Darren: On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I am speaking with Gary Parsons, who is the founder of The Selfish Thinking Company.
That speaks to me on a level other companies have never spoken to me before, because I am, by my own admission, very, very selfish.
Gary is heavily involved in wellbeing and wellness within businesses, looking at how businesses can do better for their employees and help them become better versions of themselves.
He is also a member of the Professional Speaking Association, so I’m going to be talking to Gary about professional speaking, speaking on stages and how he gets paid the big bucks for doing the big talks.
I’m quite interested in what you brand as The Selfish Thinking Company, for leaders who need to be a bit more selfish. I think that appeals to me on a personal level because I consider myself selfish, and I’ve been told I have zero empathy.
What exactly is a selfish leader, and why is it a good thing?
Gary: Let’s start with what people think a selfish leader is, because so many people hear “selfish” as a bad word.
When you say you’re selfish, there’s guilt attached to it. It feels as though it means you don’t care about anybody else, you’re self-absorbed or egotistical, everything is about you and nobody else matters.
The way I look at the word selfish is about taking that guilt away.
Especially in 2026, when we are more open about wellbeing, we look after ourselves better than we used to, or we’re certainly more conscious of it.
For me, bringing the word selfish to the forefront of our minds means prioritising ourselves, our mental health and our wellbeing.
Whether you are a leader within a business, the founder growing that business, a parent or part of a family, wherever you are inside or outside business, thinking selfishly and looking after yourself gives you the ability to show up for other people.
It gives you the energy to get through days when you might otherwise fail very quickly. It’s about building your capacity so that you can be there, be the amazing person you want to be and support other people in a sustainable way.
Sustainable is the most important word.
Darren: Most people start a business for one of several reasons. They might not want to be employed by anyone or have anyone telling them what to do, although they then end up with clients telling them what to do.
They might want to be masters of their own destiny, or perhaps they’ve been made redundant and don’t want to go through that again.
But when you set up your own business, you make a lot of sacrifices. You sacrifice your time and time with your family. You work late, get into work early and work weekends.
Sometimes you don’t pay yourself because, if you have staff or suppliers, you have to pay them first.
Are those the kinds of situations you want people to avoid, so they make sure they remain the priority?
Gary: One hundred per cent.
I talk about both leaders and founders because one owns the business and generally has much more control than the other. The other person might be in middle management, a senior leader or on the board. They’re different environments.
The first big challenge is boundaries.
When we start a business, we blur those boundaries because we’re wearing every hat we need to wear. We’re doing the marketing, finance, sales and everything else.
Those boundaries don’t exist. You want the business to be successful, so nine to five doesn’t exist for you.
The same thing happens within established businesses. People feel they need to show their team that they are committed and performing, so they demonstrate that by working extra hours.
We’ve all heard the phrase “work smarter, not harder”. That’s what I’m trying to say.
It’s great that you are showing commitment, but go and work smarter, not harder.
Boundaries are the first major area where people make mistakes
Darren: I don’t think social media and business gurus help.
You see these people on TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn saying that, if you’re not up at five o’clock in the morning filling in your gratitude journal, going for a walk and doing three hours of reading, then you’re not working hard enough.
By nine o’clock in the morning, they’ve already done seven hours of work, and they then carry on all day.
These people teach others that they need to work harder and harder, and for longer and longer, to get results.
What do you think of the way they influence people who are going into business?
Gary: Interestingly, I was going to start a marketing campaign last year called:
“F the hustle”
Using the full word.
That hustle culture is exactly as you describe it. At five o’clock, you’re out of bed, you’ve had a protein shake and you’ve gone to the gym.
Those things can be great. Going to the gym can be a good way to switch off, rather than waking up and immediately going on your phone or heading straight into work. It can be a good way to support your wellbeing.
But the exaggerated idea that you should do all of those things before nine o’clock creates a toxic culture. It calls people’s commitment to their businesses or employers into question.
If you’re not doing all of those things, how committed are you?
That might sound great at first. Personally, I’d probably die on the first day if I did anything like that.
It is difficult to sustain for a week, a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
Now let’s add some extra things into your life. Perhaps you’ve had a diagnosis of ill health, lost a loved one or are going through a particularly difficult time in your business.
How can you sustain those routines while under so much pressure elsewhere?
