasn't about 18 months, but for two winters, I used to take my winter week off the newspaper holiday and go work for free in advertising agencies in the big town leads and all that because I just wanted it so much.

Speaker 1 28:17

Yes.

Mike Coulter 28:18

So so that was that was so that was the second thing that really shaped me was being lucky enough to get a job in the newspaper, understanding that there's a single advertising and saying that's got to be the path for my life.

Chris Grimes 28:30

Boom. I love how you're shaping this and you're following the structure to the letter beautifully, as if you put it in print and it's there in the in the racing post. Uh, now the third shape, please. The third and the fourth are the same source.

BJ Fogg And The Tiny Habits Shift

Mike Coulter 28:44

So, you know, this is a massive fast forward in terms of the newspaper. So dad inadvertently pushed me towards a job that ultimately was working in a newspaper, and the newspaper sort of advertently pushed me into working in advertising, and then that was like oh, I don't know, two or three decades, relatively successful advertising. Worked in Germany, worked in Amsterdam, worked in New Zealand, most of the work was in London, in advertising agencies in London, agency in London, and in Scotland, one of the great agencies that should have been in London called the Leaf Agency. Anyhow, so this is a massive fast forward to 2015-16. Massive fast forward. This is you know 25 years, 30 years. And I worked for the do lectures then. So I worked for the do lectures in 2015-16. And I write a thing called the Side Project Report, which is about the power of side project we touched on. And one of the things I write about in the side project, but I do a chapter on what's called behavior design. I'd been aware for a year, well, I'd probably been aware for about two or three years, about a professor at Stanford University called BJ Fogg, who'd been one of the most influential voices in Silicon Valley in the early days of PayPal and LinkedIn and Facebook and Apple. You know, when social media kicked in in 2007, BJ Fogg was active at Stanford University. And he'd been very influential in in the early days, not so much in more recent years, because he he feels quite rightly that Silicon Valley and a lot of the apps have become very dangerous in terms of mental health, in terms of the way that they hijack so much of all our time, not just kids, but you know, kids maybe they've got a bit more, maybe they're a bit more malleable in terms of the parallel in Frankenstein.

Chris Grimes 30:48

We have created a monster and you're reporting on BJ.

Mike Coulter 30:51

Exactly that, exactly. It's exactly that, yeah. So yeah, and the the the unpleasant addictive qualities, let's say, that we've all experienced by going down those rabbit holes and still and and so BJ is his work these days is not to work with Silicon Valley, but actually to be the antidote to Silicon Valley. So point three and four that shape me were both came from BJ Fogg. And the first one was he himself tried to do a startup in about 2010, and it I won't say it nearly broke him, but it caused it, it caused him a lot of stress and a lot of problems and things like that, and a lot of not a lot, but some behavioral issues he wasn't too crazy about. And he thought, this is madness. He's saying, you know, I'm one of the world experts in how human behavior works, the psychology of influencing human behavior, which I say been doing in Silicon Valley. Yeah, I'm allowing these maladaptive and unhelpful habits to not just creep into my life but affect me in terms of, you know, I'm not dealing with stress as well as I should, or I've got some really maladaptive coping mechanisms. Surely, if anybody can figure out a way or a methodology or a set of models and methods to build strong, robust, positive habits in their life, it's me. So he went back to the drawing board, and just for himself, originally just for himself, he designed this method that became known as the tiny habits method. Yes, built on his decades of research about how influence human behavior. And lo and behold, if it didn't have a wonderful positive outcome for him, then he got himself back on track. So buoyed by this, you know, he shared it with friends and family, and then he started sharing it with his students. He had a thing called the behavior design lab at Samsung. He started sharing it with his students, and lo and behold, lots and lots of people around him, not least himself, are living happier, healthier, more fulfilled lives based on this model which he called the tiny habits method. Yes. I'm writing this report for the do lectures, and I kind of knew about the tiny habits method, but I never take it seriously. So I'm writing about BJ and Tiny Habits, and I think, right, you know what? I've got this brief to write this side project report, and it's come at a time in my life when I actually needed the money, I needed the work. The brief was fantastic. David Hyatt wrote the brief. It's a fantastic brief. I really want to do the brief, and it was, you know, working with the do lectures.

Chris Grimes 33:13

And how did you meet David to even get alongside him in that way? That's a slightly longer story.

Mike Coulter 33:18

It's it's a relatively interesting story. Rather than break the flow, flow here, Chris. I will come back to that if we're if we time them, I'll tell you how do I meet how do I make David Five? Because I think that's instructive in itself. But thank you for flagging that. So I got this brief on, but here's the thing to actually really do a great job on it, I had to be on my A game. And at that time in my life, I wasn't even on my F game. You know, it just uh it was everything I wanted, and it came at the worst possible time. You know, usual stuff, I was stressed out, I was drinking too much, I wasn't getting on with the missus, all that human stuff that comes at the wrong time when you least need it was there. And the paradox is I'm writing about this guy, BJ Fogg, it happened to him, you know, a few years before. He did this time, I'm right about that. So I thought I need to take this tiny habits thing seriously. So I'm writing a side project report and I rename it in my head, Mike. You're gonna do the side project project, and that is learn tiny habits, take it really seriously, and apply it to this project. And I did that and stoned me if it worked in a really short period of time. So I got so blown away by this. A, we knocked the project out of the park, which was fantastic, but B, more importantly, this is the tree shaking bit, this is the what shaped me a bit is I thought I need to know more about this. This I've just I've just discovered a superpower. I need to know more about this. So I I looked into it. Are there any workshops in the UK? Can I find any tiny habits coaches in the UK? Nothing. Crickets. All I could find was that BJ and his sister ran this thing called the Tiny Habits Academy, where you could pay a pretty high-watering amount of money for me at that time to train over about eight weeks over Zoom to qualify as a coach. Now I didn't want to be a coach, I wasn't interested in coaching it, but I wanted the information for my own personal application. So I bit the bullet and I paid it. And because it was in California and it was done over Zoom, well, actually, I think it was done over Skype in those days. It was 4 p.m. Class started every Tuesday, but 4 p.m. California time. So I started class at midnight every Tuesday night. So again, it was another indication about my level of motivation to do the thing. It wasn't I wasn't being externally motivated, I wanted this thing.

