How do you turn a string of spontaneous decisions – and even some tough health setbacks – into a thriving business and an impactful brand? This month, Anna welcomes public speaking pro Alex Merry, founder of the MicDrop community, for an open conversation about resilience, redefining success, and building a business that truly works for you.

Key moments:

[00:02] Anna introduces Alex; the serendipity of their meeting, joining MicDrop

[01:37] Alex’s career beginnings: from football coaching to founding a speaking community

[04:07] How success has evolved, and the impact of Alex’s health journey

[06:16] Building confidence: stories from charity fundraising and “creating hype from nothing”

[08:30] The shift from scrappy beginnings to more public, high-stakes work

[13:58] Streamlining the business, saying “no,” and pursuing only energising work

[20:38] Using LinkedIn for brand building; Alex’s speaking strategy today

[27:05] Work-life integration: realistic routines, boundaries, and the challenge of switching off

[32:34] Overdelivering in community and the value of real support

[33:55] MicDrop: who it’s for, how to join, and next cohort details

Resources mentioned:

• Alex Merry on LinkedIn
• The MicDrop community
• The Thought Leadership Accelerator
• The Business Accelerator Programme: OneStepOutside.com/accelerate.
• Anna’s 5 pillars book: Outside of the 9 to 5
• Connect with Anna Lundberg: Get in touch on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Alex Merry MicDrop

Anna Lundberg:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to this month’s interview. And I know everyone says this on LinkedIn, but I am thrilled to introduce Alex Merru on the podcast today. I love that you’re on here, Alex, because I think it’s almost a year ago now. Coming up to it, May, when I first sort of met you, and it was one of those perfect storms, triangulation, whatever you want to call it, I had someone recommend you to me. I had a training that you gave in another community I was part of. And I never remember the third thing was. But all the power of the universe are pointing me in your direction.

Anna Lundberg:
So I’m really glad that I made a relatively spontaneous decision to join your MicDrop community, which we’re going to talk lots about, I’m sure, but I’m really pleased to be able to get to know you and the amazing community you’ve curated in the meantime. And I’m excited to have you on. So I’d love for you to tell us, who are you and what do you do?

Alex Merry:
Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me, Anna. It’s great to be on this podcast. So I runMic Drop, which is a public speaking community for, we say, for tomorrow’s thought leaders. In reality, what that means is we have lots of solopreneurs, founders of companies, authors, coaches, consultants, and we take people on when they’re starting to get clear on their message. We work with them to land more speaking engagements, transition into paid speaking, and build their personal brand through the things that they say.

Anna Lundberg:
And I have to dial the clock back a little bit and understand a little bit. Where did you go? How did you end up there? So if we go back to your young, young self, how did you start your career? And what have been a couple of the twists and turns along the way.

Alex Merry:
I started my career as a football coach.

Anna Lundberg:
I didn’t expect that one. Okay.

Alex Merry:
I did my coaching. One of the best presents I ever received. My parents, I. I was given my coaching, my first coaching badge qualification or course at the time. It was a course when I was 16, so I was the youngest person on that. And the plan was to go into professional football and. And coach some teams. I was never actually very good at football.

Alex Merry:
And actually a similar theme sort of goes through for public speaking, too. I’m not a particularly good public speaker, but being able to help other people with it is something that I’ve seemed to sort of fall into. My journey beyond football was. Was in charity fundraising. I ran a charity fundraising agency for. For seven years with two others. We grew it very Very quickly and had a. An extremely unrobust business model that we dragged through the hedge backwards for way longer than we should have done.