You can’t.
As a leader, you are already being pulled in every direction. I talk about leading under pressure and the responsibility and pressure to perform.
Adding the idea that you should also be getting up at five o’clock in the morning is too much. Unsurprisingly, we see people burning out.
Going back to those influencers, I was recently sent an article from The Times in which the boss of a very high-profile company said he didn’t believe in work-life balance.
That doesn’t sound right. Maybe I’ve been working in this area for too long, but it sounds so wrong to say that out loud.
That is someone who goes on holiday and continues checking his mobile and working. That isn’t a holiday. It’s simply a different place to work.
People might promote those attitudes, but how many of them talk about the negative sides?
When I started this journey, I wanted not only to tell my story but to encourage other people to talk about difficult periods in their lives.
I interviewed a very successful multimillionaire who, after selling his business, attempted to take his own life that same day. Luckily, he is still with us, but we nearly lost him.
There are people who aren’t telling those stories but really need to, because many more people are struggling.
Those are the voices we need to hear. Not from a doom-and-gloom perspective, but from the perspective of reality.
Darren: The attitude of working harder and harder can be generational.
My dad used to say that, if you want something, you work harder for it. You do overtime, work six or seven days a week, save up and buy what you want.
That’s not necessarily the way the world works anymore.
You didn’t want to mention the boss of a company, but I’m going to mention Lord Alan Sugar. He has famously said several times that working from home is a scam, and that people who work from home are dossing, sitting around watching television and not doing anything.
He believes they need to return to the office because that is the only way they will be productive.
It is, of course, a complete coincidence that Alan Sugar owns a lot of office space. I’m sure he isn’t incentivised in any way to encourage people to return to offices so that he earns more money.
Those people don’t seem to understand work-life balance. People can work from home and be just as productive. COVID proved that.
What is your view of that draconian attitude that people should be in the office from nine to five or nine to six, toiling away and not being allowed to do anything outside what their boss tells them?
Gary: Our economy is built on a lot of people owning property.
I’m sure Lord Alan Sugar also has retail and commercial properties, as many successful entrepreneurs do. I have friends who own residential and commercial properties that they let out.
Businesses have modelled their revenue and growth on buying more property. Where do they end up if everybody works from home?
Where do the sandwich shops end up?
We saw a huge change in the dynamics of the high street following COVID.
More recently, with everything happening around the Iran war and the resulting increases in electricity and oil prices, some countries have been considering how to reduce energy consumption.
Some governments have told public-sector employees to work from home.
They may not truly believe in it, but they return to it as the default when circumstances require it.
I’m slightly indifferent about that, because it can place an extra burden on individuals who then face higher energy costs at home. People are already being squeezed by the cost of living, particularly food and heating.
Do I believe people should have the ability to work from home? Yes, absolutely.
But I also believe we need a place we can go.
You may or may not be a big soap-opera fan, but in Coronation Street and EastEnders they have the Rovers Return, the Queen Vic or Roy’s Rolls. There is always somewhere the community gathers.
That is important within organisations.
Before launching this business, I worked in HR and people consultancy. One of the questions clients regularly asked me was, “How do we keep engagement going?”
I kept coming back to the same answer. It’s great to embrace working from home, but people still need somewhere they can return to and connect in person.
That might be a yearly conference, a quarterly conference or another kind of company event. The physical connection of employees seeing each other in person makes a massive difference.
The answer is balance. I use that word every day, particularly in my mentoring work.
It’s about giving people the option and permission to create balance in their lives, and empowering them to do it.
Darren: I understand the need for a meeting place.
I’ve heard it said many times that, if people went to the pub as often as characters on Coronation Street do, they would all be alcoholics. People working in the knicker factory seem to be in the pub drinking every single day.
We have a policy where people are in the office two days a week. One of those is always Tuesday, and they can choose whichever other day is best for them. They work from home for the other three days.
Some people come into the office five days a week because they don’t want to work from home. Some are in three days a week because it suits them better. Two days is the minimum.
I never work from home myself because I don’t like the isolation. I need to feed off other people, which technically makes me an extrovert, although I don’t necessarily feel that way.
I understand that people need somewhere to go because being constantly isolated can negatively affect mental health.