Speaker 1 35:32

Yes.

Mike Coulter 35:33

So that's what I did. So I trained in that and I've qualified as a tiny habits coach. And to this day, it's it's amazing. And and funnily enough, I did then over time because I thought, well, just don't keep it to yourself. I did and still do occasionally teach it primarily to creatives like me and say, I was stuck, this is what I did, it might help you. Do you want to hear about it?

unknown 35:52

Yes.

Mike Coulter 35:52

So that was that then just finally on the four tree shakes, BJ was instrumental in the the fourth one, in a really simple way, but very profound way for me, which went back to his roots about even pre-tiny habits when his his models and methods of understanding human behavior, I realized, and this is only in 2019, I realized in 2019, so I've had three decades of being relatively successful in advertising. And advertising is about influencing you know consumer behavior. And in three in three decades of doing it, I'd kind of been making it up as I went on. I'd never been formally formally trained and qualified and take qualifications in psychology. So as BJ Fogg would he train me. Again, we did it up, we did it over Zoom primarily, but then I went to California and did a thing called boot camp with him and qualified in what's called behavior design, which is how do you use it in the day job? Yes, how do you use it to get customers, how do you use it to write your website, how do you use it to choose your pricing, how do you use it to decide what your content's gonna be in your workshops and courses and things like that. And it it changed everything for me. I I use it every single day. So I have a use it every single day in like tiny habits stuff. If I'm working on stuff like, you know, excess. For example, when I had knee surgery, I'm convinced if I hadn't learned tiny habits, my rehab wouldn't have been as so quick and phenomenally successful. I realized someone that had been useless, absolutely useless at getting myself to do stuff, one of the world's great procrastinators, to do a 1.80 and almost like I decided to do it. And I'm pretty confident I'll be able to nail that really quickly.

Chris Grimes 37:38

And the science of motivation, I've just heard this, you're knee deep in motivation, which already, yeah.

Mike Coulter 37:44

Yeah. Yeah, most people I mean, and this is it. That's a really interesting point, actually, Chris, because when I've been working in advertising years before, when I've been working on health campaigns for like when I when I was working in Scotland, I was working for what's called Health, the Health Education Board for Scotland, and their job was to enhance the health of the millions of Scots that were drinking or not eating enough vegetables or you know, not exercising.

Chris Grimes 38:11

Exactly. In your Mars a day, work, rest, and play.

Mike Coulter 38:15

Exactly. But yeah, in my, you know, a lot of the solutions I came up with in those days, which were baked into the brief. I hadn't really even written the brief, but the first one of the earliest things you've seen, how can we motivate people to drink less, to eat five fruit and veg a day, to exercise? How could all about motivating them and things like that? And I realized years later with BJ Fogg that actually there are millions of people already motivated to do the thing you want them to do, and that's who you need to find first, that low-hanging fruit. And if it works with them, then you can get to the harder and harder populations and audiences.

Chris Grimes 38:53

There's a delicious irony in the name Fogg as well, because this is about clearing the fog and clearly, yeah.

Mike Coulter 38:58

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure BJA would be the first to to um maybe that's been some kind of deep unconscious driver, maybe because it's all about clarity, exactly. It's all about clarity and simplicity and making stuff easier to do. And you don't need to look very far, but you know, for example, when Google launched, you know, Google now have got I don't know, 30, 40 different products, you know, uh Gmail, self-driving cars, YouTube, spreadsheets, loads of different products. When they started, their first product was a single page on the internet, a search engine. That's all they started with. But here's the thing when they started, there were already 17 search engines doing perfectly well on the internet, you know, Ink Tommy, um, Yahoo, uh, Ask Jeeves, there were loads of different search engines. And what Google Genius was, they realized, well, hang on a minute. If millions of people already want to search, and we've got a better product that makes it easier to do, and you get better results, we don't need to go out and saying, hey, we've got a great idea. Why don't you search for things on the internet using our search? No, no. People already want to do it, so just say, hey, to that audience that's already motivated, say, we've got a better way of doing it.

Speaker 1 40:15

Yeah.

Mike Coulter 40:16

Airbnb didn't invent bed and breakfast, stay in some stranger's house. They didn't have to motivate people, saying, We want to motivate you to stay in a stranger's house in a strange city they haven't been to for. They just made it easier to do the app and the interface. It looks so the rooms look beautifully clean, the horse looked so they weren't like serial killers. You know, same with Uber. Taxis have been around forever. Millions of people already wanted to get from A to B, so they didn't need motivating. They needed to see a little diagram of the taxi committer, pick them up so they could get a swift half in the bar before the taxi gets there. Or they didn't even have to give any money to the taxi driver because it was all baked into the app. And that was just like the bang moment for me. Yes, it's not about motivation. Find people who already want to do it and just let them know that you offer an easier, better solution to what they've been using.

Chris Grimes 41:02

And winding you forward, there's a very exciting moment at the end called show us your QR code, please. And I know that you've put all your wisdom into habitualize.com. Habitualize.com, yeah, that's me. Anyone else? And that's where you now apply your micro habit, your tiny habits, basically.

