In this episode of Peer Effect, Nigel Thomas, founder of David to Goliath, shares his profound journey of transformation from facing life's darkest moments to rising with a new vision; turning personal challenges into a source of inspiration for others facing their own "Goliaths."
Together, we dive into:
Explore how Nigel is not only documenting his growth but also helping others navigate their challenges through the strength of vulnerability and the power of community.
For more about Nigel Thomas's journey and insights, follow him on LinkedIn.
More from James:
Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com
In this episode of Peer Effect, Nigel Thomas, founder of David to Goliath, shares his profound journey of transformation from facing life's darkest moments to rising with a new vision; turning personal challenges into a source of inspiration for others facing their own "Goliaths."
Together, we dive into:
Explore how Nigel is not only documenting his growth but also helping others navigate their challenges through the strength of vulnerability and the power of community.
For more about Nigel Thomas's journey and insights, follow him on LinkedIn.
More from James:
Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com
Today, we dive into the resilience of the human spirit with Nigel Thomas, a visionary who has turned his personal struggles into a source of strength and inspiration for others. After facing a particularly difficult time in his life, Nigel chose to channel his pain into purpose, founding David to Goliath, a platform dedicated to empowering others with the courage to conquer their giants. Join us as Nigel unfolds his compelling story and imparts some valuable lessons on leadership, building resilience and fostering deep, meaningful connections within global remote teams. You're listening to Peer Effect, the podcast that fuels you with new ideas and inspiration through interviews with founders and experts who've made it happen. I'm your host, James Johnson, and I coach Series A plus founders to take back control, propel their businesses and live a fulfilling life, let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so three to four months ago I was thinking about taking my own life, and the reason why was because I lost the person that believed in me most, and that was this woman who believed in me unconditionally, and this belief gave me the conviction and confidence to go and quit my nine to five at 26 years old and build three marketing agencies, two of which we managed to get seven figures. And after I lost that person, I nearly gave up on everything, including life. But the thing is, looking back, what I said to myself in those dark moments. So I'm not going to continue for me, I'm going to continue for everyone else who deserves a second chance in life. And really, why it's called David to Goliath is because David was passed on that belief, that self-belief that with a slingshot and a few pebbles he could go and defeat the mighty Goliath.
Speaker 2:So my whole thing is I'm documenting my company back in public. I quit my comfortable job as CEO of Alpha Inbound a six-figure salary to risk it all and build this newsletter. We've got an audacious goal of 100,000 subscribers in 2024, which is obviously going to be seriously challenging. But I'm documenting in the pain. I'm by no means over this issue that I've had in my life, and I want people to have a front row seat to the chaos that entrepreneurs really go through, but also for anyone else who wants to challenge themselves and do something more in life and really leap into the unknown, into that uncertainty, and the reason they can get through that is because they have the self-belief to do it, and that's what I want to be able to pass on. So, even though I lost that, I still had that experience and I'm grateful for that, and now I'm in a position where I'm ready to come back, rise again and obviously pass it on to other people.
Speaker 1:Well, it's very noble calling and good luck with that. I suspect this is going to lead on quite nicely into your answer to the first question, which is what is a unique insight that you would share based on your experience, and what's the story behind it.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I think we talked about community and really Harvard Business. They did a study on human happiness. It was the longest study ever conducted I believe it's still going on 85 years that they tracked some guys in the States. They looked at everything you know. They didn't know before they went into this study what the metric was around happiness and what causes it. They looked at everything and the results are quite astounding. We're talking about impact on physical health, relationships, stress, literally everything you can think of. What they found is the biggest cause of happiness is deep, meaningful relationships, and even though social media has been fantastic for connecting us all, the problem is it's quite shallow.
Speaker 2:So now we find ourselves in a situation, a world, where people are more lonely than ever. People are in cities and they don't have many friends, and for me, I was in that position. I had this one person, my entire support system bearing in mind. When I was at school, I was incessantly bullied and I just stuck out from most crowds. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a very creative thinker and I don't fit into most crowds and now it makes sense. But if I had more of a support system, I probably wouldn't have been in that place, so obviously part of my thing is sure, it's 100 000 subscribers, but that represents each individual, so we can build a community so people can have that safe place and environment to connect with other people that understand them, and I think this is one of the best things that you can do and especially if you find people that accept you for who you are and don't try to change you, because I think that's one of the big differences between the UK and the US.
