Unveiling the Man Behind the Mic: Chris Gets Interviewed on The Company Road Podcast (1st Anniversary!)

“It felt like things were taking me into uncomfortable situations, and then learning from uncomfortable situations basically brought opportunity, and an opportunity then opened up other doors and things went from there. Really.”
Chris Hudson

This month’s theme

For the past year, the Company Road podcast has been a beacon of inspiration for leaders and aspiring intrapreneurs. But today, the host, Chris Hudson, steps out of his usual role and into the interview chair.

In this special episode, Nathan Bell, Chris’s long-time colleague, delves into Chris’s fascinating journey. From a childhood marked by distance and isolation to a successful career in advertising, Chris shares the pivotal moments that shaped his outlook and his passion for helping others bring positive change to their workplaces.

This introspective conversation is packed with valuable insights for anyone who wants to find their voice, embrace their individuality, and become a changemaker within their organisation.

In this episode you’ll hear about

• How Chris developed a view of the world
• What made Chris feel like the world was against him
• When did Chris realise he needed to be more positive
• What was Chris’s moment of frustration
• How Chris found his tribe and rhythm within advertising
• How Chris learned to overcome adversity
• How meeting his wife influenced his life
• The challenges of balancing family life and a professional career
• Some of Chris’ tips for productivity
• How Chris’ experience as a father has made him a better leader
• Balancing being a leader and being a role model for your children
• Where Chris sees his company and podcast going in the future

Key links

The Carrot Collective
Nathan Bell LinkedIn

About our guest

Nathan Bell, Founding Partner of the Carrot Collective has anchored his career at the intersection of research, strategy, design and cultural change. With over 25 years in advertising, brand strategy, large format immersive technology and the built environment, Nathan has led some of the world’s most pioneering brands, cities, and institutions to solve complex design and societal problems.

About our guest (your normal host!)

Our host, Chris Hudson, is a Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.

Transcript

Chris Hudson: 0:00
All right, Hey there and welcome to this very special edition of the company road podcast. And it’s a remarkable feeling really to know that you’ve made a contribution to some people’s lives out there. All the way around the world and you’re, you’re getting feedback from various people across lots of different countries. But in today’s episode, I wanted to really reflect on the journey of this podcast a little bit as it started out around 12 months ago and that’s right. We’re celebrating the company road’s first birthday today. So it’s episode 52 and it means that we’ve been able to create a year’s worth of helpful advice for intrapreneurs and leaders like yourselves on how to bring more positivity and impact into your work. And I want to say we’ve had some really interesting and seriously talented guests and some amazing conversations on the show so far. We’ve had founders, leaders, designers, comedians. Jazz musicians, actors, artists, dancers, so many more. And if you’re hearing this and this is your first episode, then, it’s lucky that you are listening to this, but obviously, check out some of the amazing stories that we’ve had on the show so far if you have time. So. To make this a very special and momentous occasion and to mark that, I thought I’d give you something a bit different to mix it up. And for that reason, I’d love to introduce a very special episode of the Company Road podcast, which involves a different kind of guest and the guest is actually going to be me. Getting into the nitty gritty, I thought long and hard about who would make the best interviewer for today’s episode. And I know there are plenty of people lining up to ask me silly, challenging, or very personal questions, but many of those would take this podcast recording into a dark, dark place. And we can’t, we can’t necessarily do that on this occasion, but fear not. Let me introduce you to the most fitting host for this episode, the one and only Nathan Bell. So nice and welcome to the show.

Nathan Bell: 1:49
Thank you, Chris. Thank you so much. And gosh, what an honour to be here to help you acknowledge such a momentous anniversary, a momentous occasion just after kind of listing, your, your previous guests. Yeah. I feel genuinely grateful and a serious congratulations, a genuine congratulations to you, Chris. It’s a huge, a huge achievement.

Chris Hudson: 2:11
Oh yeah, it feels like yesterday, but, but obviously it’s, it’s been, it’s been quite a few weeks. And like I said, we, we do, we do the episodes every week and, I’m going away in a little bit. So we’ve had to line up many more episodes so that we, we don’t stop and people can continue to listen to the show. So. It’s been a serious undertaking, but yeah, I’m just glad that people out there are enjoying it in some way. So I want to introduce you a little bit more, Nathan, before we kick in. So Nathan, you’re a founding partner of the Carrot Collective where I’m a partner as well. And you’ve anchored your career at the intersection of various things, which makes you like perfect for this chat today. So you’re at the intersection of research, strategy, design, and cultural change. And you’ve, you’ve got over a couple of decades of experience in advertising brand strategy. tech built environment, and you’ve, you’ve done some amazing work around brands, cities, and institutions to solve some of the societal problems and design problems that are out there. So, is Nathan a good interviewer? You may ask the answer to that is definitely, yes, it’s definitely yes. So why is that? So Nathan, you’ve been a lifelong fan of Michael Parkinson. You love a bit of Parky. But to be honest, I reckon you’re a Louis Theroux and Piers Morgan, Ellen DeGeneres, James Corden. You’re all rolled into one, right? You’re going to take all the good bits, put them together, and then we’ve got Nathan. So on that note, I reckon we’ll pass over to you.