Mike Coulter 41:18

It's it's one of the places people can find me, but I suppose I wouldn't been doing my job if I didn't say people just type Mike Coulter into Google and see what it shows you. It will show you a famous American actor, if you if you get the spelling wrong, but if you spell it C O U L T R, you'll invariably find me.

Bike Wife And Creative Mentors

Chris Grimes 41:36

Wonderful. We're now on, having done the four things that have shaped you, three things that inspire you, Mike Coulter.

Mike Coulter 41:43

Okay. I I hesitated to um to include this, but my bike inspires me. And I remember actually, it was when I was working on the uh side project report, and I was still sort of figuring out the timely habits up and BJ and stuff like that. And I wanted to build more exercise into my day and things like that. And it was uh it was the the the light nights had come. And uh there was one time I had a particularly tough day, and it's about six o'clock, maybe a bit of half five, and I thought, and I I cook, I cook dinner pretty much most days in our house. My wife goes out to work, and um I cook dinner pretty much most days, but but like we don't eat till late, we don't eat till about eight or something like that. And I just decided you know what, I just fancy an ice cold, ice cold glass of lager now. Just I'm just gonna chill out for 20 minutes, half an hour of the lager. And I went to the fridge, I go to the fridge, and I look outside at the shed, and I think the bike's in the shed, put the beer back, got on the bike, and then I designed a tiny habit. After you've finished work, get your bike out of the shed and put it somewhere where you can see it. Because it became this visual prompt, this, this, this inspiration. I say, look, you've got this great bike, you've got great places, you've promised yourself you're gonna change, get another. You can have the beer when you get back if you want while you're cooking, that's fine, but get on the bike. And so the bike totally inspired me. Now, this bike is 20 years old. I bought it in Edinburgh 20 years ago, and I bought it secondhand then, so it's not even 20 years, it's probably 25 years old. It's fairly new when I got it.

Chris Grimes 43:22

And please send a picture of your bike at the end. This is so beautiful because my I say often, my bike is my freedom. This is totally relatable.

Mike Coulter 43:29

Oh, that's great. In fact, you know, funny enough, when I proposed to my wife about 30 years ago, I was so I've been at bikes forever. Instead of buying an engagement ring, I I actually bought her a mountain bike. Oh no romantic, I mean misromantic or whatever. But yeah, so bikes have always bikes have always been part of my life and um always inspired me. As a as a younger man, I used to do endurance sports and uh crazy distances on bikes and that. And uh so yes, I've I've always been inspired by bikes because it's so so simple as well. Again, I love how it comes back to tech and didn't didn't Steve Jobs once say that a computer, when he's talking about early days of ab a computer is a bicycle for the mind.

Chris Grimes 44:16

Great answer. Love that. Please, as I say, just to reincorporate, please do send a picture of your bike. Absolutely. Second thing that inspired uh yes.

Mike Coulter 44:25

Yeah, this should have come first, actually. Uh, my wife. My wife totally inspires me. When I met her, she was um a typographer in an advertising agency. But this was pre-MAC. This was when you you sent type out to be set, and it came back as a you know, a sheet with type on, and then finished artists would cut it out and cowgum it down into it. So um, as I told you when we got married, I mean she's Lancashire, and uh she really does inspire me. We tried to live in Cornwall about 30 years ago, and we couldn't we couldn't make it work financially. This was like the late 90s, just when the internet was starting. And I thought the internet, I actually thought the internet was gonna be a big deal. I was so I was just an advertising copywriter then, but I saw the internet thing, I think this is gonna shake up advertising. And in fact, in 1997, and I only sold it a couple of years ago, I registered the domain in 1997, which was digitalagency.com. I thought it was gonna be a thing called digital agencies, and I thought actually, even if the even if I don't use it, people want this domain, I'll make a fortune. I didn't make a fortune, I sold it very cheaply a couple of years ago. But but in those days, like you had to to get on the internet, say we were we were living in this small town in Cornwall, it was Padstow, actually, we were living in Padstow. You had to get in touch with BT and they had to connect you by an ISDN line actually to the big grey junction box in a thing, you know, it wasn't just like plugging your phone thing into a modem and everything, and it cost about two grand to get set up. And if you want to get a printer from Apple, it was that was two grand, everything was two grand for some reason. And I was gonna set up like this internet business, and it just totally failed. So we we ran our money and we were struggling. So my wife knew two people from Edinburgh who came down to talk to me and said, We want to start a we want to start a design and actually what ended up as a digital company in Edinburgh. Will you come back? It was great, it was a lifesaver for us. So we went back to Edinburgh and there were three of them started this agency, and they were smart. They they had pals in an advertising agency, and they said, Why don't you have a studio in your agency which will be more attractive to clients and it'd be more cost effective to you because you won't be sending it out to studios and so that so it's a really good business move, and my life was part and past of all that, and I you know, she's always had a much better business brain for me, so so she did that. So she started this business, and uh I didn't see much for in the first few years for the first because she was always working, but they grew it to 80 people, it went phenomenally well. Wow, but the thing I admire about her, and she's inspires me is that when she goes for something, she absolutely goes for it, yeah. And even down to when it's run its course, she's I won't say she's ruthless, but she's practical and pragmatic. Because bear in mind she loves design and she loves typography and things like that. But once she was running a business of 80 people, it was more about arguing with the council about business rates every day, yes, or relationship issues with staff and things like that, or whether the loos were working, or whether the all the stuff other than what she loved about why she got in the business. Yes, so she did a really smart thing, and she because she could, she gave herself Fridays off, and every Friday she went and worked for nothing for a year for free, as I say, for a for the best picture framer in town. She wanted to be a picture framer, and she just totally retrained, did it for nothing 52 weeks a year. She worked every Friday to be a picture framer, and then when we moved back to Cornwall this last time, she got a picture framing business in a and it was on an industrial estate, her workshop. But still me, she didn't do the same thing again. She just as that's the that negotiation with an advertised lady said, Why don't you have an art studio in your agency? She thought, if that trick worked there, let's try it again. So she went to a this amazing, so she her workshop was like 30 minutes away. It's a bit of a drag to get to over in Bodmin from where we live. But five minutes from us, as it's amazing. I mean, you if you're in California, you wouldn't be surprised. There's this amazing contemporary art gallery. And you know, like um cool restaurants have an open kitchen. She said to this contemporary art gallery, because she knew there's extra space to the guy. She says, Why do you have a picture of framers inside your art gallery? And we said, Oh, that's a cool idea, we'd love that. But what was brilliant about it in terms of business is everybody who comes to look at art in an art gallery tends to like art and have something to frame. Yes. And the art gallery who's supporting all these artists needs to get the artist's work framed. So it was just a brilliant bit of business from her, but it wasn't done commercially. She just thought it was a really cool idea.

