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We Balance Business and Family with Real Work-Life Lessons
I offer a program for entrepreneurs and high achievers who want to elevate both their business outcomes and personal lives. I offer a clear objective: practical strategies, tools, and skills that expand capacity for success. I speak candidly about the constant tug-of-war between work and home. I argue that nothing is 50/50 and that deliberate change in habits and structures is necessary to move beyond repeated, limiting results. We will cover productivity, mindset, relationships, and mental health. I emphasise authenticity and deep, rooted confidence rather than surface bravado. I describe the show format in plain terms: fifteen-episode seasons, initial lessons that build a "success IQ," and later interviews with domain experts. I invite listeners to engage, submit questions, and to adopt the practices we recommend. I close with a concise call to action and an offer of support for those prepared to change their life trajectory.
Takeaways:
- I created this podcast to help entrepreneurs develop strategies that balance business performance and personal well-being.
- I share my lived experience of severe illness and recovery to illustrate how resilience and authentic leadership enable sustained professional and familial flourishing.
- I assert that mental health and mindset are fundamental to entrepreneurial success, and we must prioritise them above tactical skills.
- I emphasise that work and life constitute a continuous tug of war, and no binary fifty-fifty balance exists in practice.
- I explain the show format, including seasonal episodes, expert interviews, and a unique life lesson segment that invites guests to choose numbers.
- I invite listeners to change habitual behaviours, adopt new structures and processes, and engage consistently so that one conversation can catalyse lasting transformation.
Transcript
Hi and welcome to the Success IQ podcast.
Speaker A:The show for entrepreneurs who want to create and live an exceptional life.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Geoff Nicholson and this is episode zero.
Speaker A:Hi and welcome.
Speaker A:So let's get started.
Speaker A:I have to admit I am both nervous and excited.
Speaker A:This has been a long time in the creation phase.
Speaker A:My perfectionism is kicking in and you have no idea how many times I've recorded this session.
Speaker A:But that's the joys of this type of thing and something I'm working on on a day to day basis.
Speaker A:So what is this show about?
Speaker A:Well, quite honestly it's aimed for the, the entrepreneur, the high achiever in you that wants to level up.
Speaker A:They want to make their, their business exceptional.
Speaker A:They want to live a life that's exceptional.
Speaker A:And quite often what I find is, is that this is what they want, but they don't necessarily have the tools to do that.
Speaker A:And a few of them, a few people won't, will struggle with that battle continuously because quite often what they do is they do the thing they've always done and they keep on getting the same results.
Speaker A:But it's not until you do something differently that's when the magic happens.
Speaker A:And this show is designed to give you those strategies, those tips, those tools that will help you achieve the things that you want in life.
Speaker A:And it's that, it's working on that, I'm going to say work, life, balance, but it's, it's so much more than that.
Speaker A:And that, that, that term is going to come up over and over again.
Speaker A:But it's that understanding that nothing's ever going to be 50, 50.
Speaker A:It is the, it is the tug of war that we have between our business and our personal lives.
Speaker A:And let's face it, you know, you, most people started their own business because they wanted to have more free time and yet they find when they start their own business that's probably one of the things they least have.
Speaker A:And work can absorb a huge amount of time in getting it right.
Speaker A:You know, I have, my father in law is an entrepreneur, had a very successful business, my grandfather was an entrepreneur.
Speaker A:And they work constantly or worked constantly.
Speaker A:And it is a, it is amazing thing to watch someone who has a love for what they do because it's their baby, right?
Speaker A:Your business becomes like almost like another child that you are trying to, to educate and grow up and to mature into this, this cool thing.
Speaker A:But we also have to understand that while a lot of energies can be put into our business, actually sometimes the things that get neglected are the things that are even more important to us, which is our family, our partners are, even our pets.
Speaker A:And, you know, there's, there's, you know, I have to put some time aside for my day for my little black lab Maggie.
Speaker A:But there's also.
Speaker A:We need to take some time out for ourselves as well.
Speaker A:And this is part of the, this is part of the challenge that comes from that.
Speaker A:And the show is designed to assist you with giving you those tips.
Speaker A:The format that I've kind of set on at the minute, but based on feedback from yourselves and how the show progresses, is I'm going to break the show into seasons.
Speaker A:Each season is going to be 15 episodes.
Speaker A:And the first, especially for season one, the first four episodes are going to be lessons or core areas that seem to keep coming back over and over again when I'm speaking to people that are fundamental to developing a success iq.
Speaker A:And then after that, then the real cool things start, which is me getting an opportunity to speak to really cool experts in different fields from all over the place and allow them to share their knowledge and their expertise.
Speaker A:But then also gives me an opportunity to delve a little bit deeper into what they do in order to make them thrive.