Nathan Bell: 3:29
Chris, that’s a very interesting analogy. Also, I just want to kind of acknowledge, your, your discipline and consistency in being able to kind of keep this going for a year. I think that’s also, absolutely remarkable. And yeah, what a brilliant idea. What a fantastic time to turn the tables and to get your listeners, a bit more up close and personal into, the man, the man behind the brand. So yeah, let’s dig into it. Chris, you and I first met, I think it was late 2000, when I was with Freestate and Hassel back in the old days, we were looking for some strategic firepower within the, within the team. And we’ve obviously kept in touch, ever since you’ve been a really important kind of a pivotal partner within the carrot collective and you enterprise and a very new model for delivering strategic and creative services, to the global market. And so you’ve been an amazing support and such an enormous value to us at the carrot collective. But yeah, I guess I kind of just want to. I want to go back a little step and I kind of just want to understand so that I can do all of those icons. Justice that you’ve mentioned as far as interviewers go, tell me a little bit about why you decided to do this interview and be the interviewee for a change.

Chris Hudson: 4:45
Well, I had to think about something special. I’ve been thinking a little while about. the perspectives that we bring together on the show and the guests that we bring together on the show. And often those, those conversations are situated and quite deliberately so in different pockets of the world of work, how it all comes together. And I think that the complexity of work and, the situations that a number of emerging and current leaders find themselves at that the, the navigation of that is becoming much, much more difficult. I feel like therefore the, influence that we need to bring into work is much greater than just a very sort of, pocketed or ring-fenced area of expertise. And I, and let us feel like, there’s technology, there’s ai, there’s, there’s all sorts of things. We’ve had previous chats around that on the show. And it’s an interesting time. Right. And, I think that to maybe continue to set ourselves up for more of that, I wanted to say that, but I think, I, I’m often. Talking to amazing guests. I think there’s, there’s a real richness to clean this market where we are, but also some of the international guests had on show as well. It just feels like there’s, there’s plenty of people that can offer a point of view on what should be better about business, how people could be helped in some way in their own careers to create impact and positivity. And yeah, I just feel like. Everyone else has had a chance to answer the questions that I would love to answer. And for this episode, I thought, why not try it the other way around and, and to see whether you could, you could maybe get something out of me as, outside of this work as a podcaster. I’m also a consultant and I’ve done a number of other projects and things that I loosely referenced in some of the chats and the interviews that I’ve, I’ve had, obviously in connecting conversations together, but it would be an opportunity to ask me a bit more directly potentially. So for the benefit of the guests out there, and for those that don’t know me and the work that I’ve done, this might be an opportunity to help you as well in some way.

Nathan Bell: 6:40
Brilliant. All right, well, let’s go back a couple of steps. Let’s rip. The band aid off and, given my extensive experience in child psychology, let’s start there. Tell me a little bit about your kind of childhood experiences growing up, Chris. And I think specifically, what was it about those formative years that helped you kind of develop a bit of a view of the world started to kind of create. Some pathways, I guess, for you that felt natural and felt like there was potentially a calling there.

Chris Hudson: 7:15
Yeah, I don’t know, a calling, it feels like that would be something that you could identify quite early on. I can’t say I had that. I can’t say I had that. I think that I’ve always had to follow my nose a little bit. I was a very, very introspective child. Quiet child, serious demeanour. I had really extreme social anxiety actually, and I don’t know why that was. We were a family in the UK. My dad was working for Shell, a multinational company. We were placed into different countries and during that time we were taken out of the UK. We lived in Prague during the Cold War. We lived in Moscow during the Cold War. And there was a kind of bubble society based around, how the diplomats were set up for living in those countries. And We were more or less isolated from a lot of society, so, so a lot of the Western influence that we were obviously representing and then bringing in, we weren’t able to, to kind of boast or, or really share within a lot of those social settings. So couldn’t really mix that well with the locals. We were put into schools that were very contained went to an Anglo American school in Moscow, for example, and there were watchtowers and guns and, we had to be driven in. By people in the KGB, as it was like, it was kind of, that was, that was the world that was contained within the fences, but, but obviously in, if you’re walking in the park or if you were, just going back to where you lived, the mixing wasn’t really encouraged. So I don’t know whether that programmed within me a kind of separation from, from me and what was going on in the world. Definitely felt that way. Yeah. After that, my next chapter from that point was really moving to a boarding school. So from the age of eight until 13, I was in a boarding school in Ascot in the UK. And yeah, I just felt, incredibly difficult time for both my parents and me because they, They were made to work and continue in Moscow where the job was, and, and I, they were worried about the education. I needed to start in the UK to, kind of reprogram my school career basically, because that was, that wasn’t going so well. So, I was incredibly homesick. I felt really isolated, felt like I really struggled to settle in initially, and actually it was, it was hard seeing a lot of my other friends who had literally Have their parents helicopter in at the weekend to see them from miles away. But my parents are so living so far away, they weren’t be able to see me as often. So, yeah, I think that the feelings of distance kind of that, that was one thing, but then quite quickly, you learn to adjust to the setting, obviously, and you learn to kind of observe what’s going on. Obviously, in a school setting, there’s a clear hierarchy. It’s a little bit like an organisation. If I’m thinking back now, it’s like, you got the people at the top, you got the people at the bottom. There are lots of interesting things happening and, Many, many other stories, whole, it’s a whole podcast series on that kind of stuff that you could start, but I won’t go into it. I think yeah, it was, it was interesting to see, I think, the, the establishment of me as a person probably started there and I had to make closer friends and that, I think, going into, going into the world of work became incredibly important, obviously, where you’re, you’re looking to build lasting relationships with people. I always found that. That that was helpful, but at the same time, I, I still felt really critical. Like, I felt like. The world was against me in so many ways. And because I was quite sort of down about my situation, I was quite down towards other people and I actually didn’t reflect anywhere near as much positivity as I, as I do now, I was quite critical, found a lot of comfort in, in actually talking people down. I didn’t like the person that I became from that situation. In my professional career, basically look to correct that and then from the moment that I graduated from university, I started in work and I thought, right, this is the chance to actually build something else and, and to actually, you, you, you get obviously assessed for, in school, you’re assessed for your school performance and your grades and stuff, but in the world of work, it’s actually like, it feels like they’re talking about you as a person and how you are and what you stand for and what you value. And that was quite hard hitting, quite confrontational to begin with, but I thought, well, if they’re going to be looking at me like that, I better do something about it. So a long kind of journey of, it’s character building in some sort of way, but various things that time after time basically made me correct and adjust and fine tune and, and I mean, it’s painstaking, but my, my personal character, my attitude, my outlook on life just had to reprogram it a lot from, from what it had been. And yeah, in doing so, it built my confidence and, it’s been a long, long road to get to where I am now doing this. And I would have never imagined it, yeah. So to, to come back to your, your comment about having a calling, I, I just don’t think it was there. It felt like it was, things were taking me into uncomfortable situations and then learning from uncomfortable situations basically brought opportunity and an opportunity then opened up other doors and things went from there.