Chris Grimes 49:11

She just arrived knowing the solution to a pain they didn't know they had.

Mike Coulter 49:14

Exactly, exactly. And and it's worked really well, and she's she's she's she still does that.

Chris Grimes 49:19

So framing your career with a picture of a Mars bar is the whole thing. So, yes, we could now be. I think this that's the that's the things that inspire you, correct? Is that right?

Mike Coulter 49:28

Yeah, well, we've done two actually. I think that was it, three on the list for in in in inspiring. You can have three, so inspiration number three. I've been really lucky my whole career that I've worked either with brilliant art typically for for any listeners of views uh uh not totally converse, usually you work in a team in an advertising, a copywriter and an art director. Like me and you would be like a copywriter and art director now. And I've been really lucky, I've worked with some brilliant art directors who who actually are really good at writing and have made me good. One of the best things that anybody can do, whether you're an art director or a creative director, uh a copywriter is this the person, the person I think that gives the most value in a creative team isn't always the person that has the idea, it's the because you have dozens of ideas, it's the person says, nah, nah, nah, that's the one. That's awesome. Go with that, and of course, the ultimate role that is a creative director, so always has some great creative directors, and and there was one particular creative director, David Hyatt's my creative director, and then he totally inspires me.

Chris Grimes 50:26

But years ago, and this this was good psych and I know you uh David Hyatt, just planting that because that's someone very you're very collaboratively connected to him.

Mike Coulter 50:36

Yeah, yes, we worked very closely together, but he's he's very space, he's an utterly brilliant writer, very, very um inspiring writer. So I had this uh creative director years ago in London. I worked at an age called Hollis Corn Hornis Collis Corn Collis Curvan. Um in those days it was the here's the here's how advertising's changed from those days these days. Most advertising agencies now are owned by these massive global entities, uh or PLCs. In the heyday of advertising, it literally had the name of the people over the door who were producing the work. You had the creative director, the head of strategy, and the account director, or whatever. And that's I think that's one of the reasons why it's not as not as such a happy not advertising is aren't such such happy, happy shit.

Chris Grimes 51:22

It's the tragedy of the economy of scale going wrong, whereas you know, culture and hype, or hype and culture, it's over the door of the doom.

Mike Coulter 51:30

Exactly. So I've been looking at creative directors, but I just want to bring in a quick psychology story about what inspired me. That so one of the reasons you'd go to an advertising agency would be the caliber of the people whose name was over the you wanted to work with them. It's a bit like going to a football club where they've got a star striker or a star manager or something like that. So I had this creative ed called Graham Collis, and and and how it worked was when you had a you get a brief for an ad and you'd write the copy, you'd write the copy, and then a production person would take your copy with this there'd be a stamp on the back, literally a stamp on the back of the A4 paper that a copy was printed on. And it got the strategy director who wrote the brief, and he'd read it to see if it met the brief, and the account director who would have to sell it, and he had to sign, and they'd have to literally sign off. And the final sign-off came from the creative director. And one day a production guy came in, Crux and I done their house to get the sign-offs for my copy. And the production guy came in and said, Hey Mark, you might want to see this. I said, Well, he said, I said, Oh, is has Graeme changed my copy? He said, No, no, he loves it. He said, Look at this, and he signed it on the back with his name, and everybody else, all his partners could see this when they saw it. And it said, he just put in brackets and say, I wish I'd written this. This guy was one of the greatest copywriters on the planet, and he said, I wish I'd written this. Yes, I would have walked through hot calls for that guy ever since from then on, and did. And my work improved, and I got put on better and better accounts.

Speaker 1 52:58

Yes.

Mike Coulter 52:59

So that was like a soft skill in the sense of that was motivation, but I didn't need it because I was motivated anyway.