Speaker 2:Whilst the UK is incredibly rich in culture and you honestly can't beat it, and it's got such incredible things about it, it's not great, for when you want to go after your dreams, it's almost like you separate yourself from the herd and then people want to pull you back, whereas in the States it's obviously quite a new country that's banded together by immigrants all pulling together to go after and build the american dream. They're very supportive and they get behind your crazy ideas. That's why I find it's better for entrepreneurs. But even within the uk, I've talked to so many people that want to dream bigger and go and do whatever they want in life. It doesn't necessarily need to be business. It can be, you know, just doing something they've wanted to always do Go and visit that place, go and talk to that woman, maybe start that business idea, maybe write that book, but surrounding yourself with people that empower you to do that.
Speaker 2:And I honestly don't think there's anything better and any bigger shortcut in life than finding a community of those people and building deep, meaningful relationships. And judge your relationships this is what winston churchill said by how they show up in bad weather. It's all good and well when you're riding high, everything's going great and everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. But you find the real people when you're going through the tough stuff and then they show up and then they support you and they're the kind of deep, meaningful relationships you should be looking for in your life so you've, you've clearly had, you've referenced, so there's one really deep relationship that you've had.
Speaker 1:Have you also found a community previously as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I found some communities. I found some entrepreneurs not necessarily just communities, it was more. I went searching for it and I found a lot of entrepreneurs. You know, I was living out in the States and I just connected with these people one to one. And it's interesting because I actually spoke to this woman who ran massive teams at Tesla. She's one of my mentors and she said to me straight away you're definitely on the neurodivergent spectrum, you should definitely get checked out for ADHD, so it's little things like that. But then she was empowering me, telling me that I can go and build this newsletter, I can lean into my strengths, and she said this thing to me me which is you're looking for the treasure everywhere. You're trying to find this one magical thing before you leave these agencies and jump ship and go and build your own thing. But she said you are the treasure and it's. It's comments like that from people who really care about people, and she's going on to build this massive ai company and doing all these incredible things. But those are moments and conversations that change your life.
Speaker 2:So for me, it was more just going after specific entrepreneurs. I wish I had more of that community. I did most of it online, but I found certain individuals that really helped me out through my life. But the last thing I'll say on that is it doesn't necessarily just need to be if you're an entrepreneur entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:When I was in this really bad state, I came back to the UK One of my best friends from childhood who lives next door to me. I opened up to him and what we're doing on a weekly basis four times a week is at 6 am, no matter when, rain or shine, we go out at 6am in the morning, we do runs together in the dark and just having that person running with each other, you know, pushing for each other, having that accountability partner, that's really really helped me through my dark times. So I would also say it doesn't necessarily just need to be someone in business. It can be someone in a different aspect of life. But it's more about are they willing to show up for your baddest moments and are you willing to show up for them, no matter. You know whatever they're going through in life.
Speaker 1:I think that's deeply impactful so community doesn't mean just find a pre-existing organization although I'd be lucky because I might, but it sounds like it's. It's surrounding yourself with the five or six deep relationships. Aren't necessarily entrepreneurs could be friends, just people who are going to be positive and show up for you in the bad times.
Speaker 2:And build your own community is what I would say. If you can't find one that you don't like, go and build your own community, because there's a woman organization called CHIEF to give you an understanding of the scale of where communities are going in the next few years, because of all this stuff with social media, chief have got 10,000 women, I think. It is started by two female founders in New York. They've got 60,000 person waiting list and within two years they're now valued at over a billion dollars. So that gives you an idea of the explosion of communities.