Nathan Bell: 12:22
It’s a remarkable personal story, Chris, because going from. A sense of distance and, and isolation as you kind of, spoke of potentially also a feeling of, missing out and seeing what others, had around them at the time and feeling slightly different or, or isolated. And then that creation of some. Potentially some resentment inside of you. Tell me a little bit about that moment where you felt like there was some, resentment or some frustration and inside you, you mentioned there about this idea of kind of being conscious of that, about that feeling of talking people down, like, tell me a little bit about realising that and then pivoting away from that. Yeah. What was the moment? How old were you? What was the trigger that helped you realise that that that wasn’t a positive tool?

Chris Hudson: 13:19
Yeah, I mean that that’s a really good one. I think the I mean, I think in Britain, I mean, you’ve been expressed to that. I think you get the humour, right? And it’s, it’s like, Yeah, it’s centred around putting down people to a certain extent and, particularly within a boys school, that competitivity and that, that sense of peer to peer one upmanship, it’s kind of like all the stuff that you imagine that is bad about a very hierarchical male driven organisation is actually being reflected at a, at a school level. And, obviously. As we know, it comes from parents. It’s all the people’s parents. So I guess you soon try and find your place. I was trying to find my place anyway, by, by understanding that, but also looking at, how, how I felt about it. And I don’t know if it was just an uneasiness or, or just a misalignment, but I didn’t feel like I. Clicked with a lot of those social groups. And so I just didn’t engage. No, I was, I was just there on the little bit on the periphery. I was just, observing a lot. I wouldn’t engage in conversation with a lot of people because didn’t really want to. People made fun of me for that, for not talking. And I. In a lot of cases, I didn’t know what to say, to people that I didn’t really feel aligned to. So I think in school, obviously, it’s harder where the circles of friendship and the community there in a way is fixed. And particularly when you’re in boarding school for that number of years is that it’s fixed. You can’t really, can’t really change that. But then as soon as you go into, fast forward to after university and you’re into the world of work. All of a sudden you’re in, in control of your own destiny to some extent, you’ve got to put the money on the counter to pay your rent and everything else. So it felt like a, an immediate sense of responsibility to have to do that. And then obviously with that, you start to see, okay, well if I don’t engage with these people and I do engage with these people that’s where that’s going to take me. And in the beginning I didn’t engage with the people that were probably associated with success in those organisations either. But then I soon started seeing the workings within. Within some of the companies, early advertising marketing days in the agencies, like big characters, it wasn’t hard to see what they were doing because there was such big personalities. And that was a massive learning experience, just seeing such a diverse set of people represent, this is way before anyone was talking about personal brand, but it was kind of, they were talking about that. And they were, they were positioning themselves in the organisation to get To the result that they wanted to so that may, I say, it may sound incredibly, logical but I think the, the learning from it all has been to, to really observe those behaviours and, and to see, what makes a successful leader and to try and break that down. And that really bugged me, that was, that was, that was kind of on my brain for, for several, several years. Why, why are some, why are so many people doing better than me? And, and then you start thinking about it, it’s like, what makes you, I was talking about it on the other podcast I recorded last night. If you think about the biggest stars and the biggest personalities in the world, or the biggest leaders that people love being involved with George Clooney and Beckham and, Oprah and whoever else, like, what, what is it about their characteristics that attracts you to them? And it’s like a magnetic personality that some people have. And I really wanted to understand that, and it’s probably part of the reason why I’m doing this podcast actually, is to kind of bring out some of these conversations and understand people a bit better. But on face value, you can do all the work day in, day out, and you can either just do that, or you can take time. You can take the bigger learning and the richer learning from that experience, which is to say, okay, well, I’m never going to work with all these people. Again, it’s a very transient space, the workplace, next week, two people might reside and two people might join in this moment. You can be present. So we’re eight people in this room and we could do something incredibly special. I think the more work I did, the more of an opportunity I saw in that. That’s probably, that’s probably where I thought it was going.