At the same time, if you can work from home, you shouldn’t be told that you must be in the office five days a week simply because somebody wants to sell office space or has a draconian view that everybody should work in cubicles.
Can you see a future in which everybody understands this and hybrid working becomes common across all sectors?
Gary: Do we even have a future now?
We won’t go that dark so quickly!
Yes, I think it will change. It’s just a question of when.
I’ve talked about balance, but choice is also a major part of it. You choose to go into the office and other people choose not to.
It is particularly important when we consider equality and equity in the workplace.
There are people who need the choice and ability to work from home and cannot be forced into the office. We need to adapt to make sure those people are included.
From a social-justice perspective, presenteeism is a major failure in many businesses.
There are extremely talented, capable and able people within businesses, but some systems and leaders still connect promotions and career progression to being physically present.
They will miss out on some excellent talent.
There is a significant mindset challenge to address.
Yes, this will happen in the future, whether some businesses like it or not, particularly as we see a generational change.
Will it happen in the next generation? I don’t know. At times, I feel we have gone ten steps forward and fifteen steps back.
Darren: Really? You think it’s that bad?
Gary: In many ways, yes.
Equally, it depends on whom you speak to and what you read.
There are still many businesses consciously pursuing DEI-focused initiatives because they recognise the difference they make. They understand that cognitive variation across the business is important.
The businesses that continue embracing it and talking about it will see the greatest difference and gain a competitive advantage.
Darren: Other businesses are going completely the other way and trialling four-day working weeks.
That is becoming a major movement in the UK. I don’t know how widespread it is in the United States or worldwide, but it’s certainly growing in the UK and in the digital-marketing industry.
Many marketing companies are proudly promoting the fact that they operate four-day working weeks.
They aren’t expecting teams to work extended hours. Employees work four days and essentially receive more than 50 additional days off each year.
If that becomes the norm, companies that still insist on five days, nine to five or eight until six, with everybody in the office, will surely face a real dearth of quality staff.
People will want to work for companies that embrace what is best for wellbeing, mental health and creativity.
Gary: They will.
When I stepped away from the business I had grown, there were a lot of people involved: my co-director, operations director and all the different teams.
When I started working for myself, it was very much just me. I have an amazing PA who looks after me, and a friend who helps with marketing and other areas, but I’m the only full-time employee in the business.
One of the things I consciously decided to do was work only four days.
My Wednesdays are wellbeing days
It’s a day I dedicate completely to my wellbeing, although there isn’t a strict structure to it.
One thing I try to do on Wednesdays is spend time with a horse that I loan.
Darren: You loan a horse?
Gary: Yes. He is basically mine on Wednesdays, to put it in layman’s terms.
Darren: That’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say that.
Gary: I call him mine, but I share him with other people, so technically he isn’t mine.
Darren: Is it like a timeshare for a horse?
Gary: That’s probably a good way of describing it.
I contribute towards his costs. He lives at the stables, they use him for lessons and he’s mine on Wednesdays.
Darren: Wow. Go on.
Gary: During the brighter months of the year—not necessarily the warmer months, but the nice bright ones—I can get on him and we can go out.
He is so laid-back and has such a great character. We go out on our own or in groups into the woods near the stables.
You get that connection not only with the horse but with nature.
For anyone wondering what they could do with a Wellbeing Wednesday, go horse riding or do something else you enjoy.
One thing you can’t do while you’re horse riding is let your mind wander towards all the things you need to do at work tomorrow. You need to stay on the horse.
You have to remain alert and pay attention to what is happening.
Admittedly, with Merlin, he probably wouldn’t even notice. There are days when both of us daydream, and he occasionally trips over his own shadow.
But being out there on a horse and having to focus on what you are doing is complete escapism. It is meditation in its own way.
You escape from the world and spend time in nature.
I am completely in favour of four-day working.
If more of us could do that and genuinely switch off, it would make a huge difference.
The chief executive we mentioned says that he doesn’t switch off and doesn’t believe in work-life balance. I would tell him to try it.
Go and have a Wellbeing Wednesday. Get on a horse and disappear for a couple of hours. I think it would make a big difference.
I’m not a qualified neuroscientist, but there is a lot of research demonstrating the benefit of fully switching off.
When we return to our desks, offices, tasks and projects, we are no longer overwhelmed by all the decisions we have been making over the previous few days.