Speaker 1 53:06

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Coulter 53:07

But even soft on, but I think more in instructive one was was this. So one day this same creative director calls me in and he and he said that Mike, we're putting on your new a new account. I said, Okay, what am I working on? He said, We've just won the Oddbins account. The off license, I remember. Yeah, off license chair. Yes, okay. I said, Oh, he said, you fancy it. I said, I really do fancy it. Yeah, I said I think it's a great brand. I you know, I've used them myself, I think they're really great and things like that. He said, Oh, okay. He said, And you you live out out in Oxfordshire, don't you? I used to get the training from Didcot every day to Paddington. I looked I used to the 200-year-old Thatch Cottage up in the whatever. And he said, I said he said, You get a train from Paddington, don't you? You get a training at Paddington. I said, Yeah, I said, Well, there's an Oddbins opposite St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington. Oh, yeah. And well, we've set up an account for you there. So why's that? He said, Well, every Friday you can finish work whatever time you want, Friday afternoon. Remember my dad put me on every Friday, so Friday afternoon off. But go and hang out at the odd bins in St. Mary's in near Paddington. Get to know the manager, speak to the customers, ask him what's selling, what isn't selling, what's he doing, and all that. Then get anything you want. Why, if you want to do a add on champagne, fine. If you want to do it on Australian beers, fine. If you're not on whatever you want, we don't care. Just but but sign out the manager for what the vibe is at the moment in the industry.

Chris Grimes 54:36

And was this a flagship store, which is why this was the one?

Mike Coulter 54:39

No, it's just a regular flagship store was somewhere like in Farrington, which was a big old vaulted place. And they were because odd bins originally, before they were bought by Seagrams and became a bit like advertising this is bought by Mont National. Yeah, odd brim's was a very small small leash opera. They literally bought odd bin ends of wine. If there were 15 cases left in some vineyard in France, they'd have those 15 cases or 100 cases from some Californian winery or whatever. It literally was when it was gone, it was gone. Yeah, and that's what made it kind of really unique and different. It wasn't like a never-ending same brand bottles. So, yeah, and that was the deal. He said, look, go and check to the managers, get whatever you want, go home that weekend, drink it. He said, The deal is if you come back with award-winning advertising on Mondays, every Monday, I'll sign off your drinks, Bill. So for two years I drank for I drank for free and won advertising awards for the work I was doing. So if that wasn't inspirational, I'd you know, I don't know what is.

Chris Grimes 55:43

That is just great, isn't it? Which brings us beautifully to the end of the three things that inspire you. And now, this is the two squirrels. Uh what are your two monsters of distraction? What two things?

Mike Coulter 55:55

Yeah, but helping this might we might have to wing it, just have a slight conversation here. I would think that you talk you mentioned about the manifest. Well, the bikes thing is it's I I I cannot go past a bike shop without going in it. Honestly, I can't answer. Yeah, I'll look at it. So, yeah, so uh that is no, that's actually not true. I was just saying there's no bike shop on the planet. There's plenty of bike shops I wouldn't. I've got a nose for bike shops, yeah. I know a good end from a from a from a bad end. So uh yeah, bike shops is just my squirrel moment. I'm just gone. Great squirrel. We don't need to unpack that anymore. I love it. Second squirrel. I cannot walk past a manifesto without reading it. I love manifestos, and I mean I I got a very broad definition of manifestos from this point of view, like uh just do it from Nike. That's a manifesto, yes, and you know, I just get mesmerized by them and and and and and the backstory, you know. I mean, you know, just do it was the last words of a serial killer who was going to electric chair, nothing to do with uh, you know, and uh think different from Apple. So you can have you can have a you can have a two-word manifesto, or a book could be manifesto. David Hyatt wrote uh due purpose, which was like, you know, 250 pages, 200 pages or whatever. Yes, but it's a manifesto, yes. And so a lot of books I read, uh, you know, I I read them with a half a half a cocked eye of it is it what's the what's the manifesto? What's the manifesto here? Yeah, so that's that's the that's my second thing. Is um it's a really attuned purpose.

Chris Grimes 57:23

I know you know exactly what it is, but it sounds like it's a really attuned purpose imperative. What is this for?

Mike Coulter 57:31

Yeah, and of course there's a practical reason for it. I mean, I the last two years I've been training people how I write manifestos, so I'm always looking for new examples of it to to freshen the freshen the thing up. And and the last thing I would say is that half of the great ads that you'll see in the awards book, or half of the great ads that I love, are manifestos. They're why products exist, why you should consider buying this product and what this product will do for your life. Yes. You know, which is pretty much a manifesto.

Chris Grimes 57:59

I would love to ask your help, advice, and opinion about legacy life reflections when this is done. Yeah, sure. And and again, coming full circle to your own love of a Mars bar, work, rest, and play is a manifesto.

Mike Coulter 58:12

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Chris Grimes 58:14

And I'll just plant this idea. I'll mention this at the very end, but legacy life reflections is to record one's life story for posterity, but we'll come on to that in a second. Yeah. And now we're on to uh the one which is a quirky or unusual flick about you, uh, Mike Coulter, that we couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us.

