E05: Freddie Fforde: “...at Patch, we see ourselves as guests in somebody else’s community…”

Beautiful Mess

Freddie Fforde is the founder of Patch...Freddie introduces us to the vision of Patch and how it incorporates everything to do with community, collaboration and local business, as well as being a shared “work near home” workspace.

We speak about how working near to the people and places that we love means that we can invest more time into those people and places.

We speak about the importance of building community as a way to mitigate loneliness.

Freddie shares the story of the ‘long history’ version of his inspiration to build Patch, offering some real gems that link back to that story, as well as what still inspires him today.

The conversation then moves through his experience of being a founder and speaking with numerous founders and entrepreneurs…we explore some of the practices he’s observed throughout this process.

Freddie offers his brilliant approach of “build, measure, learn” as a founder and leader, and how that’s worked for him and the teams he leads.

We also of course then understand more about the meaning of “beautiful mess” for Freddie.

The beauty of the mess for him has a lot to do with the operation underneath the public image.

A rich conversation with an incredible founder and human!

Power Takeaways:

• Fundamental belief that people are great everywhere.
• People need a place to come together and to build community so that they can be stronger together.
• How difficult it is behind the scenes to build a crisp, serene process.
• The success of the output of a business is dependent on the effectiveness of its inputs, and the effectiveness of that input is indirectly or directly controlled by the people.
• Everything is always changing inside and outside businesses.
• Internal mantra at Patch is ‘build, measure, learn’ which encourages a truly agile culture.
• You’ve got to start somewhere and accept that failure, within reason, is going to be a part of that.
• There can be a real beauty and a real pride in knowing that things are improving as you move through the process.
• To bring the thing into the world and to want it to be better.
• The first thing I say to people when I onboard them is “I want you to feel safe here”. That’s what matters the most.

Resources Mentioned:

Patch website: www.patch.work

Freddie Fforde linkedin page: linkedin.com/in/freddiefforde

“The Library of Things”: www.libraryofthings.co.uk

Django’s coffee: @djangosspecialtycoffeehouse

Flower tonic: flowertonic.co.uk