The quality of our decisions can improve enormously.
It’s proven, so why not do it? Why not use the science and say, “I need Wednesday off”?
Darren: I love that.
I’ve never been horse riding, although I have always liked the idea. I think I’m probably a bit too heavy at the moment.
I looked at doing it at Center Parcs, but I’m over their weight limit, so I can’t.
Gary: When we spoke earlier in the year, we established that my school wasn’t far from where you were.
I can point you towards a riding school when you’re next in the area.
Darren: The Wirral Riding Club isn’t far away. One of my family friends goes there.
Gary: Maybe when I’m visiting family, I’ll drag you out and we’ll find a horse for you.
Darren: Consider it on.
I love the idea of taking one day a week for wellbeing.
There are so many people who brag about how many hours they work as though it’s a good thing. They say, “I work all these hours, so I’m hustling and doing well.”
That always amazes me because it isn’t a way to live.
If you need to work all those hours or stay constantly on your phone while you’re on holiday, you haven’t built a business.
It’s similar to employees who say they need to stay behind to catch up.
Who is performing better: the employee who walks out at five o’clock after completing all their tasks and hitting their target, or the employee who stays for another two hours?
Is the person working the most hours doing the best job, or is it the person who leaves at five?
There is somebody doing a better job there, and I’ll let you decide which one it is.
When we started Engage Web 17 years ago, I admittedly did a lot of work because starting a business is difficult.
I started at seven or eight in the morning, worked until eight at night and worked Sundays.
But as you grow and scale a business—and scale is the important word—you bring in the right people to do the right jobs.
You don’t bring people in and then continue doing what they are doing. You work on other things that help bring more business in.
You employ people who are better than you at certain jobs, quicker than you or less expensive than you.
There is no point in bringing people in if you continue doing the same work. You’re then all busy together, but nobody is really growing.
We scaled the business.
When people now ask me what I do, I tell them, and they think I’m joking: nothing. I do absolutely nothing. I do no work whatsoever. I do diddly-squat.
I recently gave a statistic at my networking group. Over the last three years, we have built around 125 or 130 websites.
I built none of them. I don’t even know that half of them have been created.
That is how it should be.
Scaling a business is about putting the right people in the right positions to do the right things, so you can concentrate on the things you want to do, are good at and that will help you grow and become a better version of yourself.
Gary: That makes me think about empowerment and engagement.
How much more engaged and empowered do those individuals feel because you aren’t constantly saying, “I’ll do that”?
They get a genuine opportunity to do the work.
I run a lot of training and workshops, and I also discuss this on stage at conferences.
There are people in your business who, as you said, are better at certain things than you.
I use a very simple decision matrix with two questions: should this task be on their job description, and can they do it?
If they can do it and it should be on their job description, why aren’t they doing it? Why are you still doing it?
If it should be on their job description and they can probably do it, your job as a leader is to make sure they become capable of doing that work.
That applies whether you own the business, lead a team or sit at board level.
Your role might not be to manage them directly. It could be to provide direction, coach them, work through questions they haven’t considered and challenge their thinking.
Your job is to steer the business and mentor or coach those individuals until they can independently carry out the work that should be in their job descriptions.
It is a surefire route to success.
Darren: You just used the golden word: engagement.
Our company is Engage Web, and this is The Engaging Marketeer podcast. Engagement is what it’s all about.
Empowerment is critical too.
You need to empower people to make decisions and take ownership.
If people believe you will micromanage them and tell them they have done everything wrong, they won’t make decisions. They’ll wait for you to do it for them.
Let them make decisions. Let them take ownership and do the work.
I’m always wary of micromanagers who say, “I can’t let my staff do that. I have to be there, and I have to make that decision.”
I own some rental properties and, many years ago, I had a letting agent managing them.
He had two or three members of staff, but he wouldn’t allow any of them to make payments to landlords. He was the only person who could do it.
If he wasn’t there, payments weren’t made, which meant I didn’t get paid on several occasions.
I would chase the payment, call the office and speak to one of the women there. She would explain that he wasn’t in, so they couldn’t make the payment because he refused to empower or trust anyone else to do it.
That isn’t how you grow a business. It isn’t how you retain customers either, because I eventually left.
It infuriates me when people run businesses like that. They micromanage staff, refuse to let them do the things they’re good at and insist on doing everything themselves.