Speaker 2:You don't necessarily need to do it for a massive business venture, though. You could just do it on a small basis, just within your neighborhood, within your community, within your area, within your local city. I genuinely think that if you're surrounded by people that are also going through the struggle and you're all climbing towards the same thing, I think this is the the only hack or shortcut I've found, and obviously a lot of people talk about mentorship. Right, but this is a form of mentorship. If you have that community, and I think I really do believe within the next five to 10 years, this is how we get to the next stage of human evolution.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe let's jump on to question two then. So what's an external influence that's really resonated with you recently, and why?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So for Christmas my mom actually bought me this book called the Motive, from Patrick Lencioni and he's written quite a few books around leadership and I picked it up thinking I'll have a quick scan through it. Maybe I'll learn a couple of things. I was absolutely gripped from the first few sentences and the first few paragraphs. I think it's because I am actually a leader and it struck a chord with me. But essentially and he's a great writer, patrick Lencioni he uses a fable, a story of two different leaders one who isn't really a leader, one who is a leader and then he talks about lessons at the end.
Speaker 2:But really it came down to two things. It's about the motive behind leadership. So you've got two main types of leaders reward-centered leaders and responsibility-centered leaders. So reward-centered leaders are people that are doing it for their ego, for the fame, because they want to climb to the top, and obviously they want everyone else holding them up. You can imagine you know someone there with everyone else holding them up and they're getting all the credit. These are the kind of fake leaders really that burn out. And then you've got responsibility centered leaders and again, if you go back to the image, they're holding everyone else up because they're sacrificing for their people. Because leadership isn't about ruling with an iron fist. It's about the person who's willing to sacrifice most of their people. And really you, if you're a leader and you're listening to this or you're in an organization where there is a leader you should be asking yourself this question Do you have the right motive behind leadership? Because leadership is not sexy. Leadership is about managing other human beings and you have to be there for them every single day. It's constant, it's absolutely relentless and if you're not in it for the right reasons, you will burn out. And I think the other thing is is if you're not a leader and you understand that early and then you accept that and it's your own company, but then you have a great leader within your company who is responsibility centered, and then you give them and empower them to go and lead your team because they're in it for the right reasons. I think that's equally as strong and I think a lot of people, if they were actually honest about this, they would run much more successful businesses.
Speaker 2:Because for me, I've been in a company where the leader was a narcissist and I went to him and I asked him for equity in his company right Because he was running some other businesses at the start. I built this company, led a 20-person team and officially I was the COO and I said can I have some equity? I know I can build this thing and make it great. And everyone looked up to me, not because I was something special or whatever it was, because I was there for them and I was sacrificing for my people. And what he said is he laughed me out the door, basically, and he said no.
Speaker 2:And then what happened is he came back into the company, took the reins because he couldn't take, from an ego standpoint, that I was leading the team and people looking up to me, and he ran the business into the ground and destroyed the culture that I built. And that was heartbreaking, you know, seeing people treated in such a toxic manner. And I saw the other side of leadership and when I read this book it all made sense, like it kind of just connected all the dots and it deeply resonated with me. So I think the Motive by Patrick Lencioni is a fantastic book, but, moreover, it's a chance and opportunity for everyone who's working in the team to ask themselves are you a reward-centered leader or responsibility-centered leader? What is your motive and also to ask the leaders in your team, then together, I think this creates a much better organization.
Speaker 1:Is the view that you can change your style or is it something that's intrinsic? You are one or the other.
Speaker 2:It's a good question. I think you just have to be honest. It's do you want to change? I think knowing what you actually have to do to be a leader. I think that's the first part, because most people don't understand that. There's no one telling people at school this stuff, so where else are they going to learn it? You know, most people are already running big organizations before they find this stuff out and then they're burning out, but really it's because of the motive behind it. So you first need to understand what it takes to be a true leader and then ask yourself the question if you really actually do want to change.
Speaker 2:I think it's possible, but you've got to understand every single day if you're a leader depending on, obviously, how big the company is all you're going to be doing is managing people. That's your job. You're not doing anything else. You're just managing people all the time, and people have problems and you've got to be at the top in terms of it's a lonely place and no one's going to be caring for you. You've got to take all that burden of responsibility. So you've got to ask yourself that question do you want to change? Do you want to become that person?