Nathan Bell: 17:15
It also strikes me as something kind of interesting as well, right? So you’ve gone from the confines of, of boarding school, where everybody’s desperate to broadly be the same and not stand out. For lots of different kind of reasons. And so that’s why there’s lots of behaviours, within those types of environments, that are kind of pack, sometimes pack mentality. And then you got to kind of go to university. University is a bit more fluid. It’s a little bit, less rigid. It’s kind of encouraging of new ideas, still kind of finding your tribe, et cetera. But then from university, you ended up in advertising, which. Actually has some similar, I guess, some similar cultures, certainly during that time anyway of, an all boys boarding school. It’s very and often be quite masculine. It’s an absolutely a type kind of. Personality, it’s really about kind of relationships and ultimately commercialising art. And so tell me a little bit about kind of starting to find your tribe and finding a bit of a rhythm within advertising.

Chris Hudson: 18:31
It was a really rude awakening to begin with. I remember two weeks before I started in advertising, I was in New York and a friend of mine, we graduated and got on this trip and I was having a massive identity crisis at this point in my life because I was thinking, I was saying to this guy, people are saying all this because he was a lawyer, well dressed sort of Englishman, he was about to go and do a. Criminology thing at Oxford. Yeah, I was gonna say, people talked about it, right, at the university as well. Like, he had his personal brand going through his career. Whereas I left university like a nobody. I didn’t feel like I stood for anything. I’d done the work. I’d done a lot of drinking. It was like, I was sort of spat out of the other end knowing that I had this job, which I did work pretty hard to get. I thought I asked him like, well, what do I stand for? And he couldn’t really answer me that either. And he knew me pretty well. And so I was like, all right, well, So I better sort of think about that and take that on in my next chapter. And I spent a lot of time in my head, I spent a lot of time thinking and obviously in those days where you do have all day and night to think about stuff, you just do. But yeah, starting out in advertising, it was incredibly intimidating. I remember the places AMV, like Abbott Mead Vickers in London, and some amazing people. This is the time of the Guinness surfer ad. So it was basically heyday. And, the founders were just retiring from the business but they were doing some amazing work and just the construct of that. There was a lot of power dressing going on, like you had big personalities, everyone had their own space at offices. The VHS, the Betamax, all of that was kind of set up and you can kind of walk in and everyone had the, the special, single malt or whatever it was on the shelf, smoking and like all, all of that was, all of that was there, exactly how you’d, how you’d imagine it from Mad Men and, and that kind of thing. I mean, this many years after that, but anyway, there’s still, still remnants of that. And but I’ve always been somebody that has found it hard to. really respond to a question or jump into conversation in that split second where you have to make yourself known. I’ve always needed to digest information a little bit and then, and then can give my point of view. So I just remember thinking this, this place is just going at such a speed and conversations. I can’t get a word in edgeways here. I’ve not been used to engaging with people. Socially and professionally at that speed and at that level and just the intellect was astounding there when you’re talking to the people that are writing the briefs on how to write the next brilliant economist ad and you’re like, okay, I’m just, I’m just a grad and I’m trying to understand what’s going on, but it was kind of fun. It was, it was very creative. Yeah, I just didn’t think that, I didn’t think I’d find my place there. And then I actually moved from that, that agency to Proximity, which was a good move because it then took me out of, just above the line and TV and radio and press and outdoor, but into, into basically omnichannel as it was back then and into data and digital. And that invited in a load of different personalities. So, so actually instead of it just being. Ego driven suits and account handlers. It was, it was that plus another rounded set of people. So we had, we had data scientists and analysts back then. And there, there was a digital team and they were able to talk about email and coding and, and web and early HTML and various things. And interactive marketing at that point was, was probably where it got a little bit more normal. For me, there was still the big conceptual work that you had to do, but then it needed to be stretched out across a number of different campaigns and over multiple months and years. And in the end, that carried me through to quite a few different jobs really. And it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. So, in the end it was 27 countries in Europe and it was, it was five year, CX strategies and, and running things that were localised in each of the markets and everything that went with it. But it just felt like the, The difference of opinion from that point onwards became more important. So I was able to then see, okay, well actually the solution is multiple rounded. I need to get on with all these different departments and all these different subject matter experts. I need to manage this as a stakeholder group almost and, and engage people and bringing that together to make it work was where I really enjoyed it. So I became. Probably more of a facilitator than a big personality in myself. That was much more suitable for me, I thought.

Nathan Bell: 23:05
Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, obviously those, the above the line agencies are, of that time anyway, are desperately focused on fame, are desperately focused on awards. And that kind of transition to a, a more, below the line, a more technical kind of creative outcome that actually really values the benchmarks involved in kind of consumer testing as one example. And that makes absolute sense kind of that, I guess, that stepping off point from appetising into, the world of which you, you do perform and succeed in so enormously well. Today that kind of, I guess, actually that for me is a really insightful kind of step into kind of that next chapter for you. I guess what I want to kind of understand a little bit more about is, I guess, tell me a little bit about any lessons that you learned about kind of conformity and finding your own path during those early years.