Speaker A:Because I think that's.
Speaker A:That's really what we're looking for, isn't it?
Speaker A:I mean, we all pursue success once we understand actually what that success means, and we talk about that in episode two.
Speaker A:But also we are doing our damnedest to.
Speaker A:To be fulfilled.
Speaker A:Because if you're listening to this, if you actually are to at that point where you're, you know, you're listening to podcasts, and I love podcasters.
Speaker A:There's tons of shows that I absolutely adore.
Speaker A:And, you know, I spend a lot of time listening.
Speaker A:I don't listen to radio anymore.
Speaker A:I listen to podcasts instead, because I think that's more relevant for me.
Speaker A:And I can get that opportunity to.
Speaker A:To pick relevant topics for me, which is what I love.
Speaker A:But it gives you that opportunity to take some time out and really look about.
Speaker A:What is that development for.
Speaker A:For your mind, for your mindset, for your.
Speaker A:That whole model, which is what success IQ is really focused about.
Speaker A:And then we're.
Speaker A:What we're going to do is in the second half, we're going to get this opportunity to.
Speaker A:I have a set of questions that I'm going to ask them, and this is really based about to give me a consistency.
Speaker A:And also I'm intrigued to find out what each guest, how they answer.
Speaker A:And then the final question is based on something that I have kind of really come to realize over the last.
Speaker A: about because this year it's: Speaker A:And we'll get to more of that in a second.
Speaker A:So what I did was, is I took us a moment, I wrote down all the things that I had learned in the last 10 years to take me from where I was to where I am now.
Speaker A:And I came up with 60 life lessons.
Speaker A:But then I've kind of fine tuned them and I've ramped them up to 50.
Speaker A:So the idea is, is what we're going to do is we're going to ask the guest to pick a number between 1 and 50 and then we are going to discuss a life lesson.
Speaker A:How it's, how if at all that is being in a lesson that they have learned, which will really intrigue me but also is just to find out what they think about that life lesson.
Speaker A:And so that's the sort of format we're going to do at the minute.
Speaker A: e launched every Wednesday at: Speaker A:You know, unless all of a sudden the feedback is from, from you guys that you don't like it then or, you know, I'm, I'm very much open to the feedback from the, the listeners.
Speaker A:So we will, we will take it for that.
Speaker A:It's all, it's all an experiment, I think really.
Speaker A:And that's the cool thing about stuff.
Speaker A:So it's, it's looking at that.
Speaker A:So you know, the show, you understand what the basis is of the show, you understand what my aim is.
Speaker A:You know, ultimately it's to help, help you guys, but you need to know a little bit about who I am and why I'm, why am I talking to you right now?
Speaker A:And it really stems from I have struggled a lot with talking about my emotions.
Speaker A:When I was, when I was younger, my attitude was very caveman esque, which was, you know, if, if something is suffering, if you're suffering, you don't talk about it, keep it bottled in and eventually it will disappear.
Speaker A:Well, actually, the truth is it actually rots, festers and probably makes it even worse.
Speaker A:But that was very much my, my attitude.
Speaker A: And in: Speaker A:It took me about six months to get better.
Speaker A:And then I thought, well, okay, I've gone through a blip.
Speaker A:I'm, you know, I get my life back on track.
Speaker A:And of course what I ended up doing was Defaulting back into the exactly the same format of doing things because I didn't relate the condition to the.
Speaker A:Almost the year before I got the viral meningitis, I had been ill a lot.
Speaker A:And, you know, I kind of like just gone through that.
Speaker A:That mundane thing.
Speaker A:And maybe this resonates with you where I kind of use the weekends to recharge.
Speaker A:The weekends are just something that appears as a.
Speaker A:As a moment to recharge, ready to deal with the work ahead for the following week.
Speaker A:And I was.
Speaker A:I was really low energy by the end of the week.
Speaker A:I wasn't.
Speaker A:I couldn't say I was amazingly happy and those sort of things.
Speaker A:You know, I have an amazing wife and I now have two amazing children.
Speaker A:I'll call them my dream team because they are, they're the very reason why I do the.
Speaker A:I have my own business.
Speaker A:Why I want my business to be successful is to make a positive impact on their lives as much as it makes a positive impact on mine.
Speaker A:It's also to, I guess, show them that there, there is the.
Speaker A:There is the possibilities that with hard work and, you know, that dedication that you can do the things you.
Speaker A:You want to do.
Speaker A:And I think there's an important part of that.
Speaker A:I am at the same time not naive to think that everyone gets an opportunity to do the things they love to do.
Speaker A:But I think you can inject more of the things you love to do into your life.
Speaker A:And I think there's a.
Speaker A:There's an importance there of identifying that.
Speaker A:So basically I'd.