Speaker 1:because it's not easy, and if you don't just be honest with yourself it's interesting, this concept kind of servant leadership has been around for a while. It's kind of leaders eat last, yes, and it's interesting, this concept kind of servant leadership has been around for a while. It's kind of leaders eat last, yes, and it's interesting. Like a lot of my coaching clients, they they tend to fall on the side of like very people-centric in terms of that, very much what what's? It requires responsibility. That leadership, yeah, and I think there is a danger that you can go too far, that you can be too people driven, you can be too responsive, you can be too self-sacrifice, you can be too isolated because you're there giving all your energy to your team. And I wonder how does he cover this at all in the book, or is it? Is it a bit black and white in terms of response?
Speaker 2:responsibility is good well, yeah, so this. He has a lot of books and I haven't read the other ones, but basically what he said in it is this is a foundational book for leadership, so it'll be good to go and study those other books. Obviously, leadership's very complicated, right? It's not a black or white thing, and I think it's different for everyone. In that situation, I think you know, when it comes to overdoing leadership and over sacrificing, for me it'll come down to purpose.
Speaker 2:Then, like, what are you leading? Because, yeah, sure, you've got to get everyone thrown in the right direction. You're on a boat, you're the captain of the ship, but what's the destination? A boat, you're the captain of the ship, but what's the destination of that ship? Because if the destination of that ship isn't where you actually want to go in the first place, yeah, I think, even if you're a great people person, it's probably not going to last too long and it's going to end badly. So that's then even a deeper question of why are we doing this, even a deeper question of why are we doing this? Where are we going? What's our purpose? What's our mission? I think if that's all aligned, then you're doing purposeful work and then you're inspiring other people to do purposeful work, but that's kind of a different question altogether because what I've seen is that people can't.
Speaker 1:if you come to team centers, we instinctively think as leaders that anything relates to people is a relatively high urgency task. So it always sits in our quadrant one box. And actually I've come to believe that quite a lot of the people stuff is actually distraction or low importance but can fill high urgency Because anything we tag with people, suddenly we increase the importance and what we can do is spend a lot of our time just being driven by other people's agendas, not by own. We're not doing that stuff sort of. What is our greater mission? What are our key objectives? How do we make sure we hit those and really own our agenda, as opposed to be driven by our team sometimes or our people? And the better you grow, the bigger the company. You've got more and more people's agendas and more and more people happy and you get more and more pulled off your path and more isolated. I think that can set up a quite negative spiral for leaders.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you're a leader of an organization, then the reason why you have culture and principles is because you can't actually talk to everyone, right? So sure, you're going to be managing people, but really you're going to be managing your executive team and you need the culture and the principles as really a decision making matrix so you empower people that are creative and can problem solve in their own right, and then everyone's making decisions off the same culture and principles. Right, because micromanaging people is not the way to do leadership. That's not going to end well. And again, some of the best lessons through leadership are letting people figure things out themselves, because then they'll learn the most and then they'll become dynamic problem solvers and then they can contribute more, and then, obviously, that culture gets passed down to the rest of the team.
Speaker 1:It's empowering people. Challenge aside, I do like this sort of reward versus responsibility style leadership. It's just the danger of taking it too far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's definitely not for everyone.
Speaker 1:Well, let's move on to question three, then, which is what is a sort of a practical hack or tip you'd share with other founders to make things happen.
Speaker 2:So this is something that I actually did by mistake and it led to some really big breakthroughs. So I was based out in the States before I came back to the UK and some of our team at the agency before I left it were based in Portugal and I went to visit them and it was really just to kind of get the team together, have a bit of a retreat kind of thing and just see them in person, because we were a remote team. And what I noticed, because I just literally went to these guys' hometown in Porto and we went to all their local coffee shops, the places where they eat, we went to their local football stadium, all the things that they love to do day to day and I also met their family, I met their partners and it was interesting because after that I connected with them on such a deep level and I think obviously maybe this is not practical for all leaders because you're not going to have the time to visit everyone in your organization. But if you can visit someone where they live and understand their culture, especially if you've got a team remote, it goes a long way.
Speaker 2:Got a team remote, it goes a long way Because then when you talk to them.