Chris Hudson: 24:06
I think there are a lot of expected traits, particularly when, I was, I was working in account management and there was definitely a bit of a cookie cutter approach. There were handbooks and manuals on how it should be done. It was actually very similar to when I did some work in, in hospitality, I was working at Royal Ascot in the Royal Enclosure, serving, serving one of the Royals their bread using the fork and the spoon. And there’s a certain way you have to do things. You have to like, you have to bring in the food from one side, the drinks from the other. And you need to observe the etiquette, essentially. And I felt like the world of business was very much like that. So the conformity, conformity was expected. Individualism may have made people stand out a little bit more. And I think I learned from that a little bit. But I wasn’t that comfortable or confident enough to really shine out and, and really express myself much, much more than that. And I actually found the conformity side of things really uncomfortable. I didn’t feel like I fitted with that mould. Much later, after we had kids, which was 10 years ago or so now, but we found out that one of our kids was diagnosed with autism and we found out a lot through that process. And then it made me make a lot of connections. From that back to my own childhood, and I thought, I haven’t been diagnosed myself, but if one of my kids has got that and ADHD as well, you kind of think, okay, well, there’s, there’s definitely something here that isn’t, it isn’t typical with the world of work. And I don’t know whether people were just masking a lot of those behaviours back then and just getting on with it, but I just didn’t feel like I conformed or did belong to that. So it was only really when I got. More probably into more senior roles that I was, I felt like I was in a position to be able to express my individuality a little bit more within business and that worked out sometimes and sometimes it didn’t. Yeah, there were definitely many learnings from that. I’ve been made redundant. A few times I had my view on what I thought should be done. I was presenting that to a number of businesses along the way. It wasn’t aligning with what the leadership thought. And, and ultimately, the, the role as I was performing it was, was let go. So that was probably a big learning. Again, I took it incredibly personally the first time it happened. Then, and then the second time it was. This is, this is actually a good thing for both, both parties, I think you can actually treat it as, as being something quite positive and I’d encourage anyone else to think about it in that way as well. So it’s not a personal attack. It’s actually probably the right thing.

Nathan Bell: 26:36
Yeah. I mean, I definitely think that’s something that comes with age, comes some of that wisdom that the first time you are retrenched or let go or made redundant, it’s such a deeply Personal feeling of rejection, right? Look so often, I think in the earlier days, anyway, that those initial kind of roles, a real extension of our. Of our world, of our, of our team, and you can see in certain organisations, certain industries, let’s take advertising, I guess that the levers of a free bar, et cetera, that’s where you’ll find a certain demographic on a Friday night. It’s an enormously motivating, I guess, lever because work is often an extension of someone’s kind of social life. So then when you are kind of let go or rejected, it is deeply, deeply, deeply personal. But I think as you get kind of slightly longer in the, in the tooth, you also understand that it comes down to a spreadsheet and a line item on a spreadsheet. And at the end of the day, when you’ve got so much control, ultimately. But I think kind of continuing that theme of resilience and loss, I guess I kind of want to get a bit more personal and I kind of want to explore if you’re comfortable, I want to hear about maybe your most kind of profound experience of, of love and also loss. That might have had some influence on you as a person.

Chris Hudson: 28:04
Oh, maybe we’ll start with the loss, I think. That was actually around the time, just at the end of university as well. I was in a relationship during my university time and yeah, we split up, basically dumped at the end, just before the final exams, and that had been pretty hard, but I did have to pick myself up off the floor and and do the exams and it was actually, Probably the greatest catalyst in a way, because it meant that, okay, with that out of the way, I can’t sort of sit and dwell, I may have spent a few days sort of feeling sorry for myself and in a few of the local pubs, but it just felt, it felt like I needed to do something for myself. So actually the biggest learning from that was that when everything else is taken away, you can actually find comfort in isolation a little bit. As I was in the boarding school, but find comfort in that and take steps forward that will help only you. And in that case, it meant that I had, a clear enough head to really dedicate time to, to focusing on my studies and going into, into that. And, I pulled out some pretty good grades from that result in the end, because I wanted to show that I could do it for myself.

Nathan Bell: 29:09
Chris, Dan is Brutal timing, I must say.

Chris Hudson: 29:13
Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah. By God, I looking back, I don’t know. It could have been me that, that kind of instigated it, I don’t know, maybe I just pushed her too far. She was doing the, yeah, she was doing law degrees. So she was on the, under pressure too. So, so yeah, so that was probably one of loss, I think. There have been other near losses, but nothing massive. There have been times where, you fear for the, for the life of one of your children. And, that, that kind of makes you sit back and consider. And things suddenly fall into perspective. If, if you lose a family member or, things like that are obviously incredibly Important markers in your life, the people that, your grandparents that you lose, German grandmother, who I was, I was pretty close with and yeah, just her attitude, like very, very kind of, optimistic lady would be like hugely charismatic and very warm and like really brought the family together as well. And then she, we lost her in the 2000s and that hit me pretty hard, but yeah, I mean, I think in terms of love, I mean, I think it’s something that you can use to repair. And you can draw upon it as a resource, really feels like if you, if you’ve got, if you’re a relationship partnership, obviously you’ve got to find your way to the right person, which is a problem in itself for a lot of people, it’s a bit like work, trying to find the perfect job, but this one, I met Asha in London and she was Australian and yeah, I think, since then, In a way, we’re very similar in things we value, but we’re also totally opposite. So, I was quite sort of, shy and introverted guy, as I was saying, and she was outgoing and very kind of outspoken about her views on things. I thought, this is great. I can, I can learn off somebody. who’s got that passion and that, that kind of fiery ness, it’ll bring it out of me. And, and so she’s, she’s ended up being, over this time, we’ve been married for quite a few years now, but she’s, she’s a lot more considered and I’m probably a little bit more vocal, maybe too vocal at times even. But yeah, that’s been really helpful. And actually I think the move from London to, to here has been another big step. So you obviously have to think about loss in a positive way. You’re losing a lot of your family and friends and actually leaving the UK and coming, coming to Australia. But actually the decision to move here pushes you out of your comfort zone. And all of a sudden you’re a new person in a new country and you have to start, you have to start your own voyage and, discovery all over again. And you have to position yourselves. I mean, I didn’t know whether the Australian country would, would almost accept me coming in, right? Not that I’d done anything wrong, wasn’t running away. From anything bad, didn’t have a criminal history or anything, but I thought, I’m a pretty quirky and in some sort of way, I’m a pretty quirky guy. I’m going to have to figure out whether this is going to work and whether it will be right for me. And in the end, it’s just been the most warm and receiving place. And yeah, I’ve never felt more comfortable, so, and I got my citizenship as well, so they even gave me that.