Mike Coulter 58:29

Okay, so for this, I'm gonna take you back to my grammar school, and it's the 1960s, uh, mid-1960s. So the beat, I think you know, the Beatles are there and everything. And uh I I and after Wikipedia's, I'm not sure when the Cold War ended. You know, the Cold War for our younger listeners or younger viewers was uh there was a time when we thought, and this is kind of appropriate in the modern day. I mean, it was yesterday was four years of Russia declaring war on Ukraine. Yeah, when I was growing up, as uh when I went to secondary school, there was still a chance that we thought the Russians might invade Europe and we might have Russians in in Yorkshire. So I say I went to a grammar school and it was unusual in that just like other schools, there was um, you know, all the usual subjects were taught, including languages, and the languages which most schools did were French and German. Our school was unusual in that they'd managed to lure a teacher there's a is quite an aging teacher, but he was uh hugely respected. So there was a third language taught at the school I went to, which was Russian. And all the in West Riding, where I grew up, all the um education departments were all left-leaning, you know, slightly left-leaning in terms of their political kind of viewpoints and things like that. So one day at some council meeting or some education board meeting, someone said, Can I can I float an impossible idea here? Yeah, what if Russia really did invade and there were troops in Yorkshire and they took over the running of Yorkshire or Halifax? Well, what's your point? Who speaks Russian? Oh, yeah, well, what shall we do? Well, there's that school in Halifax, Halifax Grammar's technical at Halifax Technical High School. They're the only school that got a Russian class. Okay, what should we do? Let's let's fast track the kids in that class to teaching Russian, increase the amount they taught. So we've got some we've got 30 kids that can speak Russian for when the Russians invade. This is so beautiful, it's like Warmington on C and Dad's army. So I was one of I was one of the kids taught Russian, and and so the increased number of classes we had a week at school, and then on Wednesday afternoons, which was thinking Wednesday afternoons was what ultimately am I going to play football on Wednesday afternoon? Well, that did transpire, but Wednesday afternoons, we were coached to Hoodesville, where it was a language lab where these big old tape open spool tape recorders and you put headphones on and were taught Russian by rote for three hours solid. Fantastic. It was awful. I hated it. I had no motivation. I didn't even want to be in the Russian class in the first place, but I was force-fed Russian. It's a bit like I said before. If I was force-fed broccoli, I will never ever get into it. It was the same with the Russian. So I kind of refused to no, no, no, speak to the I just didn't want to know. So I was the worst Russian speaker in the Russian-speaking class.

Chris Grimes 1:01:29

In my whole circa 270-odd episodes, that's the first person's uh quicker unusual fact. I'm the reluctant Russian student. Yeah, so that was, yeah.

Mike Coulter 1:01:37

So we were taught Russians as as kids, we taught Russian as kids just in case the Russians uh invaded Halifax.

Behaviour Matching And Dogfooding Advice

Chris Grimes 1:01:44

Perfect. We have shaken your tree, Mike Coulter. And now we stay in your clearing, which is on your back in the Atlantic, or of course on the camel trail. Now, next we talk about alchemy and gold, which is where your manifesto comes in, because this is your purpose imperative. So when you're at purpose and in flow, Mike Coulter, what are you absolutely happiest doing in what you're here to reveal to the world?

Mike Coulter 1:02:07

I think it's figuring out how to change my own behavior for the better. Or if asked, and never force it on people, if I'm ever asked for advice, sharing it with them. And just from the point, not by any stretch of the imagination, trying to give anybody approved advice. If anybody needs any help in terms of change behaviour, get professional training, either work with a approved therapist, speak to GP, all that usual disclaimers that we have to put in. I'm not giving any advice, and I don't give a I just say, here's what happened to me, and here's what I did, and here's why I found it useful, and you know, it might be tiny habits or whatever. So, me it's it's just sharing with people what what I've tried and what's worked and what hasn't worked for me. And I want to make a distinction here that one of the most interesting things that uh I learned from BJ Fogg was that he talks about this concept called behavior matching, and and a good behavior match is something a person wants to do, they're all really motivated to do it, they can do, they've got the ability to do it, and it'll get them the results they want in a fairly quick bit of time. You know, for example, really quick 30 seconds. A few years ago, I had a few issues, sort of low mood, I wasn't too happy, and things like that. And Mrs. had been talking to one of her friends, she said something like, Um, oh, my husband was like your husband, he's great now. Oh, what did he do? Oh, we went to the village hall and went line dancing every Wednesday night or whatever. Okay, that's a real bad behavior match for me. Ability. Well, I was waiting for knee surgery, I couldn't, I could ride a bike, no problem, but I couldn't walk the dog, so I'm not gonna go line dancing. Embarrassment, I'm not gonna dance in front of anybody unless I'm at a wedding and I've had a couple of drinks. My motivation to do it is really, really low. So it's not gonna happen. So that was a really interesting aspect of it. So, so for me, yeah, so the the thing is it's um sharing one. In fact, I've got a newsletter which is called Dog Fooders, and it's called Dog Fooders in the United States again in the 60s. It was this company wanted to get into dog food, and rather than sort of start manufacturing on their own, they bought just regular stewed steak that humans ate and just relabeled it. So it was as it was it was human consumption grade, and the trick that the sales reps did when we went to the pet shops was this dog food's so good you could eat it yourself. This is where dog fooding comes from. Yeah, yeah. And so dog food really is about so the manuser, dog food is about really about it's it's a news of people who will only give advice that they've already given themselves and taken themselves, yes, and whether it worked for them or not. There's so many infos and experts now in social media or LinkedIn or whatever, telling us all what to do, and half the time my fear or my worry or my assumption is have you done that yourself? You know, there's I think it's a little, I think there's a little bit, a little bit too much do as I say, not as I do. Yes. And I think it should be do as I if you want, try doing as I did, because this is what worked for me. Yes, is a much more honest way of going about it. So yeah, so I think just sharing, just sharing what's worked with what's worked, this has worked for me, it might work for you. It might not, but it might work for you. But this is genuine, field tested, even though it's like N1, just one person's point of view. This this kind of worked for me, so it might work for you, it might not.

Chris Grimes 1:05:33

And just to reincorporate, I love the idea that you got your bike out of the shed and put it in plain view because that was a high motivation factor for you changing your habits.

Mike Coulter 1:05:42

It's also a trigger to do the behaviour when you see it. You know, it works with anything. I mean, I I I I started taking I I work with a nutritionist and started taking some only a few uh you know supplements that I needed to fill a few gaps in my nutrition.

Chris Grimes 1:05:55

Yeah.

Mike Coulter 1:05:56

And I nail that every single morning as I'm making the tea. I put them where I can see them, not even take them, put them where you can see them. You know, if I've got something to do, put it where you can see. Sometimes you can have it a colour that you can see.