Alex Merry:
And it was during the second half of my time running that agency that we. I managed to convince TED to let me run one of their events as a volunteer initiative. So I started TedX Clapham. And then I, I arrogantly thought that I could help people with their talks, people who had achieved sort of global fame in, in various ventures and things that they’d been doing. And it was sort of lucky that I did because it was at that point, very organically, people started to refer me. And long, Long story short, when we eventually decided to, to stop the charity fundraising business, I was like, what on earth do I do now? Let’s just see whether there’s anything in this. And that’s, that’s how coming into the world of public speaking, thought leadership, communication, that’s, that’s how, how we ended up here, really.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah. Turns out there is a little bit of something in this after all, which is good news. I like to ask the question, how has your definition of success changed from the beginning of your career to now? But I want to shift it a little bit for you. I’m curious from that moment when you sort of started, oh, is there anything in this? And you began the mic drop journey, I suppose. How has your perspective on success changed to now that you’re running a thriving community, you have a big audience and you clearly are very good at what you do, how has your definition changed from A to B in that journey?

Alex Merry:
I was so prepped for the other version of that question. Anna. I have absolutely no idea. No, I think, I think in all seriousness, the, my perspective on success has changed from, from starting this business really through health circumstance more than anything else. I had issues with the COVID vaccine and that ended up in a scenario where I still had to run a business whilst dealing with a heart problem for a couple of years. And so you sort of, you know, and I’m sure this is a reoccurring. It is a reoccurring theme on, in the conversations that you have on this podcast. But when you have something like that happen, your definition of success starts to change quite a lot.

Alex Merry:
And, you know, healthiness, being healthy is a. Is a really good start from a business perspective. I think success now is about feeling like you’re part of something that’s bigger than you. Prior to that, I think it was about the fact that I was being able to tell other people I was running My own business and I had control of my destiny and all of that stuff that felt quite liberating, particularly as most people my age at the time weren’t doing their own ventures. That felt quite cool, but the reality was actually pretty brutal behind the scenes. Very difficult running your own business.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, my goodness, I’m sorry to hear that. And unfortunately quite common, but such a positive story when we see that we turn that into a rethinking of how we’re doing things and still make it work and not just sort of fumble along, but actually make it a continued success in every sense of the words. I guess from the perspective of, and you mentioned there a few of the fundraising and so, and I know you’ve mentioned before sort of the door to door salesman kind of stuff that you did and I can see how that could set you up for success now. But obviously there’s a lot of confidence and courage that you need to go, hey Ted, I’m going to put on this big event and then even to launch the community and so on. So how did you, you know, behind the scenes take us into your, your mindset there? How did you find the confidence and courage to make these big decisions?

Alex Merry:
The journey of running that previous business was a massive part in that. The, the real story behind that was I didn’t set the business up. I was essentially employee number one. And, and then they brought me on as a, as a co founder a couple of years later to, to grow that business. And we were so gung ho because no one knew who we were. And when we were recruiting the, the staff and the fundraisers to help us, we were using universities to, to, to do that. And we turn up on campus having to compete against the big four and all your standards kind of corporate journeys and try and convince a load of people to spend their summers knocking on doors, fundraising for charity and try and convince them that would be a good idea. So learning to create a sense of hype or something from nothing was just, was inbuilt and ingrained in me from the age of 21.

Alex Merry:
As soon as I left university. We just put ourselves into those uncomfortable environments to see what would happen and what would work. And I think things like that set me up in really good stead for, for being okay with a bit of uncertainty and okay, if it all goes wrong, you just do something different next time or, or you know, and learn from it in some way.

Anna Lundberg:
And I think unfortunately that’s the opposite of certainly what my experience was. I was very much in sort of the the good girl looking for external validation, following the rules, perfectionist tendencies that a lot of us might have, and that don’t really set us up for success in the entrepreneurial space. And I suppose, like, that also prompts me to ask, how is it different, do you think, when you’re first starting? And I saw this, I was in marketing at Procter and Gamble when we had little brands that were failing or unknown. We could be pretty creative and innovative and scrappy and no one cares. But then once we have a certain success now, you know, all eyes are on you. Once you have, and we can extrapolate hundreds of thousands of followers on LinkedIn and big events and so on, do you think we lose a bit of that and we have to, I don’t know, settle into a comfort zone again or obviously trust bigger teams and so. And do you, do you sense that shifter at all or do you feel like, no, I’ve still got the freedom. I can do what I want and.