Gary: A good friend of mine, Serena, talks about leaders who abdicate responsibility.
That isn’t what you are asking that business owner to do.
You are asking them to retain accountability while working with somebody else who can take responsibility for carrying out the task.
There are so many systems available now, particularly around finance. You can set limits, or allow someone to complete all but one small part of a process.
It fascinates me when I speak with leaders and business owners who take on so many duties and are scared to give them away.
I worked with somebody this week who owns several shops.
She said, “Maybe I need to stop doing all the stock ordering. Maybe I need to get somebody else to do it.”
The issue was that she had spent about £3,500 more than usual, against a normal stock spend of approximately £10,000.
It created a valuable learning opportunity.
Why was more money spent that month, and could she build a simple policy around it?
I’m not talking about a 20-page policy. It could contain 20 words.
It might say that, if the amount exceeds a certain figure, the employee needs authorisation. If it doesn’t, they can place the order.
If you’re simply replacing the stock you order every month because it has sold out, order it.
If you are spending £3,500 more, I would probably like to know why and have some oversight.
That is a perfectly good first stage. In time, you can overcome that as well.
Founders are particularly prone to holding on emotionally to their babies and refusing to let go.
I’ve been there.
For context, in 2017 my previous business was turning over just over £1 million—around £1.2 million.
We were growing by around 235 to 250% year on year.
Anybody you speak to will tell you that growing by 20 or 30% year on year can be dangerous. We were growing by a crazy amount.
I reached a point where I struggled to get out of bed or walk around the supermarket. My energy levels were completely depleted.
Even though I had a co-director, I felt I had to look after and do everything.
It became a real wake-up call when I sat down with my doctor and said, “I don’t feel well.”
Following my diagnosis and conversations with the doctor, I quickly realised that I needed to stop doing what I was doing and give the work to the very capable team around me.
The difference was massive.
Our turnover dropped year on year from around £1.2 million to £800,000, but we made more profit because the team and I were doing things in a better, smarter way.
It demonstrates that you cannot do everything yourself because you will burn out.
Darren: It’s strange when you see business owners, managers and even employees trying to retain control of tasks because they’re worried somebody might replace them or take their job.
They’re afraid they’ll lose their value to the business.
They take pride in the fact that, when they’re away, everything falls apart.
They come back after a week and say, “I can see the business has gone to pot while I’ve been away. You clearly need me,” as though that’s a good thing.
It isn’t.
If you are a manager or business owner, you go away and things go wrong, that is on you. It is your fault because you haven’t made sure the people in the business can manage without you.
We have created a skills matrix in our business.
Every task that people perform within their roles is listed. We make sure different members of staff are cross-trained in different skills.
There should never be only one person who knows how to do something.
If somebody is going to be away, we make sure somebody else has been trained so the work is covered.
I’ve mentioned this before on a podcast, and the person I was speaking to found it revolutionary because they had never heard of it.
I assume you have come across this yourself.
Gary: Massively.
I used to have an employee called Matt. He won’t mind me mentioning him.
He was effectively our office manager and did everything. He was the glue holding everything together.
Darren: That sounds like our Alan.
Gary: Matt was brilliant.
He entered the business as an apprentice and saw everything as it grew, including all the problems we encountered along the way.
I remember sitting down with him one day and listing several things that had gone wrong.
He said, “Normally I do that, but I was away that day, so it didn’t get fixed.”
A few employees were making mistakes, and Matt was silently going in and fixing them.
They didn’t know they had made the mistakes, and we didn’t know he had corrected them.
There are many stealth employees who, with good intentions, quietly make everything come together and put other people in a good light.
It isn’t bad for somebody to say, “I’m struggling with this.”
Historically, if you told an employee, “Darren, you aren’t very good at sending those confirmation emails to clients,” they might assume they would be sacked or disciplined.
I see it as an opportunity.
We have found an area where they need to improve. What can we do about it?
These days, AI might be able to help with something like that. But what systems or training can we put in place to ensure the process doesn’t go wrong?
Our business was a people consultancy, and one part of it was a pay-and-reward team.
They processed payroll for around 100 companies. The largest had 1,200 employees.
Another client had only 20 employees but a higher total payroll value than the company with 1,200 employees because of the salaries involved.