Nathan Bell: 32:09
Hey, so tell us about your, and yours and Asha’s kind of relationship, kind of where you met, to today, and your, your family. Take us through that.

Chris Hudson: 32:20
It’s funny. We were telling the story the other night. So we were both working in London. Asha was a friend’s birthday, and it wasn’t a milestone birthday, it was just a birthday, but it was running over three days, 27, 27 years old or something. It was that kind of, milestone birthday. She was off in what was, it was a Turkish bath night and it didn’t, it ended up being a very comfortable experience for her. And she was with a friend of mine called Clare. Clare I went to school with. So, so they were out one night and I was out in Holborn somewhere in London and I got this call from Clare saying, we’ve just had this like horrific bath experience and there was some nudity and they, they just felt really uncomfortable in this Turkish baths. In the East end of London somewhere. So they came, they came to the pub to, to basically to kind of comfort themselves. And we were already there. So, so yeah, this guy that I was with was incredibly objectionable guy. They ended up, Clare and this guy who won’t be named, ended up in pretty much argument two or three hours. And it allowed me and Asha the opportunity to talk. And we got to know each other. Yeah, worked out really well. So. So it was total coincidence, we, we had, yeah, we had two more nights of that kind of birthday thing carried on. We saw each other for the next two nights. And then straight after that, we all went our separate ways in a way. We had holidays planned. So I was going to Mexico for two weeks for a wedding. Asha was going on another holiday to Cyprus and we came back together after that. And yeah, after that, things just sort of progressed. But yeah, we had two kids in London, then moved over here. I had another kid and yeah, I’ve got a daughter and two boys now. And a whippet who’s around here somewhere under a blanket. And yeah, it’s just been totally, I mean, it, it, it’s been totally rewarding from that point of view. Just, just getting to know yourself through. And again, that’s like a mirror being held up to you and kind of get it over the head every day. But it’s like, they, they tell you so much about yourself and you learn so much from from your children, so, so even if I don’t right now, I don’t work with it. A lot of people directly, with an organisation, because company road is set up as its own thing, but the children are always there to tell you what you could be doing better. So that helps too.

Nathan Bell: 34:39
Let’s move into kind of that, that idea of harmony, the harmony of family and career, let’s call it. Yeah. I’m not sure if that exists, but tell me a little bit about. I guess some of the challenges that, that you face in balancing family life with, your, your professional ambitions. I mean, obviously, you and Asha are an amazing supportive team, but tell me a little bit about, all of those different hats that you must wear. And I guess what you’re You know, what your philosophy on how you balance, home life and, and professional life and still get to do all the amazing things that you do.

Chris Hudson: 35:22
I don’t know. We just work a lot. There’s no magic recipe. You just work really hard and tired often. Oh yeah. Well, I gave up the booze. I mean, that was a big thing. A few years back, so three years into not drinking and actually the surge of productivity, the clarity of thinking. It means that at any point in theory, if you really wanted to, you could jump into your work. Not that you want to, but you know, that can be helpful. You can be out at a gig or going to see something in the city one night back at midnight and you’d be up at five because that’s when the kids are doing something and then You, you can get into work if you need to. So it’s like, it’s like the shackles are off and you, you, you feel like you can manoeuvre a bit more easily. So that’s been one helper. I think that in the beginning, obviously I was in a really intense job in London and Yeah, the format there was the actual work part time in another job that was kind of stable. She was managing the whole of the house and all the kids and, a bit more traditional, probably wasn’t something that that would have lasted, wouldn’t have been sustainable because we were both, I was just, Over worked and I couldn’t bring much back into the house or back into the family because I was just exhausted and And she was you know, probably a little bit and quite fairly resentful So that had to stop and that came to a bit of a crunch But when we came over here, it was our opportunity to kind of level things out a little bit more. Asha took over her dad’s business and was able to kind of rebrand that and take that into web design. And now she’s looking at accessible and inclusive design and is her own boss. And Company Road has been something that I’ve been wanting to set up for a little while. And I think the, the fact that we’ve got, kids that have been diagnosed with different things means that we, we need to manage you know, therapies and get them the care and attention they need. So automatically your focus switches from, yeah, just spending all the time that you can possibly with the people that you work with to, to trying to balance that in some way with, with the family and what the kids need. So yeah, it’s been pretty hard. I think. Yeah, to begin with, I couldn’t work from home that well because it, it just felt very, very hard to get my headspace and, and to think clearly, but definitely, definitely more used to that now. The kids can be anywhere now and it’s just like, if I’m just focusing on what I need to do, then I can do it. So I think your, your discipline for being able to perform a task for work in a certain way, it definitely sharpens up, when you’re put to the test. The three kids and the dog just. Could need anything any time and there’s, there’s always a sense of chaos or just be around the corner, but you know, that’s just family life. Really.