Alex Merry:
I’ve got a bit of freedom. I don’t have as much freedom as perhaps I used to. You get the odd lesson along the way. A really good example was I posted a. I shared a newsletter last year and I just got really terrible feedback from it. And it was quite a controversial clip from quite a controversial speaker. And one of the things that I learned is that people expect fairly positive energy, like examples and so forth from me. And I think some of the most interesting stuff is in the stuff that really challenges the way we think and believe and makes us feel a little bit uncomfortable.

Alex Merry:
And so unless people are further on in their relationship with me and, and LinkedIn isn’t there, and, and it turns out neither is my newsletter, it’s a little bit harder to share, to share clips like that because they get, they, they get misinterpreted. So in the back of my head, there is, there is certainly something being like, I know that my audience won’t respond well to certain things, whereas in the past I perhaps wouldn’t have known that. So I think it’s come with a really, a much deeper understanding of who it is that I’m trying to speak to.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah. And I suppose the confidence of knowing what your message is, you could pull back from those harder conversations or you can lean into that because you know that that’s sort of where the interesting lessons come, I suppose.

Alex Merry:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But I, generally speaking, I’m in quite a creative world, so I’m able to, I’m, I’ve, I’m, I’m able to talk about subjects that really interest me and do it in different ways. And I think actually if I, if I look at what I share on LinkedIn versus what I might share inside Mic Drop, for example, there’s a little bit more nuance in mic drop versus a very punchy LinkedIn post which has very little nuance because that nuance doesn’t do well publicly. Unfortunately.

Anna Lundberg:
That’s my big downfall. I’m all about the nuances. It’s very hard. We need to get better at the black and white. And this is what it’s something I see again and again in others as well, I suppose. One thing so I’ve only had a couple of sort of viral experiences over a decade of kind of plodding along with my stuff. One time Arianna Huffington shared one of my articles and I got thousands of people came to my site and, and I didn’t have any kind of filter so I had a hundred calls or so. Most people didn’t turn up.

Anna Lundberg:
The rest were just wanting free advice. None of them resulted in a sale. So that was Experience one and experience two was just a few weeks ago. I shared something which I fully stood behind and most of it was positive, but it did bring out a couple of people from the woodwork who are critical and it just meant me really crisp up. And I think you’ve talked about this too before, but we talk about fear of failure, but what about fear of success? And suddenly maybe a bit of imposter syndrome, people are going to expose me as a fraud, but also just oh, so many people listening to what I have to say. I’ve got to double down even more on the rigour and not make any mistakes and not get cancelled and whatever other fears. Do you sense that as well, that fear of success that holds?

Alex Merry:
Oh my goodness, yes. And it almost always comes after some public success of some sort. You know, it’s the public stuff that’s the hardest. So, and actually quite relevant, I was thinking literally about this this morning because I’ve got to write a newsletter for next week. My founder, the Thought Leader newsletter. And at the beginning of this week I made a very snap, very last minute decision to share a a new AI tool called the Audience Whisperer to see how that goes down. And I shared that and we’ve now got a load more subscribers on the newsletter and I’m now thinking, oh God, Monday’s article’s got to be good or they’re all going to subscribe. And that is now guaranteed to result in me spending hours painstakingly trying to work out what I’m going to say and what I’m going to put in.

Alex Merry:
Whereas most weeks I don’t give it. Give it a second thought. I just go with what. What comes naturally. So I absolutely hear you on that. I don’t know whether. Whether that ever goes away.

Anna Lundberg:
No. And I guess that’s okay. And it’s true that it’s good that you care. I suppose if you’re writing as if no one’s reading it, that’s. That’s quite a sad state of affairs. And I think if you. It’s quite empowering then that you have a big audience of people listening and you’re getting that feedback. Maybe a challenge for some people starting out is that you don’t have that and you do feel a bit, you know, I have clients, really in the early days, I’ You’ve got eight people on my newsletter and you feel like, oh, and in fact, when I shifted last year and I did more work with corporate again, I had four or five people when I started and I thought, oh, can’t be bothered with this.