Speaker A:I'd gone through my meningitis, kind of got a bit better, recovered six months, went back to work, and then almost a year to the day was about October 25th.
Speaker A:I was rushed to hospital again with bacterial.
Speaker A:Suspected bacterial meningitis.
Speaker A:And that is when the, the world as I knew it pulled the rug from under my feet.
Speaker A:I started to notice that when I came out of hospital that my energy was even lower than before.
Speaker A:I was struggling to walk to the bathroom.
Speaker A:I couldn't lift the head off my pillow.
Speaker A:Every single muscle in my body was aching.
Speaker A:And this, this ridiculous pain that was going through my, through my body.
Speaker A:I used to have to crawl down the stairs and wait and for about 10, 15 minutes, and that's not an exaggeration, to then go to my lounge to watch tv, where I literally would just have to sit there because I didn't have the energy to move.
Speaker A:And after, after a couple of weeks of that, I started to get even worse, which ended up resulting in me spending 12 months, practically 12 months, sleeping 22 hours a day, not being in a great place, as you can imagine, practically.
Speaker A:I hibernated for a year, which then followed by, you know, four years of being housebound and in a wheelchair or a walking stick.
Speaker A:I was frightened to leave the house.
Speaker A:I had clinical depression, severe anxiety, ridiculous rock bottom, low self esteem.
Speaker A:I just was not in a great place.
Speaker A:And of course with me, who wanted to be a great dad and a great husband, I had amazing amount of guilt because I was holding, I was kind of putting everyone's life and the families on hold.
Speaker A:And it came to moment where I thought the only way I'm going to be able to help my family out is by me being out the picture.
Speaker A:And the only, in the moment of temporary insanity, the only way I could sort of go, right, okay, this will sort it out was I left the house to end my life, to commit suicide.
Speaker A:I knew where I was going to do it.
Speaker A:I knew that I could get my car to about 50, 60, 70 miles an hour.
Speaker A:And with the seatbelt off the air, the oak tree at the bottom of the road would kind of sort everything out really.
Speaker A:So that's, that's what I did.
Speaker A:And I got in the car and as I, and as I was doing, you know, as I was picking up speed, the speedo was getting higher and higher and the seat belt was off and you know, it's been, it's been 10 years now and every time I talk and I talk, I talk about this a lot.
Speaker A:I talk about this when I talk to, when I'm speaking at events and all sorts.
Speaker A:Is, it still is, is a huge lump in my throat when I talk about this.
Speaker A:But when I was driving, I, I literally heard my eldest son Will's voice in the back of my head saying, daddy, not now.
Speaker A:And he kept saying it and kept saying it and I slammed on the brakes, pulled to the side the road.
Speaker A:So I had a, you know, I, I screamed, I cried, I just, I just was, was, you know, vented I guess is probably the best word to describe it.
Speaker A:But then also a really intriguing thing happened.
Speaker A:It was like a switch, flick of a switch.
Speaker A:And it was that I need to find out what most people, what takes people from this point to, you know, changing their life, creating positivity in their life, living a life that they are proud of and that impacts others in a positive way.
Speaker A:And that has been my mission ever since I, as a, as a career.
Speaker A:I am now a coach, a trainer, a speaker, a consultant in the area of performance.
Speaker A:And, and resilience.
Speaker A:But the interesting thing is when you're talking to entrepreneurs and you, you speak to them about that sort of stuff, the other stuff comes in, so it talks about you.
Speaker A:You quite often find that when clients initially come to work with me, they'll think about business or they'll think about just the family side if you want, the life side.
Speaker A:But then quite often what you find is these are.
Speaker A:Because as an entrepreneur, they're very interconnected with things, with life and with one another, and it's looking at all those aspects.
Speaker A:So we look at productivity and mindset and, you know, and we look at how their relationships is not without, not just with others, but with themselves and all the other stuff.
Speaker A:And it's quite interesting because quite often they come to look at the hard skills, but often part of development in order to develop a success IQ is to look at the softer skills as well.
Speaker A:And the program, I think during the program, it's important to talk about mental illness.
Speaker A:It's important to talk about those, those subjects because it's an important part of everyone's lives.
Speaker A:You know, your mental health is key to your success.
Speaker A:It's, it's just as important as you learning, if not more important actually than learning how to make a sell on a phone or how to market your company or how to look at your social media strategy or your content marketing, your mindset, your mental health, your.
Speaker A:How you, how you look at yourself and the world around you is key in order for you to do that.
Speaker A:So when you go to speak to clients or when you go to speak to people, you can speak with a confidence that isn't just surface confidence.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's deep and rooted confidence that allows you to really be the person you are.
Speaker A:And, and you can live with authenticity.
Speaker A:You can, you can be that person you want to be.