Nathan Bell: 38:09
And would you say that there’s some, there’s some kind of shared, lessons around leadership within an organisation and, in leadership. In being a role model and a, and a father

Chris Hudson: 38:26
from the point of view of being a father. Yeah. I think you can never, I don’t know, are we calling the kids, the staff? Is that how, how the analogy works or your employees, which, where do they fit it? Are they the leadership? We’re just the staff.

Nathan Bell: 38:41
It picks up on the. I think it picks up on the kind of the earlier conversation we were having right around potentially some of those traits, if you like, around, enormously successful, leaders around empathy and charisma and

Chris Hudson: 38:57
let’s see where that goes. I mean, the lesson is that you can stay where you want in any situation in the family environment and you can expect to be totally ignored. It’s, you, you communicate enthusiastically and very clearly at a low volume or even at a high volume, it feels like, you could be talking to the wall. So that’s probably harder than it would be in a business context. I want to say, because in the business context, you’d like to think that somebody would give you the respect to actually sit down and listen to what you were saying without, just, Oh, I’m just going to go off and watch the TV or leave the room mid sentence. So there’s a, there’s a code of conduct that works pretty well for a business point of view there. I think the from a leadership point of view, I think the playfulness and curiosity from the kid’s point of view is something that really, it just leads to unexpected things. So you can have the same routine in your house every day. It’s always going to be and feel different. You wake up every morning and it’s just like, it’s just like panic as well. But if you’re comfortable with that. Then in a business context that can be incredibly useful and it might be interesting in a way to mix up the format or suggest that you do it a different way or just improvise, just, just try, try something new because kids wouldn’t stand for that, right? They wouldn’t just have it the same way every day. So, so that’s pretty good. But yeah, I think, the, the, the lessons around tolerance and obviously empathy, you’ve obviously got to understand a lot of other people’s situations above your own and really, and really know to that, and it feels, talking to Asha about this and a number of other mothers, they, they feel like as a parent, you You do give away a lot of yourself when you have children. So that can be the case in work, but a lot of other leaders that I’ve interviewed have also said, as a leader, the more you give to the team around you, so it’s a more of a leader you’re perceived to be in a way so that giving away is important. I still think you’ve got to keep something about yourself, you’ve got to preserve something otherwise. Otherwise, you’re just a shell and, um, you’ve, you’ve handed over the keys, right? So, and then you do become the staff, you’re just making the toast in the morning and driving them somewhere. So yeah, I think, I think it’s probably definitely a balance, but I’d say probably leaning more towards doing more for other people than, than for yourself is, is the overall principle there.

Nathan Bell: 41:26
I want to run an idea past you. I was speaking to a very. Dear friend of mine, that the other day and he had started developing. A certain kind of strategy for his young kids in the morning to try and make mornings slightly calmer. And he realised that if he could, as he used to do in the studio, he would get into the studio, he would turn the lights on, he would turn the music on, he would turn the heating on ready to kind of receive the staff. And that kind of resulted in a, a bit more of a, a calmer, but slightly more kind of focused. Design studio. He adopted the same kind of strategy in and around the home. So he made sure that he was up before it’s got off. But everything was kind of organised. Everything was calm. And I think in theory, that sounds like a brilliant idea. How would that kind of. Level of urban experience design work in your home.

Chris Hudson: 42:20
So imagine the home is like an architectural studio and it’s got the concrete floors and, the sharply dressed people turning up at some point on time. Everyone wearing black. And they might even bring you coffee. Is that, is that how it works as well?

Nathan Bell: 42:35
Maybe less of the hard edges, but that kind of idea of everything kind of being ready to kind of, receive. Here we are again, calling the kids employees, but ready to receive the receive children. Would that contribute to any sense of kind of calm or structure? I think I really liked the idea, but I’m not sure of how practical it is in reality.

Chris Hudson: 42:59
Well, I mean the what was it the 5 a. m. Club or is it now the 3 a. m. Club or something? Yeah, the time at which you have to wake up to spend time for yourself I think it’s the 5 a. m. Club is the book but it just feels like it’s earlier and earlier and earlier So if you value your sleep And, balance in that respect, can she, she look at like Richard Branson and his routine and all of these leaders that say they go to bed at Mark Wahlberg or everything. Basically, you’re in bed at 8. 30pm and then you’re up at 3am to do stuff. Preparation is definitely going to help but it’s about probably how much you can practically squeeze it. And then, if you’re up that early, do you really want to do it? Yeah, a lot of people

Nathan Bell: 43:42
wouldn’t. That’s true. That’s very true. And you certainly don’t want to be up at 3 a. m. or 4 a. m. with a steaming hangover. That’s for sure. There’s no, there’s no doubt about it.

Chris Hudson: 43:52
We’re already up at 5. 30, getting kids lunches ready. I mean, to an extent, that’s, that is what we’re doing, but. Even so, like, you don’t know how they’re going to wake up and what they’re going to walk into the room as, so you always got to meet them, meet them where they are. And, Lael Stone, who was the parenting coach that I had on, on episode 40 um, you’ve really got to scan, scan the kids and the people a little bit. As they enter the environment, because you don’t know how they’re responding to that environment until they’re there, and then you, you might have to replan I’ve had my, I’ve had days where I thought it’ll, we’ll get everything humming along as you’ve described, put some nice music on. And create this kind of, put the, the scented candles or whatever we can find. It’s not meant to feel like a nightclub toilet or anything, but it’s kind of like, it’s kind of like, well, let’s, let’s try this out. And sometimes it’s worth, sometimes it hasn’t, you just don’t know how they are and how they’re going to, how they’re going to receive that sensory information as, and when they enter the room. So yeah, it’s worth a crack, but I’d, I’d keep it as one of your tricks.