Anna Lundberg:
But they’re four or five human beings who are paying you their attention, could very much potentially lead in big contracts and so on. And as we always say, you know, imagine 100 people in a room, 2,000 people in a room. That’s a huge audience. Even if we’re not getting the big hundreds of thousands of impressions or whatever that some other people might be getting.

Alex Merry:
It’S all about who’s in the room. I had a really good example of this a few years ago. One of the first talks I ever worked on is the kind of. Is the talk that actually is why I do what I do, really. And we had a talk at TedX Clapham that went on to change some government legislation or certainly played a part in changing government legislation. And that particular talk hasn’t been seen millions of times, just been seen by a few people who happen to be the right people. And so the external validation of lots of impressions or lots of views or whatever it might be. Actually it is a vanity metric because it doesn’t take into account the actual impact something might go on and have.

Anna Lundberg:
And I suppose in a bit more sort of practical perspective, what does your business model look like? Both, I guess, to support your health and your ambitions and your lifestyle and your. Yeah. Your income goals. What kind of services are you providing at the moment?

Alex Merry:
Eighteen months ago, I came to the realisation that I had taken the business as far as I could without any sort of external support. I was done so done working way harder than I was three years before and barely producing the same outcome. Just, we were just flatlining, plateauing. It was just complete stagnation. And I wasn’t enjoying any of the work that I was doing except for this tiny community that started to build. So I made a decision to bring in a coach and work with a coach. It’s been absolutely amazing having someone who’s not in the weeds, not emotionally connected, being able to guide you and take you through. And one of the things that they shared with me early on was you’ve become everything to everyone.

Alex Merry:
And that really resonated. One of the exercises they got me to do was to write down all of the products I had. I had about 15 different products and how much I enjoyed each of them. I didn’t enjoy many of them. And so then it became sort of the next few months became this slow weaning off those products just by talking about them less and not pointing people in the direction of those things. Because often I don’t know whether you find this, but people don’t actually really know what they want. What they’re after is someone to point them in the right direction. So there could be lots of places I could have the same conversation with someone and point them into four or five different places or probably seven or eight different places at the time.

Alex Merry:
Now I’ve. I’m much more streamlined. We’ve got mic drop which is the core of the business and takes up the majority of my time. We’ve got some one to one coaching that I do with very senior crazy successful people who don’t like other people to know that they’ve got a coach. And then I’ve got a 12 week programme which is quite high tickets called the Thought Leadership Accelerator that I run once a year and I, I run that once a year to keep my sanity. It’s so time intensive that I did run it twice a year at points, but it was just, it’s just too much for me to be taking on. So I, I dropped it back to every January. So Mike drops core of the income.

Alex Merry:
The Thought Leadership Accelerator is kind of the second biggest income producer. And then the one to one coaching after that.

Anna Lundberg:
I love that. And to some extent we have to go through that process, right, of experimenting and trying things and seeing what lands and seeing what we enjoy. And exactly that conversation is the one I’m having the last few days and weeks and months, I suppose is what do you want? Because people come to say, is it this one should I do this or that. But it’s really taking a step back and looking at what do you want your business and your life to look like in a few years time and then especially once you have a few years under your belt, you know that certain things are working then you can get a bit more picky in terms of where you’re leaning in. Right. And simplify as you said.

Alex Merry:
The other thing that’s really surprised me, I used to do so much one to one work and it used to be for. I’d work with people for three months and they get like six to eight sessions and I would charge £3,000 for that and you know there was a relatively high turnover of people sort of doing that and it was again it was quite time intensive for me. I now run one 12 month. You can, it’s a 12 month commitment. I run two sessions a month. It’s 15K. I was just thinking why on earth, why on earth was I was I kind of thinking so small? But you need, you need other people to be able to tell you what is often achievable. There’s no way even a year ago I would have believed that would have been possible.