Speaker A:It doesn't mean you have to share your thoughts and, you know, wear your emotions on your sleeve, but what it does mean is, is that you can be an authentic version of you.
Speaker A:And I think that's such an important key part of, of us living an exceptional life.
Speaker A:It's not to be someone else.
Speaker A:It's not.
Speaker A:It's to surround the people around you with people who accept who you are and not this facade of who you want to be.
Speaker A:And it's amazing the, the release.
Speaker A:It's amazing the, the higher levels of happiness and content that you get when you do this.
Speaker A:And it all revolves around so many different types of things.
Speaker A:And as an entrepreneur, you know, you are, you Have a, you have a duty to yourself in order to be the best version of you you can be for more than just a good business.
Speaker A:You, you being at your optimal level of performance, you being at the optimum level of mental health, you being at the, the best version of yourself allows you to be brilliant within your business, but also great at home, you know, with a great relationship.
Speaker A:Because let's be honest, if you are, if you are good at sales, well, okay, I'm interested in what's going to make, what do you need to do apart from training in different techniques, why you need to be great at sales.
Speaker A:If you are have an okay relationship, what makes you have a great relationship.
Speaker A:And then from a great relationship, what makes you have an exceptional relationship.
Speaker A:If, if you don't like looking yourself in the mirror or you look at yourself in the mirror and just throw insults.
Speaker A:I'm interested in what takes you to the next level to go, okay, mirror.
Speaker A:You know, I'm going to use you as a, as a tool to make me feel absolutely fantastic in the morning.
Speaker A:And what you find is, is when you are, when you are working to yourself, when you are working to make yourself exceptional, when you are working to develop this success, IQ is all about, you know, a constant expansion, a constant challenge of what is it that makes it the best version of you?
Speaker A:And it's, it.
Speaker A:And that's the, that's the, that's the bit I really love.
Speaker A:That's the bit that I love speaking to people and seeing the glint in their eye and you know, straight away when they have hit or when they are talking about the thing that they absolutely love.
Speaker A:I mean, why do I have my own business?
Speaker A:For two reasons.
Speaker A:I have my own business because I want to make a difference in the world to people, to help them live an amazing life and not go through the crap that I went through.
Speaker A:Because I could have dealt with that in a far, far better way.
Speaker A:I might have still got meningitis.
Speaker A:You know, that, that's by the by.
Speaker A:But the other stuff, 90% of that was caused by situations that were going on that I actually could have dealt with in a hell of a lot better way.
Speaker A:The other reason is I want to give my family and myself a great life.
Speaker A:You know, I want to be able to travel around.
Speaker A:I want to be able to go on cool holidays.
Speaker A:I want to be able to educate my children and be a role model is the word I am looking for.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:I am, you know, I'm wanting to be a good role model.
Speaker A:Now, what parent doesn't want to be a good role model, you know, and I think that's the important thing.
Speaker A:So this is very much what the show is going to be about.
Speaker A:And we have got some really cool guests coming up and it's.
Speaker A:It's all about, well, what is it that we can.
Speaker A:What is it that I can do to help you be even better in what you do?
Speaker A:And, you know, it's amazing because there's a.
Speaker A:There's a strap line on my, on my website that says just one conversation could create a lifetime of results.
Speaker A:And I really do believe that.
Speaker A:I really do believe that.
Speaker A:We just have to hear something that can be.
Speaker A:That switch that went through my head.
Speaker A:Now, mine wasn't any.
Speaker A:The switch that I had wasn't anything profound apart.
Speaker A:Well, it was for me, obviously, but it was profound because it was just my son's voice saying something.
Speaker A:I've worked with people and I know people that have had something profound from a, a simple conversation or something that happened on a podcast or a video that they'd seen, and it just changed how they thought.
Speaker A:And, you know, if you're ready to make that change, if you're ready to live that exceptional life, it's time to stop doing what you've always done.
Speaker A:It's time to start looking at what do I need to do differently, what habits, what beliefs, what.
Speaker A:What processes and structures do I need to change that is going to allow me to do that.
Speaker A:And that is what success IQ is all about.
Speaker A:So, you know, please share with me your feedback and please share, review, subscribe to the show because it gives me the opportunity to assist you and to make a better impact on people's lives, like yourself.
Speaker A:But also it helps me, you know, get, get the show more noticed, which is also, it's, you know, it's important for, in order for me to make the impact I want to make, but it's, you know, if you want to send me a question or feedback or a topic that perhaps you'd want me to share, then please send an email to podcasteffnicholson.co.uk or you can visit me and get all my social media links on www.jeffnicholson.co.uk.
Speaker A:I'd like to take this opportunity to wish you the greatest success.
Speaker A:Have an amazing week and I look forward to speaking to you soon.
Speaker A:Take care.