Nathan Bell: 45:00
You’re absolutely right. I think the missing piece from that kind of, idea, not everybody is stepping across the threshold of an Aesop store, calm and ready to, try and try some moisturiser or some, some lip balm. Are they the customers you have stepping into the kitchen are slightly more unpredictable.

Chris Hudson: 45:18
Yeah. And to be fair to the kids, and anybody else in an office environment, they don’t know what kind of person they’re going to be meeting when they step through the door either. What mindset are we in and how are we projecting that to them? We could feel like we’re totally calm, but we might seem as if we’re stressed or we might seem as if we’re ready to have a conversation, the signals they pick up on, non verbally as well are incredibly, incredibly important. So yeah, you’ve got to, got to. I don’t know, it feels like it’s an incredibly hard challenge to get that right, but one that you’d fine tune over a lifetime, really.

Nathan Bell: 45:51
Hey, tell me a little bit about where to next, where to next for, for company road, where to next for, the podcast. Are we going to start seeing some merch online shortly?

Chris Hudson: 46:03
yeah, yeah, I’d love that. Well, I mean, what are your ideas? Have you got some? Yeah.

Nathan Bell: 46:08
Well, I mean, obviously I’m not going to give those away for free. We can have a bit of a discovery session and explore that. Yeah,

Chris Hudson: 46:13
yeah. Okay, I know your rates. Yeah, I think to be honest, I’m following its natural path a little bit and seeing where where people are finding, interesting conversation, engaging conversation. I’m trying to Like, like I said, to build it up more as a conversation really. So into the community uniting community a little bit around some of these conversations and, and then thinking about how we can use that, I feel like the, the event spaces are a little bit. It’s a little bit hit and miss in the event space, particularly in this market. And it’s obviously reliant on one thing happening once a year or, or a specific format. And, the meetup scene is kind of happening, but it’s a little bit, a little bit ad hoc and a bit random. So I’ve, I feel that there’s, there’s an opportunity to bring people together and, and for people that have been on the show and for listeners of the show to, to really come together and actually share even more. And for that to become a. A safe space, but also a kind of learning ground really in one way or another. So whether that means that we, we help with that learning process, we, we develop materials in the end that we, we might have things that we can, we can take out to the community eventually. Up until now, it’s been more about listening to the state of play. Within the organisations and the leaders that we’ve been talking about. And now it’s probably going to be more around the possibility of what else can be brought into those businesses and organisations to actually help the people in, in those organisations. And yeah, to see, see what could be made possible. So I think, I mean, the opportunities there, and I feel like, I don’t know, I just feel post COVID everything’s a little bit stale. It’s stagnated somewhat in the way that work is done. And that did take a few trees and feathers, but it, it just feels There, there needs to be a new lease of life and the threat of technology now presents the opportunity for people to have more time either for themselves or, or for, for doing, doing more in the human aspect. And I feel that that, that would be an interesting thing to explore now. And, and beyond the walls of organisations, I think that a lot of the, the richness of what happens is contained within the I had the guys from Telstra and we, it just feels like there’s so much good stuff happening within organisations that it would be a shame not to share it and allow people to benefit from that more broadly in some way. So I’m keen to keep on going with it as long as people are happy to engage with it and want to be part of it really.

Nathan Bell: 48:43
Well, I think once again, Chris, I think you should be enormously proud of. The platform that you’ve created, I know for a fact it’s, it’s helped me enormously as a, as a, as a business leader, as a business designer, I think the, the breadth and depth. But also the humour that you bring, what can be often very technical conversations is something that you should be enormously proud of. And again, the consistency and the commitment to creating such, remarkable content over the course of a year. This is to be really, really commended and something to be really, really proud of. I’m also enormously excited. Grateful that, that, that you’ve considered, me appropriate to poke and prod at you on this particular podcast and that and very special podcast has been, so thanks for being so kind. open and transparent. Thanks for sharing your really, really fascinating story. So it’s been an absolute pleasure.

Chris Hudson: 49:43
Oh, thanks so much, Nathan. Super kind. And like I say, I mean, it’s incredibly generous of you to give up your time and expertise to come chat to me as well. And yeah, never say never to you being the guest on the show either, because that could happen, right?

Nathan Bell: 49:57
Never say never. I will commit to that.

Chris Hudson: 50:00
Yeah. All right. Thanks so much, Nathan. Thanks Chris. Take care.

Okay, so that’s it for this episode. If you’re hearing this message, you’ve listened all the way to the end. So thank you very much. We hope you enjoyed the show. We’d love to hear your feedback. So please leave us a review and share this episode with your friends, team members, leaders if you think it’ll make a difference.

After all, we’re trying to help you, the intrapreneurs kick more goals within your organisations. If you have any questions about the things we covered in the show, please email me directly at chris@companyroad.co. I answer all messages so please don’t hesitate to reach out and to hear about the latest episodes and updates.

Please head to companyroad.co to subscribe. Tune in next Wednesday for another new episode.