How I've become a daily 1 minute habit for people in 20 countries around the world

As part of reflecting on 2025 being the 20th anniversary of my business, I started to wonder what else was similarly 'birthed' in the same year.

It transpires that YouTube and I both share the same anniversary!

So unless you've been auto-playing the contents of my channel there, I wanted to take this opportunity to do a mini-audit of how my life on YouTube has played out over our lives together so far.

What I've found is that since launching my channel, and generating content for it, most people who find me there do so through my shorts (the videos, not the apparel) or from a direct link from someone else's website.

They've come from over 20 different countries, and over the lifetime of my channel have watched an average of at least 1 minute of my content every single day of every single year.

That doesn't seem too shabby?

The specifics (if you want to get grainy about it) = 

Firsts

1) The first video I uploaded was in 2010, being interviewed for a national project about empowering adults experiencing mental ill health to create their own social enterprises:

https://youtu.be/8AduAsnWMjE 

2) The first content I purposefully created wasn't until February 2020, and was about why should never trust your business adviser (which includes me!):

https://youtu.be/ZpPYqBlt1Ek

3) and my first short was in November of the same year (2020), celebrating the special relationship that social enterprises share with toilets (the first, but not last, time I sat on the porcelain throne to record content!):

https://youtube.com/shorts/EFLDDvLwOrU?feature=share

Biggies

1) My most viewed short on YouTube was about how I'd made a low-tech Meeting Owl Pro:

https://youtube.com/shorts/flf0GExdbsc?feature=share

2) My most viewed video was a rallying cry to stop people using the word 'pivot' during a pandemic: 

https://youtu.be/4G-iHsWIszQ

Guesting

1) The first video I appeared in anywhere on YouTube that someone else had created and uploaded (to my knowledge) was in May 2013 - effusing about the Responsible Business Standard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBx1qWHWt_U

2) The most viewed video of someone else's that I guested in, was recorded in Sept 2023, about redefining the concept of social entrepreneurship with Anne Scottlin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxm8p7w59uQ

Playlists

I curate several playlists in my channel, the most popular of which is my collection of shorts and being interviewed by other people on their podcasts on the topic of imposter syndrome:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbjwTqLUXg99vP8ZLwQhn_vPYY1xlF0ON

So, if you're a Youtuber too, how does your content and audience compare?

all social impact is built on sh!t

Each year I openly publish an impact report on myself.

And as this is my 20th year in business, it's gotten me thinking not just about the legacies of the impacts we create, but also what the foundations for these changes we're making are.

As some will know, I decided to mark the official anniversary of my business not with fanfare, speeches, or grand gestures like sending everyone cake, but a simple flush of my office toilet - to mark it being twinned with a school latrine block in Uganda. In doing so, I'm trying to help recognise the dignity of that generation, and help them to remain in education. And through this, my hope is that they'll be subsequently able to create more impact for their families and communities that they would otherwise, if they weren't able to remain in school for reasons of hygiene and sanitation.

So essentially, I'm creating impact by starting with sh!t.

Which has made me wonder - just as there's Maslow's hierarchy of needs (i.e. you can't sustainably progress to building esteem until you feel safe, both physically and emotionally), is there a comparable hierarchy of impact that we can/should create?

Lots of initiatives to help transform lives and communities seem to be designed in the assumption that the people they're designed for will be able to relatively easily engage with them (the biggest barriers usually identified being child-care, and transport) - but what if we more explicitly mapped out how people can engage and move through the stages of creating impact?

In the UK there are actually very few legal rights and protections for people to have access to a toilet, unless it's in their own home or direct place work - so when we're trying to create impact for communities, how far how we considered their needs to 'take a dump', and how far that may be stopping them from being able to become part of something that will make things better in the future? 

p.s. - you can get the latest full impact report here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dybBV3fIqIPz9k14hs3YxBOIFZ_EKspT/view?usp=sharing

after 20 years, it's time to go to the toilet

My business is 20 years old.

20 years! Only about 10% of enterprises that start-up get this far. 

To put this in perspective - when I started out, smartphones didn't exist! (it would be another year before the first tweet was posted; 2 years before the first iPhone was released on the world; and 3 years before Dropbox was launched. The typical best internet speed was 1Mb compared to around 900Mb today - we had to rely on using sharpened bones to scratch messages onto stones, and then hope people picked those stones up when we threw them at them).