Process was incredibly important.
The issue I described with Matt wasn’t payroll-related, but if it had been, and Matt had stepped in to save the day, it could have prevented an employee being massively overpaid or an employer facing a serious problem.
It might have cost the client or our business thousands of pounds.
Recognising and addressing those gaps is incredibly important.
Darren: Employees make mistakes. I’ve made mistakes.
Your first instinct when you make a mistake is often to cover your tracks.
You think, “I can’t possibly let anyone find out because I could be fired, disciplined or get into trouble.”
You try to hide it.
When somebody eventually discovers what happened, it has become a much larger problem than it would have been if you had admitted it immediately.
Everybody makes mistakes. It is how you deal with them that differentiates you.
You make mistakes with clients and employees. Employees make mistakes with owners.
What you do next makes the difference.
If a company makes a billing error or your broadband is cut off for three hours, the important thing is how they handle it.
If they wash their hands of it and pretend it wasn’t their fault, that’s bad.
If they say, “Yes, we did that. Here’s a £30 credit on your account,” that’s fantastic.
A lot of people don’t understand that.
Gary: A friend sent me a podcast episode a few months ago that really spoke to me.
It was in a different context, but it connects with what you’ve said.
Showing up is great. Being there and doing something matters.
But trying, making an effort and going out of your way to show somebody you care can be worth even more.
The speaker was a leading psychologist. He said that walking through the door every day is great, but hearing about everything somebody did to try to get through the door, even if they didn’t manage it, can mean far more.
Our behaviours, values and how closely our actions align with those values make a huge difference.
I made a mistake this morning, and that’s fine.
The number of mistakes I’ve made in business is helpful from a mentoring perspective because I can help other people avoid them.
I’ve made mistakes that have lost me a lot of money, but I’ve also made mistakes that have made me a lot of money.
I’ve contacted the wrong person, had a great conversation and heard them say, “That sounds as though it could work really well for us. Can you come in and have a conversation?”
Mistakes have good and bad sides.
Own your mistakes and deal with them. We are human.
I often say, without wanting to invalidate anything anybody is experiencing, that we are normal people going through normal things.
When we are trying to be the best of the best, it is okay to say that we are struggling, have made a mistake or should not have walked through the door that day.
It is okay to admit that you are struggling as a leader.
If you model the behaviour of somebody who is invincible, like a computer to whom nothing ever happens—although things do go wrong with computers—how can an employee look at you and say, “I’ve made a mistake,” or, “Something is going wrong and I need your support”?
There is a phrase I share with everybody: there is always a reason and never an excuse.
I don’t want people to excuse me. If I’ve made a mistake, I will own and deal with it.
But I want people to show compassion. I want them to understand why it happened and work with me.
I want them to understand what I’m going through.
If you can do that with your employees, and employees can do it with their leaders, how beautiful and productive is that?
How successful can that business become when people work on that basis?
Darren: I love that. It’s a great phrase.
The moral is to own your mistakes because everybody makes them. It is how you deal with them that matters.
When I was an employee, I had a boss who made a lot of mistakes because he regularly jumped to conclusions.
On one occasion, he burst into the office and tore a strip off somebody, shouting and screaming at them.
He was completely wrong and had got the wrong end of the stick.
He realised afterwards, but he took the person outside and apologised privately after shouting at them in front of the entire office.
Gary: That needed a public apology.
Darren: Exactly. A public apology was needed.
Gary: It’s interesting.
Many leaders still believe it is acceptable to walk into a business and argue with or shout at somebody in front of everyone.
Whether they are right or wrong, displaying that behaviour is hugely disengaging.
A lot of my work is influenced by something I experienced personally.
I developed facial palsy when I was 18, and it was only during the last five years that I began talking about it.
I spent 20 years not talking about it and wearing a mask.
The message is about the damage caused by pretending to be somebody else.
Many leaders believe they need to wear the mask of strength.
They think, “If I don’t admit something has gone wrong or that I’ve made a mistake, I’m strong.”
That is what some people understand strength to mean.
But people within businesses are beginning to realise that:
Showing vulnerability and their human side is a strength.
I don’t mean vulnerability in the sense of inviting somebody to take advantage of you. I mean showing that we are human, that we make mistakes and need to show compassion towards one another.