Anna Lundberg:
And especially when you’re starting quite low. Right. You’re just grateful for a workshop here or do you want coaching?

Alex Merry:
It’s feast or famine.

Anna Lundberg:
Absolutely, yeah.

Alex Merry:
And, and feast or famine makes you make decisions you don’t want to make. And one of the things I’ve definitely been better at since having my heart problems have been really listening to my spidey sense around how actually, you know, when you’re in a negotiation with someone, how is it actually going to be for me working with this person? Do I really want to work with this company? What’s the emotional toll? It’s going to feel great getting the money in the bank but what’s it going to feel like the day after that money’s in and it’s just, just in the bank now? How hard is that work going to be? And so I’ve, I’ve really tried to listen to my intuition and move away from the stuff that like, you know.

Anna Lundberg:
I find whenever you resent it or regret it right then you can trace back to that initial oh, I had the gut sense that that wasn’t the right thing but, but greed or sort of scarcity, whatever it is or you know, just pushes you so you never regret it. I think saying no to those types.

Alex Merry:
Of opportunities, fear is the big one. You’re just worried about paying your, your next Month’s rent.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah.

Alex Merry:
You know. Yeah.

Anna Lundberg:
And. And the point about founders, funny enough, I was chatting with a guy who runs a fintech accelerator this morning and he was saying around him, they just, they don’t really. They’re not open to the idea of getting a coach because there’s a bit of this unspoken thing like, oh, if I’m admitting to investors and my peers, I don’t know what I’m doing, then I can’t ask for help. And yet, you know, you’ve got a heart problem, you’d probably go to the doctor, hopefully, or, you know, you’ve got a tooth problem, you go to the dentist, you need accounting, you go to an accountant. It’s a bit of a shift still, I guess some work that needs to happen, both in terms of mental health but also just in terms of the sort of softer elements of coaching, I suppose.

Alex Merry:
It’s so hard to sell this. You know, everyone hates term soft skills, particularly for in that soft skills world. But it’s, it’s, it’s. They’re very, very hard to sell and you don’t really understand the, the impact they have until you take the jump. And I’d also say from my personal experience, it’s been, you know, it’s quite confronting to admit that you’re not good enough yet and you haven’t, you haven’t got it all figured out. So you’ve got to, you’ve got to sort of allow yourself to have that realisation and there’d be a sense of acceptance of, I’ve, I’ve done what I can to get this far. It’s. We’re going to need more help to, to go further.

Anna Lundberg:
I love that and I’m really glad you got that support and you’ve been able to, to shift things in your model and how have you been? And I know we’ve talked about LinkedIn a little bit. How are you building your brand? Are you still speaking yourself? Is it LinkedIn that’s your primary platform? How are you attracting new people into your world?

Alex Merry:
LinkedIn is my primary platform, just because there’s that ease associated with LinkedIn. You know, you can post every day. I say ease. I mean, it’s so unpredictable. But because I can post every day, there’s something there and every time I post, I’m creating a bit of IP that I can use and maybe that can go into some AI, you know, so it’s actually, it’s probably never been a better time to be writing because that stuff can be converted into really useful collateral for your business. It’s going to help you create that sense of success and fulfilment without it having to be such hard work in the future. That’s a realisation I’m coming to more and more often at the moment I do very little speaking, as little as possible. Anna is the.

Alex Merry:
Is the complete truth but there is the. You know, I will tend to. My goal really is to do one or two big engagements a year to sharpen the saw and in between that I might do some stuff that I’m kind of interested in and, and lights me up and is. And I think it’s going to be fun. So I’m putting myself out there a little bit more this year. I’ve already done more speaking than publicly than I have than I did last year and, and that’s fine but I’m just being extremely strategic about it. I’m not doing the speaking for the money stuff at the moment. I’m doing the speaking for the personal.

Anna Lundberg:
Brand and I guess to still, you know, you got. Still got it and you’ve got to still experience what the rest of us are experiencing in terms of nerves and putting ourselves out there and so on. I suppose just to remind yourself still of what that’s like.