Speaker 2:Not only do you gain a lot of respect for them instead of flying them all out to a different city, you see them in their environment, so you can speak to them and communicate with them in a way that's very specific to them, and obviously you understand what they're dealing with day to day. You know when they're speaking to their loved ones, who are their loved ones, how do they interact with them, and then you can be there for them and you can make sure that their personal goals in life and all the people they love are aligned with the companies and just the conversations we had after that two or three days we spent together was so much more meaningful and, interestingly enough, I noticed that they were a lot more engaged in their work after doing it and they started working a lot harder and were a lot more productive, as well as, like I said, building that deep-rooted trust with them. It would also go a long way into understanding their culture, and that will make you a better person all around.
Speaker 1:And I wonder whether they're more willing to share their true goals. Yes, they were.
Speaker 2:You know, if I, when I went to Portugal, met some of these guys I met their father, for example, and one of their fathers wasn't so well and I shook his hand and we went for food together and I could just see in the eyes of the guy that the team member I was meeting how much that meant to him.
Speaker 1:So let's say you run a 50-person company and you've got people in five different countries. What's the frequency we should be aiming for here?
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I've never run a 50-person company so maybe I'm not the best person to ask, but I think just even doing it once would go a long way. I would be astounded if you didn't notice a massive difference before and after. Everyone meets in person. And I think the remote work's great. The internet has decentralized power and opportunity a lot. But what remote work isn't great for is those deep, meaningful relationships. And I think when you build those and people see each other and not just the work side of things they're talking about the personal things and they you see another human being. You want to connect with them more. You want to do more meaningful work together.
Speaker 2:And another thing is to incentivize people because obviously once they have this experience they'll really enjoy it. You can have your goals and say maybe you've got a stretch target in your business, for example, if it's sales, you can say we've got this stretch target. We're obviously going to have to push really hard If we reach a stretch target. We will then organize a retreat for the entire organization and, by the way, let's do a vote on where everyone wants to go and now the team picks where we go together, so they feel like they've created this, and then you can all get together. Obviously, in the process, you hit a bigger goal, then you all celebrate it together as a team. I think this is a really good thing to install, especially for remote companies.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like there's links back to AnswerOne in terms of if you're saying that founders should sort of find a community for them. It feels like answer three is almost like build a community within your own company in terms of with the same thing, like build deep meaning, like it is not a community until they're deep based on deep meaningful relationships. Yeah, and it's harder to have deep meaningful relationships without that sort of in-person interaction.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent, yeah. I couldn't agree more of in-person interaction. A hundred percent, yeah.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more, which also links to the idea of responsibility leadership yes, not reward it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the other thing is you'll probably see when you meet people in person, you see who good leaders are and you see who aren't good leaders, and you also see the real traits behind humans. And it's weird because once you've seen this and then you go back into the business and workspace especially if you're working online you start to see everything else through a different perspective and you start to understand people a lot better. And that is a great way for then organizing your team, making sure people are in the right roles, doing the right things. So I think not just for everyone else's benefit, but for your own benefit that the person who's organizing it it's fantastic for management and setting up your team in the correct way, not for when you're doing the big presentation in front of everyone, when you get together, more for when you're sitting down having a coffee with someone or you're seeing when they're ringing their loved one.
Speaker 1:These little things, these little interactions, if you really listen and you can learn a lot, I think it also makes teams a lot more forgiving, because if you haven't met and you're mainly communicating by written word word, you're very prone to misunderstanding. It's kind of oh, it's tony from finance, again that and it actually. You actually met tony from finance in person and you realize that he loves porto and he's actually a really nice guy. And when he writes this he's not. He's not being a dick, he's just actually, yeah, he just has a different communication style. He's actually a really nice guy and when he writes this he's not being a dick, he's just actually. He just has a different communication style, he's just trying to get sent across quickly. Suddenly you're a lot more forgiving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. And then maybe you find out that Tony's just gone through a divorce and he's really stressed and he's finding the pressure of his job really hard. So he's pushing because he's trying to show the CEO of that company that he is really good for the organization and that pressure has obviously come through in his communication. But when you understand that, you can relate to him, you can say how things are going. Obviously, I know you've gone through his divorce, I know it's hard. What can I do to help you? And yeah, all magical kind of things come from that.