Chris Grimes 1:06:08

Yeah.

Mike Coulter 1:06:09

See it across the room. Make it easy to do. And seeing something that you're gonna do and having it to hand, and there's a lot of evidence that actually designing your environment. We talked about our home studios before and things like designing your environment to make it easy to do, make it more easy. You'll pop in a seat and you're off and ready to go. Not spending 20 minutes getting rid of the making the bed or you know, getting the light right or whatever.

Christmas Cake Quotes And Saying Yes

Chris Grimes 1:06:34

And now I'm gonna award you with a cake. Hurrah. So now this is where you get to put first of all. Do you like cake, Mike? I love cake, yes. Too much. Yes. Cake of choice, please. Uh Christmas cake. Oh, I say, lovely. You're the first guest who's ever said Christmas cake.

Mike Coulter 1:06:50

Oh, well, there's a reason for it. There's a reason for it. My mum no longer with us, but my mum used to, wherever I've been living in the world, my mum always used to make me a Christmas cake and send it. And it was always in this almost bum-proof tin, about 17, you know, layers of grease-proof paper, then tin foil, then in a tin with with around. Used to take longer to get into the friggin' tin to get to it to need like so. My mum went over from me, and now my sister's taken over that mantle. But the reason for Christmas cake is and and my sister's on my brief every year is extra cherries in the cake. You don't need a cherry on the top of Christmas cake, you've got dozens already in there. Yes.

Chris Grimes 1:07:31

Yeah. Very happy you unpacked the bomb-proof Christmas cake as well. Now you get to put a cherry on the cake. Yeah. This is stuff like uh what's her favorite inspirational quote that's always given you sucker and pulled you towards your future, Mike Coulter. There's a an American choreographer called Twyler Thorp.

Mike Coulter 1:07:48

A name, Twyla Thorp. She's still she's in her 80s and she still goes to the gym at 6:30 every day. Yeah. And at the gym are founders of businesses, uh, senior executives, bankers, and things like that. And she said, when she sees them, they're not merely getting in some exercise when they can, they're ambitious about taking control of their body, they're as ambitious about taking control of their body as they are about succeeding at work. Their body is like a second career. She says, like a pledge, devotion to your body requires daily renewal. That's one. So about making sure our tools are working okay for us to do stuff. And others from a great meditation teacher that I I bind to, and he just says, Look, an anxious mind cannot exist in a relaxed body. I think it's a whole new take on the mind-body relationship.

Chris Grimes 1:08:47

Lovely. I'm just gonna let that hang there. Lovely. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given by somebody else, Mike Coulter?

Mike Coulter 1:08:56

Say yes more often. There's a lot of talk about saying no, and I let me just literally unpack in 20 seconds. Saying no, things like people wanting your time. Will you come and do this? Will you come and do that? Will you write that with that? Always interesting. Keep your antenna up, but we can't say yes to everything. Yes. But internal experiences, oh, what's that funny pain in my tummy? Oh, that got a pain in my neck. Oh, I feel a bit anxious. Oh, that's not great. Well, all these experiences we have in the body or the mind. So I'm talking about, yeah, I've I've had my run-ins with with mental health and um, I'm in a good place now, but mental health and anxiety and and and um panic disorders and stuff like that, which has been in a sense paradoxically, a blessing. When they when they arrive and I struggle with them, I found that they get worse, they're already here.

unknown 1:09:46

Yes.

Mike Coulter 1:09:47

But saying yes stops that struggle and helps the helps promote getting untangled from it. And you know, it's that old saying, isn't it, that you know, if you say no to it, it makes it more like Velcro. Yeah, if you say yes to it, it makes it a little more like Teflon and actually leaves you a lot quicker. So that's been that's my big my biggest say yes to all internal experience. Because if it's an internal experience, it's uh it's arrived already. The the g the you know the gene is out of the bottle if it's if it's there and you're feeling something. Yes, so your response uh the responsive yes, it's like yes, now what? How can I work with this?

Recommendations Legacy Links And Farewell

Chris Grimes 1:10:23

It's very relatable because of my passion and it working in the realm of comedy improvisation with its mindset of yes and of course, yes, and thought, of course, yes, absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. Uh wonderful. So um, yeah, that's that's a big improv thing. It's yes and exactly, yes and as opposed to no button, the qualitative derivation of both. Beautiful. We're ramping up now to talk about Shakespeare in a moment, to talk about legacy. Uh, but before we get there, this is the pass the golden button moment, please. They don't like it up, Mr. Mannering. We've mentioned Dan's army and warmington on sea and Russia already. But um, who now you've experienced this from within, might you most like to pass the golden baton along to in order to keep the golden thread of the storytelling going, Mike?

Mike Coulter 1:11:07

There are three people. Uh can I have three people? Yes, I love that. Um one guy's a a friend of mine up in Scotland in Edinburgh, who used to be a scallop fisherman, he used to hand dive for scallops at 4 a.m. in the morning. Oh, yeah. And before that, he brought he wrote a book of his experience of he went and lived in Alaska in the wilds and built a log cabin fending off bears. And before that, he trained with a fellow French Foreign Legion. So there's a guy, it's called Guy Greve. Um, he's a miraculous, marvellous man. Guy Greve, Guy Greve, G-R-I-E-V-E, Guy Greave, and he he belts out a lovely opera tune every now and so it's Guy Greve. There's there would be, of course, David Heyer, who is uh gold standard. And the last one I say is a palaman who's uh is is um is a professor of business, I think, at Chicago Booth University. He's a huge friend of the do lectures. And my third one is a professor, I think he's a professor of entrepreneurial business at Chicago Booth University, and it's called Professor Greg Bunch, and he is the most wonderful, qualified, gifted, educated man I've ever known. He often uses poetry to um to unpack his thoughts. So yeah, uh, Greg Bunch.