Alex Merry:
Completely. And the keynote I gave last, the month before last now was a great example of that. I, I forced myself to do something on a topic that isn’t my topic, a high stakes event. I was opening the thing. So it was good to go through that. Yeah good to go through that process and remind myself.

Anna Lundberg:
And I love what you said about linking what you’re putting on LinkedIn haha. With your commercial stuff that you’re doing and not just posting. Right. I think so many people I work with that sort of hate marketing themselves and just feels another thing you put on to everything. Plus, and I was joking with you the other day that oh, I’ve got to leave my house now. It’s very easy just to sit at home on your computer and think you’re working. Whereas all I’ve done is posted on LinkedIn like unless that actually leads to sales or real conversations or possibly, you know, at some point leaving the house then. Then what’s the point? So I think reminding yourself always of that if you can turn it into.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah. Programmes or other emails, repurposing stuff but also always bring it back to why you’re doing it rather than oh, that’s just one more thing I need to add to my plate.

Alex Merry:
Yeah. And I think thinking of it as I see LinkedIn as a training exercise as much as anything else. If you take the idea that it’s marketing out, then and it’s actually a way for you to get better at what you do so you can help your clients even more, so you get more recommendations. Even if the stuff doesn’t come through LinkedIn, it will, it will reflect in the. That you’ve already got. So I think it’s a really good way to get clarity on what it is that you’re standing for and what it is that you believe. And, you know, that’s how I see it and why I think I enjoy it. Generally.

Alex Merry:
It’s just frustrating when the platform’s algorithms don’t let you, don’t necessarily give you the credit that you deserve every time.

Anna Lundberg:
Yes, it’s very unfair. I’m writing amazing things and it’s not getting picked up. I had that on Instagram, I posted something genius and I got about 12 people viewing. Not sure that’s quite worth my time, but luckily it’s part of my broader ecosystem. So it’s not just the post. But there’s definitely frustrations. I think sometimes you sort of need to balance that kind of short term scrappiness and focus on cash flow, maybe in some cases. But then also think of the longer picture of the patchwork that you’re building of people seeing you and, you know.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, building that network and conversations and the bigger picture.

Alex Merry:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. How have you found all of this stuff has evolved for you over the last couple of years?

Anna Lundberg:
Well, I’ve been through an interesting pivotal moment because I left 12 years ago, I’m going to say now. So a couple of years ago there was a bit of a moment of existential crisis when a decade has passed and all the things that I hear people say, oh, I should be further along and do I still want to do this stuff and do I reinvent entirely? So that was a year or two of kind of quite slow process, I think, and progress. But thanks to that, I’ve come out energised. Now my kids are a bit older, so my ambitions have peaked a little bit. Not peaked, hopefully, but expanded. And I’m feeling ye. Yeah, really great. And literally just very recently, in fact, I’ve, thanks in part to the conversations, we have, you know, been promoting a free workshop with my more corporate audience as well as pushing my business accelerator and both of those.

Anna Lundberg:
What I’d say to the audience as well is however many people do or don’t buy or join your web, whatever the exercise of doing that allows you to have conversations you weren’t having before. So rather than just kind of posting stuff and being afraid to sell or whatever, you’ve got something to invite people to, they can then say, no, that’s not right. Or, yeah, that’s amazing, that’s exactly what we need. But, you know, and that’s where the interesting things happen. So like we were saying before, it’s not really about the numbers, it’s about the quality of the conversations. And that does come from risking a little bit, putting your head above the parapet and doing stuff that might not land exactly as you want it to, but it’s what happens next, I think, that becomes really interesting completely.

Alex Merry:
And you never know. Like, some of the opportunities that come your way as a result of putting your head above the PowerPass surprise you. You know, they’re not always things you expect. And then when you’ve got these sort of. Of pattern breaks that aren’t sort of not business as usual, but can create business, that’s. That’s a bonus. Like, that’s. That’s part of the excitement of running your own thing.