That is such an engaging quality and an enormous strength in a leader.
You might walk into the office and say, “Bear with me today. I’ve had some bad news,” or, “I’ve had a massive argument with my other half, so the decisions I make might take a little longer this week.”
Again, there is always a reason and never an excuse.
We want leaders to show their genuine, vulnerable side.
Then, when employees are struggling, those leaders can offer them the compassion they need.
Those models of behaviour work both ways.
Darren: A phrase has come into my head twice while you’ve been talking.
It’s a stupid phrase from a film, and I can’t even remember which film.
Somebody explained what you have just said by saying, “Everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time.”
Gary: I love it. I’ll have to Google that.
Darren: It wasn’t SpongeBob SquarePants or anything like that.
It was much older, and I remember somebody responding to it.
It might have been something like A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, although it could have been the original Wall Street. It sounds like something Michael Douglas would say.
Anyway, let’s move on from pants.
You’ve mentioned public speaking.
You’re a member of the Professional Speaking Association. What has that done for your business?
Gary: I’m also regional president this year.
Darren: Congratulations.
Gary: Thank you, although it has happened in difficult circumstances.
I was only meant to be vice president this year, but our regional president sadly became unwell and passed away very quickly, within a matter of hours.
I’m trying to find a way to celebrate the position, but it is difficult to balance.
Having spoken to his wife, she told me how important the Professional Speaking Association was to him.
It is a huge honour to champion and talk about professional speakers today.
So I am celebrating, although in unusual circumstances, becoming regional president for the East Midlands.
At the time of recording, there are 14 regions across the UK and Ireland.
The association has been a major part of my life for the past two years and has been incredibly helpful.
I have learned from a lot of mistakes.
I’ve entered speaking competitions where I felt I failed miserably, although I probably did reasonably well.
Darren: You are often your own worst critic.
Gary: Absolutely, especially when you ask for feedback.
We have peer groups and member showcases where we ask for feedback from the room.
At one showcase, I spent the entire time standing in front of the projector.
It was such a stupid thing.
I had been doing a lot of training with a professional speaking coach, focusing on how I moved around the room.
I was so concentrated on using the room correctly that I forgot about the huge screen behind me and blocked everybody’s view.
Apart from that, everybody loved the talk and it went well.
The PSA has been a huge part of my life.
In my first year, I secured a major speaking engagement with a large UK regulator.
It has been great to move between different clients and find different ways of being involved in the world.
I’ve spoken to people in the United States and met the president of the Maldives Professional Speakers Association.
Darren: That is a useful connection if you want to visit the Maldives on a tax-deductible trip because it’s a business expense.
Gary: Absolutely.
My longer-term aim is to become the PSA president across the UK and Ireland.
I was initially asked to become regional vice president last year, but I said no.
We all experience self-limiting beliefs. I had already been a leader, and I wondered whether I wanted to do it again.
After attending several events, including our national conference, I called Mal, who had asked me to be vice president.
I said, “I’ve changed my mind. I completely understand if you no longer want me as your vice president, but I would love to do it. I’d love to become regional president and, within the next five to ten years, I’d love to become national president.”
He replied, “Okay, Gary. That’s quite a change of mind.”
My longer-term aim is to become PSA-wide president across the UK and Ireland within the next five to ten years.
This is a great step in the right direction.
The association has opened so many doors, to use that cliché. The relationships, support and people around me have been amazing.
Darren: You said you did a major talk for a client you didn’t want to name.
Was it a paid talk or a free talk, and did you get any business from it?
Gary: It was a very lucrative paid talk.
Darren: I saw your eyes light up when you said “very lucrative”.
Gary: Absolutely.
I think I had been a member of the Professional Speaking Association for only six months.
For context, my previous business started in 2009, and I was still a non-executive director at that point.
As a business leader, I had spoken at many Chamber of Commerce events and was used to speaking in front of audiences.
But it is very different when you become a professional speaker and begin looking at it in an entirely different light.
I’m even more critical of myself now because I know what I should be doing and recognise the things I didn’t do ten or fifteen years ago.
The event was a leadership conference.
I spoke about my mental-health journey in 2017, including my severe depression, and contrasted it with the apparent success of my business.
I wanted people to see both sides and understand why we need to prioritise our mental health and wellbeing.
It was amazing.
