79: Henry May on Leaving His Respected Job, Letting Ideas Develop, and Taking Action

Cracking Creativity Podcast with Kevin Chung

Henry May spent his childhood playing with LEGOs. He loved the outdoors and harmless mischief. He thought his life was pre-ordained. He thought our paths are set for us.

This all changed the summer he joined Teach First. The two years he spent here, changed his thoughts on the education system and his role in the world.

After his time at Teach First, and a short stint at Procter & Gamble, Henry took a trip to Colombia through Teach Colombia and fell in love with the country. But he also heard horrible stories about the public schools there.

These were the driving forces that pulled him to leave everything he knew in London and to start CoSchool in Colombia.

In this episode Henry talks about why well respected jobs aren't always right for us, why good ideas take time to develop, and why you need to stop waiting and put your ideas into action.

Respected Jobs Aren't Always the Best For Us

If you ask most people what they want out of life, one thing they will mention is a good career. They want a safe job at a well established company. They want stability and security. But that doesn't mean a job at a well respected company is right for everyone.

That's exactly what Henry found out while working at Procter & Gamble. While most people would be overjoyed to have a job at a company like P&G, Henry found it frustrating.

"It was such a different world from this real life, hard hitting world of being a teacher in a school in South London. To then be found in an office talking about selling razor blades, nappies, shampoo. I just couldn't connect with the deeper purpose. I really respect an organization like Procter & Gamble for the success that they've had, for the benefit that they bring to the world... however I found it very frustrating to see so many intelligent, capable, caring people there who were using all of that talent and all of that brilliance to sell 1% more shampoo than their rivals."

Just because a company is a good business, that doesn't mean it's the right fit for everyone. Sometimes our hearts just aren't into it.

"Ultimately that's the bottom line in an organization like that. They do a great job of developing people, and growing leaders, and making some fantastic business people, but I was a mismatch in terms of where my heart was."

Sometimes Good Ideas Take Time to Develop

In the modern age, we want things to happen instantaneously. We have been conditioned to expect instant gratification. But sometimes good ideas take time develop. Sometimes we need to think things over before they can become a reality.

That's exactly what happened to Henry. His dual passions for Huracan FC and CoSchool were on completely different journeys, but after thinking about it for a few months, the ideas converged.

"They were separate dots on... different journeys of my life that didn't make a connection immediately. There wasn't intentions. It took a process of reflection and iteration, and three or four months initially of thinking 'Am I going to focus on the Huracan foundation? Is that my thing? Is that what I am going to do? And eventually CoSchool was born out of this process of stopping."

We're always in such a rush to get our ideas off the ground that we don't give them time to breath. That's why Henry advises aspiring entrepreneurs to spend some time thinking about their ideas.

"I think that if there's something that I learned from that, there's something I share with other people, with friends who are thinking about doing something entrepreneurial, the value of stopping and stepping outside of the white water, not just for a day or for a week, I mean I did it for three months. I gave myself the time and space to think, to explore, to consider, to evaluate, to analyze. I think out of that space, was the birth of probably my greatest moment of creativity."

Stop Waiting and Put Your Ideas Into Action We all have ideas we're passionate about but far too often, we let them sit inside our heads. Instead of giving ourselves the chance to succeed we self-sabotage and do nothing. Henry believes that if you have a good idea, you need to treat it with a sense of urgency. You need to talk to people about it. You need to test it, to write it down, and prototype it so you can learn as much as possible. "Every day that you wait to make that idea a reality is a day less of your life to make your idea happen. So if you have an idea and you care about it, treat it with a sense of urgency. Treat it with the same sense of urgency that you would treat a ticking time bomb in your hand. You don't know what might happen in your life or what things will go on and what circumstances might change, and you don't know how long that idea might be in your hands for. So give yourself the chance to, if you really care about it and you really feel it in your gut, and you feel like it's something you want to do, the how and route to success and execution, to creating a business plan and model and team, that's not important. That's not the most important first thing. And I think that's a common mistake. People go 'I haven't got a plan. I don't know how to make this a reality.' Well, I think every single entrepreneur that ever had an idea probably had a moment like that... What you do is get an idea and speak to people. Test it. Write it down. Draw it. Try and prototype it in the quickest and shortest way possible to learn as fast as possible." If you don't put your ideas into action, you'll never know if they're going to work. You can't learn anything about your idea if it just sits inside your head. The best thing you can do is lean into your fear and take action. "You can learn an incredible amount in about twenty minutes of your life, about ideas, by putting them into action. You can learn zero about ideas by just thinking about them. If you put them into action, act them out, listen to them, and role play them... all of a sudden stuff starts happening. So that would be my biggest advice and lean into fear. Take that step out of your comfort zone and go somewhere you haven't been before. Take the idea with you. Let the idea lead you. Don't be afraid of failure. I mean, learn. Learn, grow, test. See what happens." Read more shownotes from episode 79 with Henry May