Anna Lundberg:
My favourite example of that is linked to your event at the end of last year, because I was. You ran an event where we were supposed to do a little talk and unfortunately those tickets were sold out when I checked. But there was this role as an MC and I’d asked you, what’s that about? Should I do that? And you said, yes. So I foolishly signed up to it. But that was amazing. First time I’d left the house in ages. It was. Yeah, it really landed well and haven’t yet turned into a commercial opportunity.

Anna Lundberg:
But the people I met, obviously, and the conversations and the feedback I got was amazing. And that’s something I never would have even considered. It wasn’t even on the radar. So it’s those kinds of random, spontaneous things that sometimes can awaken opportunities that you weren’t even aware of.

Alex Merry:
So, so true. And any event that books Anna as an MC will be very lucky to have her.

Anna Lundberg:
I’m putting that in a testimonial posting tomorrow. Thank you very much. You totally can end the conversation. That’s all I needed. Bye. See you. I guess the final sort of area to explore is what I call the work life integration. And you mentioned health and obviously you’ve got your wife.

Anna Lundberg:
We were chatting before you went online about runs and marathons and all sorts. So do you have a typical flow? What does it look like? We’ve talked about boundaries before as well, but how much do you Work. When do you take time off? Can you paint a picture of what the day to day reality looks like?

Alex Merry:
At the moment I’m barely taking time off for those who can’t see, which is all of you because this isn’t a visual podcast. I just got a serious look from Anna after I said that we do have, we have a pretty solid routine. So I work with my wife Livy and mornings are spent pretty active up until maybe 9 o’ clock. We’re out walking the dogs, running, yoga, maybe going for a swim, whatever it might be, you know, we’re both really active on, on that side of things. I don’t take any meetings until 12pm and that is a blanket rule. That means I can get some deep work done in the morning and then my afternoons are spent doing calls. And that’s typically how it works. What spills over into the weekend is often writing a newsletter or for Monday or it’s at the moment running these programmes inside Mic Drop that I thought when we came up the idea were going to be really low touch from my perspective, but actually having to create them, I can’t just do a half, half baked job of being like go do this.

Alex Merry:
I want to try and help really sort of map out the process where possible. So that’s taking up a little bit of time. At the moment we’re bringing someone in to help with managing my content publicly and I think that’s going to really help free some time. My goal come the end of the year is to have a five day week. One of the things that we really struggle with is because we work from home, it’s extremely difficult to, to take a weekend off, especially when you like what you do like I love what I do right now. And I was saying to Libby last night, with the potential I see for where we’re taking the business, I would be very, very happy to just work like outrageous hours. And it’s. I’m, I’m trying not to do that at the moment.

Alex Merry:
When the thought leadership programme finishes, we are booking some time to just get away for a few days. So there is a little bit of a break and one of the best things I’ve done was this. At the end of my thought leadership programme we have a filming day and at the filming day last year I brought my bags with me because I was straight off to the airport and I ran away to Namibia where I couldn’t use my phone for seven days. That was excellent. And I think forcing ourselves to get holidays in that are away from our normal Environments is, is the most important thing to do and we’re getting better at it.

Anna Lundberg:
I’m happy to hear that. But it is so hard, like you say, when we love what we do, when we have ambitions for it and can see and we get pulled along by that vision and when we’re working from home with our partners, is a perfect storm there to make it very difficult for you to shut down. So I’m going to keep making faces at you, but I’m really glad to hear that you’re thinking about the long term picture of, you know, making this sustainable because you want this to grow but you want it to work right. We don’t want to burn out or whatever other circumstances can, can happen if we, if we don’t take care of these things. I think building that in, in a sustainable way from the start. I used to think that you had to hustle for success and then take a break. But actually what you’ve done then is either burnt out already or you’ve built in hustle to your business model. And I think, of course there’s an element of going a bit above and beyond when we’re trying to make something work.

Anna Lundberg:
But the danger is you get into those habits, your clients expect it from you. It’s, you know, it’s very hard to then break free of that further down the line.