They fed me, and I had three different desserts because I’m vegan. They said, “We don’t know what you like, so we made you this, this and this.”
Two of them were chocolate, so I was happy.
There was an Oreo brownie cheesecake-type dessert.
They fed me, I delivered the talk, went home and sent my invoice.
It was a great conference.
As a professional speaker, I am generally paid somewhere between £3,000 and £10,000.
There are events I do for free.
I’m an official campaigner for Changing Faces, a UK visible-difference charity supporting people with scars, burns, facial palsy and many other conditions.
I also work with Facial Palsy UK.
I speak publicly, deliver webinars and do a lot of camera work for those two charities.
I have a campaign coming out for Face Equality Week, and we completed the filming in London a few weeks ago.
There are other occasions when I might accept a token amount.
For anybody wanting to enter professional speaking, it is okay to speak for free or for £100. That is absolutely fine.
For professional commercial work, I will generally say no unless the fee is between £3,000 and £10,000.
However, fill a room with 100 HR managers who may want to buy wellbeing workshops or mentoring for their leaders, and I might not charge anything. I may ask only for expenses or a small fee.
It is whatever I want to make of the opportunity.
Darren: It sounds as though you are in a very good position, which is good considering your business focuses on wellbeing.
You appear to be living a really good and happy life right now.
Gary: Thank you.
I want to say yes and celebrate that, because I absolutely am.
I was going to say I’m in a privileged position, but I have also worked incredibly hard to get here.
That is important because self-doubt and issues around self-worth can make us overlook what we have achieved.
I have worked incredibly hard, from starting a business during a recession to where I am now.
But like anybody, I still experience moments of doubt.
I still come off stage and think, “What on earth was that, Gary? You did an awful job.”
Then people come up to me and say it was great.
Other people might say, “That was really good, although I would have loved it if you had done X, Y and Z.”
That feedback is absolutely fine—although perhaps not at that exact moment. Maybe give me an hour.
Darren: Let you cool down first.
Gary: Yes. Let the adrenaline go before telling me.
There are still ups and downs.
I have a sick relative. My grandad is unwell at the moment. Things happen in our lives, and it is fine to admit that we are struggling.
I’ve had a rocky couple of weeks, with some anxiety and self-doubt.
But looking at the positives, I’m in a very good position. I’m being paid to do something I enjoy.
How great is that?
I’m also switching off at the right times and doing things outside the work I’m passionate about.
My mission is my life’s work, but I can also get on a horse, go riding, go camping and do fun things that have nothing to do with that mission.
I have a really lovely balance in my life.
Darren: That sounds like a beautiful place to finish because we are out of time, although I could talk to you for longer.
As a final point, anyone listening who loves what you have said and wants to find out more—whether about the PSA or hiring you to speak at an event—what is the best way to contact you?
Gary: Anywhere you can find me on social media—YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn or elsewhere—I’m Gary Parsons UK.
That’s Gary with one R, and Parsons: P-A-R-S-O-N-S.
You can also visit my website, which conveniently has the correct address: garyparsons.uk.
Please feel free to send me a message. I’m more than happy to exchange messages and have conversations.
The world can sometimes feel very closed.
If something is happening in your life right now, please reach out.
If I’m the only person you ever reach out to, we can have a valuable conversation that could make a difference to your life and your organisation.
Darren: Fantastic, Gary. Thank you very much.
I’ll put the links to your website and social media below the podcast.
If you’re watching on YouTube, they’ll be in the description. If you’re listening on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon or somewhere else, they’ll be in the show notes.
Thank you very much for being a guest on The Engaging Marketeer.
Gary: Thank you. Thanks very much.
About your guest:
Gary Parsons is the founder of The Selfish Thinking Company and a professional speaker, mentor and trainer specialising in leadership, mental health and workplace wellbeing. Drawing on his experience of rapidly scaling a people consultancy while experiencing severe depression and burnout, Gary helps leaders establish healthier boundaries, empower their teams and build sustainable organisations. He is also involved with the Professional Speaking Association and campaigns on behalf of people with visible differences through Changing Faces and Facial Palsy UK. You can connect with Gary here:
Website: https://garyparsons.uk/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garyparsonsuk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GaryParsonsUK/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garyparsonsuk/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@garyparsonsuk
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