Speaker 1:I suppose the thing that I'm curious about and like practically, if this is kind of different like build, build your community either internally or externally, it feels like identifying your community internally is kind of easier because they're already internal. It's just, yeah, get in front of them, build deeper relationships, make it a bit, make something, a bit more of it. But how would you advise, from how you've done it, building your external community what practically would you do in terms of identifying the people to go and reach out? How did you reach out to them? How did you just go about it?
Speaker 2:Well, I started documenting my journey online and I know this is hard for some people to do, but that's where content comes in. Great, obviously, everyone talks about content from the marketing perspective and sales, because you can get an ROI off it so you can track that very easily. But really content, especially if you lean into who you are as a person. You take your personality online. You share not only the good, but also the bad and the damn right ugly. It acts as a filter to draw the people who share your values towards you. So I have a lot of people reaching out to me that are very aligned with me and, interestingly enough, when I was at Alpha Inbound, our best hires came through the content that I was putting out that they'd been reading for six months. And what happened is when they came into the organization and some of these people they could have gone to work at Fortune 500 companies, but they chose to work with Little at All for Inbound because they wanted to be in a company with a leader like me who had my values and the mission that we are on together. They bought into that. So when they were onboarded, they hit the ground running. There wasn't a massive onboarding time. So we didn't go through a recruiting agency and there was just a really good team fit. But obviously outside of this I've had a lot of other people that I've done business with or I've just become friends with that are drawn to my messages and they share the same values as me. So obviously this takes some time to build.
Speaker 2:If you're not willing to put the work in to do that, then another great way to do it is to follow other people's content and people share their values in their content and then usually they probably will have built a community. Or again, if you think about it, if someone's putting out content, like I said, they've attracted a lot of people through that filter to them. So that means that they've already got a community. It might just be not in the sense of we're meeting up every month, but they've got a community of people online and then you can connect into their community. And if that person is talking about certain topics that you resonate with, the likelihood is they've got a lot of people following them who also resonate with those topics and principles. So then you can go and follow those people, you can connect with those people on whatever platform you use and then within that, suddenly those people all have friends who all align with those values, and then you have this big network effect.
Speaker 1:I think that's really, really useful. You see, with so many founders, you're always giving energy out to your team. Very few people get it back and that's why people have coaches to sort of have at least someone who's there to support them. Having someone who's there to support them, but having a community of peers or people with shared values is also another very valuable way of rebuilding your energy pool, rebuilding your resilience, getting new ideas yeah, I've always thought about building your tribe and you know the content community you can build online and as humans, we're tribal by nature.
Speaker 2:Our ancestors, we're all tribal. That's how we're having this conversation in the first place, because they banded together as a tribe, so naturally, that's how we are wired. And with this whole online movement, there's this whole thing called solopreneurship I'm sure you've heard of it before where basically people are quitting their jobs and they're becoming solopreneurs.
Speaker 2:I don't believe in that and and here's the reason why If you're doing everything for yourself, then for me, that's not freedom, because then you have to do everything you're also not good at. For me, what freedom is is focusing on my strengths every single day and only doing that, working alongside other people who compliment me in the areas I'm not good at but that's what their strengths are and then together as the tribe, going back to how we got here today our strength as humans we can all win together. So I think if you create that tribe within your organization and you, really everyone leans into their strengths, so you get really honest about that, you meet up in person, you really find out what people's strengths are. I think this is a great way to see business, and that's something that I take away from this conversation.
Speaker 1:Reflecting on our conversation with Nigel, it's clear that the journeys we embark on as founders are deeply intertwined with the connections we cultivate along the way. Nigel's story is a reminder of the strength found in vulnerability and the incredible potential of leadership and human resilience when fueled by meaningful relationships. Thank you for tuning into Peer Effect. Join us next week for another inspiring episode that brings light to the experience and lessons shaping change makers across the globe. Until next time, cheers.