Alex Merry:
I completely agree. I look back at certain moments, particularly when I had the heart stuff, and I just think, yeah, that wasn’t, that wasn’t good. I remember having to, we were pretty low on cash and we were out. We, we take some time away every winter to go and work from a different country. So we were in Athens this year. One of the places that we’ve gone to a few times is Madeira, just for a few weeks and we’re working hard out there. It’s not a holiday, but we get, it feels like a holiday on the weekends. But I remember having to do this session for Bloomberg and there were, you know, it was a massive online audience from across the world and my heart was just going absolutely nuts and I couldn’t as, you know, I, I stand up for all my workshops.

Alex Merry:
I couldn’t stand up properly. So I had to like, I had to just get the back of a sofa to prop myself up on while I got myself through this workshop. I just think, yeah, not great. But unfortunately we are faced with these realities as a, as business owners where you’re never going to get it perfectly in sync when stuff happens to you. I now have some insurance that would have Been really useful back then.

Anna Lundberg:
I have to admit that a couple of years ago I ran a full day off site for a team of 50 and I had a throbbing migraine the whole day and it was just, you know, what can you do? You can’t cancel at that stage. And I certainly didn’t want to and I was okay, but it certainly wasn’t my best work, unfortunately. So, you know, sometimes for all birthday, the things I evangelise about at the reality might not be ideal.

Alex Merry:
Sometimes it’s a perfect storm and yeah, we’ve got to try and be kind to ourselves when. When we fall into that.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah. And on that note, I actually wanted to make you feel really uncomfortable right now because when one of the other interviews with one of the mic droppers and I don’t want you to take this wrong way actually, given the conversation we just had, but we just talked about how amazing you are, you and Livy and how. How high a bar you’ve set for the community and you know, I’ve been in a lot of programmes. I like to think I run good programmes myself. But you really do over deliver and I don’t want you to take that to be like, oh gosh, I’ve got to keep doing that because I want you to also step back. But just to reassure you that we so appreciate what you’re doing and you know, in terms of the quality, it’s so much more and better than I think any of us expect. We’re like, oh, I’m going to join a speaking community. So the range, the support we get from you both and just, yeah, everything you do is very much appreciated.

Anna Lundberg:
So I’m gonna leave that with you, but thank you, I appreciate that.

Alex Merry:
And that’s very uncomfortable to hear.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, that’s what I thought. We’ll leave it there. It’s a nice little pause, as you like to recommend. With that in mind, if anybody solopreneur, expert, etc, who. And I know you work with people who want to get better at the speaking craft. They want to perhaps get paid for the speaking, get more paid gigs as well as we also do lots of work on our LinkedIn and personal brand and so on. So hopefully this interview is going out at a good time. I know you open the doors to Mic Drop, is it three times.

Anna Lundberg:
Tell us more about how we can find you and your programmes.

Alex Merry:
We’re only opening Mic Drop twice this year, partly because we want to be good to ourselves and do it sustainably. We’re not growth at all costs. Yeah, we’re not growth at all costs at all. So we will bring in a group in May and I’d imagine we won’t have much many spaces left by the time this goes out. And then we’ll be bringing in another group in in October. And the goal’s really simple. We’ll help you get clear on your message, build your personal brand and you speaking as a way to generate or either either amplify your current income or generate a secondary income. And yeah, it’s a pretty special low ego group who are an absolute pleasure to work with.

Alex Merry:
So if that feels like something that sounds good, then yeah, head to my LinkedIn and you’ll see more details.

Anna Lundberg:
Perfect. We’ll make sure to link that in the show notes. Thank you so much, Alex. Such a pleasure. And as ever uncover some surprises for me as well. So I’m very selfish when I do these interviews. I really appreciate getting a peek behind the curtain and looking forward obviously to working more with you and the group as well. So thank you.

Alex Merry:
I loved it. Thanks Anna.

Anna Lundberg:
Amazing. Thank you so much.

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