Now, it turns out that the material associated with this particular anniversary is porcelain - something that most of us here in Britain associated with toilets.

But for me to have gotten this far, porcelain actually seems an apt simile for me:

• it has a high elasticity - to be able to keep up with all the changes in the world over the last 2 decades, the range of work I do, and types of organisations I support across all sectors, means I've had to be able to easily keep stretching myself.
• it has considerable strength and hardness - I've pushed hard on some things over the years, often to personal and professional criticism and opposition. This includes: (successfully) challenging CIC legislation; publishing a book that exposes most of the claims that people make about 'imposter syndrome' to be unproven and/or not based in any factual evidences; shining a brighter light on the 500,000+ unpaid carers who are discriminated against by all the bodies that are supposed to be supporting them because they're the only type of carer who aren't recognised in law for the sole reason that we're also self-employed; and calling out the apparent unprofessional practices of some social investors, which are damaging the wider sector; to name but a few.  
• it's translucent - I've openly published details of how I'm creating (or not) impacts of different types each year; and also been honest in my blog posts about when and where I've gotten things wrong.  
• and it has a high resistance to shock - if you've followed my blog over the years, you'll know that since becoming self-employed, my family has been made homeless twice; my father (who lives at the other end of the country) has almost died twice; I've navigated a difficult divorce; been investigated for tax fraud by HMRC three times (and cleared every time); had 'unannounced police visits' late at night; and so on. So much so, that the few people who know just how much 'shock' I've had to respond to and work through over these last 2 decades, are all amazed that I'm not only still in business, but not needed to be admitted anywhere...

So I'm actually pretty chuffed to be associated with porcelain.

But I also didn't want to miss the opportunity to try and mark this milestone - so, linking back to the toilet analogy, I've decided to twin my office toilet with a school in Uganda via https://toilettwinning.org/

25% of all human beings today don't have somewhere safe, clean, and hygienic to go to the toilet. Not only does this create all sorts of associated 'bio-hazards', it strips fellow people of their dignity. And if schools don't have toilets, then kids will find ways not to go there for those reasons, and as a result, lose the chance for education and so lose the future that they could/should have had, including the opportunity to break generational poverty.

So the next time you're paying a visit to the loo this year, please think of me and what you might be able to do to similarly 'be more porcelain'; and maybe if you might also be able find a similar excuse to twin your toilet with someone else's. 

sitting in the bath; jaffa cakes; and b0llock sticks - what it takes to get on my (not so) secret Santa list this year

Last month I committed to being a (not so) secret Santa for some of you out there.

The good news is that I've now dispatched 4 lots of surprise random gifts - the bad news is that I'm a little concerned as to what some of you are now expecting of me...

To recap - the criteria for getting onto my 'nice' list, and have something come through the post to you, was that you interact in some way with any of my activity across social media between then and the last week before Christmas.

And to date, the replies and comments that have meant their contributors have had early festive gifts have been:

- someone revealing my secret ability to eat a whole packet of jaffa cakes within seconds;

- people wanting to see me do youtube clips while in the bath (I already do some whilst sat on the toilet);

- celebrating the historical roots of caffeine fuelled networking (aka theRSA); 

- and sharing images of their seasonal b0llock stick tree. 

Thankfully it also seems that what I'm able to send out is being well received - and there's still time for you to share in my festive efforts: my last 'draw' will be on Friday the 18th December, so go start scrolling through my posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, YouTube, Medium, this blog, and anywhere else I may be loitering with seasonal intent... 

zoom-ing from our beds

At the start of lock-down, I started do video calls from the toilet, then in my dressing gown, and now from under the duvet - for many people forced to work from home, the space to create a home office anywhere other than their bedroom may be a luxury they don't enjoy; and whilst doing zoom calls from our beds can be helpful, there's also a hidden risk in doing it that no-one seems to be talking about... 

can we please stop using the word 'pivot'?

when is social enterprise like a toilet?

...when Social Enterprise Day (19 Nov 2009) is the same day as World Toilet Day

How could no-one have spotted this before?

(insert your own punchlines...)