Chris Grimes 1:12:21

So I've got poetry, opera, and diving for scallops at 4am. That's pride, that's quite an elixir of awesomeness. Thank you very much. Love that. Thank you. And now, inspired by Shakespeare, all the world's a steed, all the bittered wibbid, beery players. How, when all is said and done, Mike Cote, would you most like to be remembered? I think it's just uh I knew Mike, I liked Mike, I loved Mike. Love that. This is now, this is the very exciting moment called Show as your QR code, please. And this is now we're listening and watching and loving, but also tiny habits business class. What's the domain of where we can find out all about Mike Coulter on the web?

Mike Coulter 1:13:03

Yeah, uh www, um habitualize h a b-i-t, habit, u l-i-se.com, habitualize.com.

Chris Grimes 1:13:14

And if you're watching, you can scan the QR code and boom, takes you straight there. How very, very exciting. Also, if you'd like to connect with Mike on LinkedIn, you can connect with Mike Coulter on LinkedIn. Look for him, obviously. Don't misspell it. C-O-U-L-T-E-R. And you can scan this QR code as well, please. It's very, very exciting.

Mike Coulter 1:13:33

How you're making it easy for do everyone to do that's perfect. Behavior design. You're a behavior designer, Chris.

Chris Grimes 1:13:39

I'm very visual like you are. So this is wonderful. Um, just a couple of announcements. Um, if you uh would like to talk about having a conversation about being in this show too, the website for my show is thegoodlistening to show.com. It also syndicates to UK Health Radio and also very excitingly in the last month as I go to press uh with brushwood media in the States. So it's my cunning plan to trebuchet into the States to get the Americans even more enamored. And then what I'm particularly excited about, and also I'd love to talk to you about this post this Mike, is I've got a very special series strand using this construct that Mike and I have both been riffing on, using the clearing the tree, the da-da-da-da-da, to talk about Legacy Life Reflections, which is to record your life story or the story of somebody that you love for posterity, lest we forget before it's too late, with me as your host. And you'll look if you look at the website the good uh uh legacylifereflections.com, it's a series stand that's already already been there within the Good Listening Two show. But my father, Colin Grimes, is an enigmatic mascot where he's sort of going, cheers to a good life. I recorded my father in the halcyon days of his 80s. He died a year and a half ago, but I got my dad when he was about 83, he lived until he was 86, in the halcyon days of his 80s, and a very precious recording and film of him it is. Back to you, Mike Coulter. You'll enjoy this. This is a final, final sort of epic coachy question. As this has been your moment in the sunshine, Mike Coulter of the Good Listening to show Stories of Distinction and Genius. Is there anything else you'd like to say?

Mike Coulter 1:15:15

No, Chris. Just to just to thank you for giving me the opportunity to do it. I can see immediately how it fits with the Lifetime Legacy. I I've um It's been a bit more of a grown-up version, actually, of what I've been discovering with Do Radio and Three Wims, like I said earlier, that by having the discipline of doing three whims for do radio, I've been amazed and surprised that I'm sort of figuring it out, figuring out my life in real time. And then when I went through um the structure of your show, I found it really, really interesting. And did you just very quickly, I mean, um we've done about 25 shows so far, and I think it's like 86,000 words a show, and where we talk about time, money, mojo. So if we've done 20 odd shows, I've already got like 60 or 70 with three subject matters, 60 or 70 stories, yes, most of which are about that have come out of my life. So I think what's been magical about this last hour with you and actually doing the preparation for it, I've almost got half my autobiography written. It's extraordinary. That's it's just a fantastic gift that because when do we find the time to do it? But it's taking no time. It's there's something really you're on something really uh mind-blowing here, particularly the end the legacy thing, which is really cool.

Chris Grimes 1:16:38

Thank you. That's very, very much appreciated and precious feedback. And as I say, going forward, I would love to talk about because your vibe attracts your tribe. I'd love to talk to you and do radio about you know, lending this structure, curating this structure within that domain. Because I I love what you're all about and up to as well. As I say, genesis of the yellow door crossing the threshold. I'm a huge fan of both you and uh David. I've seen you facilitate as well. I've been to a couple of the workshops that you do. What's that wonderful uh place in London where you do it? Cecil Sharp House, Bridges Park, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Coulter 1:17:15

Yeah, I think strictly, strictly rehearsed there. You know, when they're doing the the dance at the rehearsing, yeah.

Chris Grimes 1:17:22

So thank you so much, Mike. It's been an absolute deep privilege talking to you. And what a fantastic, glorious episode. I've got I've got two episodes out of you, a nice big, lovely, juicy an hour and a half together, which has been lovely. So thank you very much for watching. I've been Chris Grimes. This has been Mike Coulter. Thank you very much indeed. Good night. You've been listening to the Good Listening to Show with me, Chris Grimes. If you'd like to be in the show too, or indeed fifth an episode to capture the story of someone else with me as your host, then you can find out how pair of the series trends at the goodlistening2.com website. And one of the series trends is called leadership reflections. For business leaders or those of you that work in the leadership domain to be able to share your leadership lessons learned along your way. Maybe you'd like to play it forward as you move from one leadership opportunity to the next. Maybe you're about to stop, and you'd like to drop the mic to preserve your leadership legacy, or you may just want to consolidate where you already are as you share your leadership reflections. Tune in next week for more stories from the clearing, and don't forget to subscribe and review wherever you get your podcast.