--- title: "Empowering Through Routine" episode: 177 date: 2025-10-02 guest: "Ed Johnson" canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/177-empowering-through-routine audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-177/audio.mp3 --- # Empowering Through Routine Joanne Lockwood is joined by tech entrepreneur Ed Johnson to explore how routine and structure can empower people at work and beyond. Drawing on his experience building a mentoring platform and launching a new social network focused on habits and goals, Ed unpacks why clear expectations and practical accountability help individuals and teams thrive. They discuss what it takes to scale a software business without losing the human touch, including setting boundaries, managing client expectations, and building remote-first ways of working rooted in trust, honesty, and flexibility. The conversation also looks at mentoring relationships, the value of candid feedback, and how managers can balance autonomy with the clarity some people need to do their best work. Joanne and Ed consider how AI is reshaping work and content creation, and where it can support productivity without replacing human connection. They close by reflecting on shifting demographics, the growth of solopreneurship, and why building sustainable routines matters as work and careers continue to evolve. ## Chapters - 00:00 — Introduction and Welcome - 04:22 — Guidance from a Trusted Mentor - 08:05 — Customisable Software Challenges with Growth - 11:24 — Creating Fulfilling Workplace Cultures - 14:33 — Effective Team Management Enables Scalability - 18:28 — Need for Structure in Work Accountability - 20:13 — Understanding Work Expectations - 25:35 — Embracing Busyness in Entrepreneurship - 28:45 — Navigating Social Media Challenges - 31:47 — Rediscovering Authenticity Post-Corporate Life - 34:32 — Human Touch Over AI Interaction - 39:00 — Social Accountability Through Digital Routines - 40:22 — Data-Driven Weight Loss Success - 44:59 — Balancing Work and Growth Challenges - 49:13 — Ageing Workforce: A New Reality - 51:01 — Living My Best, Creative Life - 53:52 — Inclusive Conversations with Joanne Lockwood ## Key takeaways - The pivotal role that authentic, constructive mentorship plays in personal and professional development. - How clarity of expectations and transparent accountability are fundamental for building trust and belonging in teams. - Strategies for maintaining an inclusive, purpose-driven culture when scaling a business or adapting to remote, virtual work environments. - The importance of designing processes that empower self-leadership while recognising individuals’ varying needs for structure and autonomy. - Approaches to blending technology and humanity, especially the merits and limitations of AI in creating personal connection and organisational alignment. - The psychological benefits and practical outcomes of publicly sharing goals to foster accountability, whether for wellbeing, learning, or workplace success. - Insights into preparing for a future where ageing demographics, flexible work, and digital innovation will reshape both career trajectories and inclusive practice. ## FAQs ### What is the main theme of this episode? The episode centres on the power of routine, structure, and accountability—both personal and professional—as tools for empowerment, inclusion, and cultural transformation within organisations. Guest Ed Johnson discusses his journey as a tech entrepreneur, the foundation and scaling of mentoring technology, and the launch of his new venture, URoutine. --- ### Who is Ed Johnson and what are his key achievements? Ed Johnson is a tech entrepreneur and CEO/co-founder of URoutine. He previously co-founded PushFar, a widely adopted corporate mentoring platform. His focus is on building systems that help individuals thrive through purpose-driven structure, inclusive design, and meaningful accountability. --- ### How do routine and structure relate to inclusion? Routine and structure provide clarity, reduce ambiguity, and foster environments where individuals understand what is expected of them—key factors for building psychological safety and a sense of belonging. The episode highlights that when employees have clear routines and accountability mechanisms, they are empowered to perform, innovate, and feel included. --- ### Why is accountability important in professional development? Accountability turns intention into action. As discussed, having someone to answer to—be it a mentor, peer, or digital platform—increases the likelihood of achieving personal and professional goals. Accountability also nurtures self-motivation, helps overcome inertia, and refines focus. --- ### What makes an effective mentor-mentee relationship? According to Ed Johnson, honesty, trust, and the willingness to give and receive candid feedback are vital. A mentor should hold up a mirror, balance objectivity with support, and help their mentee face realities, not simply offer reassurance or ego-boosts. --- ### How can small teams create and maintain a strong organisational culture? Culture in small teams is often defined by the founders’ values and leadership style. Ed Johnson emphasises the deliberate creation of honesty, flexibility, and mutual respect as foundational elements. These practices set the tone for scalable, positive workplaces where people look back with pride on their tenure. --- ## Transcript Joanne Lockwood: Foreign. Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world? Remember, everyone not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo and share stories that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show. So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites. And this is episode 177 with the title Empowering Through Routine. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Ed Johnson. Ed is a tech entrepreneur and the CEO and co founder of URoutine, driven by a passion for empowering people through structure, goals and inclusive design. When I asked Ed to describe his superpower, he said it is being fueled by purpose. He builds systems that help people thrive to self motivation and meaningful accountability. Hello, Ed, welcome to the show. Ed Johnson: Thank you very much. Wonderful to be here. Excited about our conversation? Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And we were just chatting away in the green room before we pushed the record button. We first met, we reckon about 2018 sometime IBM South bank and it was an EDI DEI recruiter type conference, if I remember rightly. And you were one of the keynote speakers on that day? I was. And I Ed Johnson: have to say I felt at that time I was very early on in my previous company and founding my previous company. I felt at the time like I had no idea what I was talking about and I was trying to perfect the elevator pitch and some days it was really eloquent and sounded professional and other days I'd hear myself saying it back and think even I don't know what I'm trying to do. Joanne Lockwood: Or sometimes it sounds so crass, doesn't it? Sometimes you lift back and go, oh, that's a bit cringy. And oh, did I really say that? Exactly, Ed Johnson: yeah. And I think that IBM day was probably one of those days where I was one of the keynote speakers and didn't really know what I was talking about. I sort of mumbled and rumbled through it. But I met some wonderful people, you included, so that was a great point. I will say you winged it well and you did create a Joanne Lockwood: lasting impression on me and your belief because the product you were involved with was Pushfile, which is a mentoring platform. And I'm a great believer in the people space around the power of mentoring, formally or informally. And Pushfire Platform was about trying to formalise, creating accountability within mentoring, wasn't it? Absolutely. Ed Johnson: The main objective was for us to help people to find and form mentoring relationships that worked and give that a bit of structure, give people the ability to track their progress with their mentor or mentee. Yeah, we seemed to have managed to achieve that when we went on that journey and started engaging with lots of people who were interested in mentoring, which was great to see. It Joanne Lockwood: became quite a big hit in corporates. I saw some of your client lists and it really did get traction and still is, I guess. Absolutely. It's continuing to grow. It's really Ed Johnson: a wonderful thing to see it continuing to thrive and incredibly proud that my co founder and I built this, you know. Yeah. Organisations really were engaging with and continue to engage with the power of mentoring. I think it's such an important part of one's professional development, access to a mentor, but also the opportunity to be a mentor. I think that's very empowering for individuals as well. So who was your mentor? Did you have many? I have had a number of mentors through the years. The one that I always cite is our chairman at the time, Martin Sherwood, and he was a wonderful mentor. Mentor to me. He would advise me on the things to do, but often things not to do in running startups. He's been involved in and on the board of a number of startups and he's fantastic at what he does, gives me really good advice and is also honest. I think that's really important too. So I can ask questions and he'll give me a really honest answer. I've seen and had interaction with some mentors who will just tell you what they think you want to hear and actually that doesn't really serve as very valuable. I'd rather hear the truth, even if it's, that was terrible or that was awful. I'd rather hear that than someone say, yeah, that was great, when it really wasn't. So, yeah, he was a very good, very good mentor to me. Yeah, I agree. I've Joanne Lockwood: mentored a few people and I'm sometimes thinking, sitting there when I'm talking to them and saying, I'm in danger of being very brutal here, and that's what you're there for, is to really hold the mirror up and say, look at yourself. You're saying this. Do you really believe that? Or you're just going through the motions and you need people to really cut through that BS that you're hiding behind and face up to those realities. But, yeah, as someone who's mentored others, I have found it quite personally challenged to balance that own objectivity with personal opinion. That's a real challenge as a mentor, isn't it? Completely. And I Ed Johnson: think the best way to overcome that fear is to be really transparent and honest with one another. When you're having the initial conversation about, will you be my mentor or mentee? But also then reminding one another at the start of every mentoring conversation and saying, look, I'll be completely honest with you. I'll tell you what I. What I think. And I'm doing that because I want to be helpful. And if at any point you'd rather I didn't, please just say can change. Change the conversation. But actually, if you're setting that as an expectation at the beginning, you'll find that 99% of the time, the individual being mentored will say, yes, I do want that. I want you to be honest with me. If I was looking simply for a bit of an ego boost or a pat on the back, I could go to my friends for that. And actually, a mentor is there when they're slightly removed, and they can give you that honest response. Joanne Lockwood: So, first of all, you mentioned you founded it with a co founder. So there you are, two people developing on this thing. You've got maybe a. Maybe a shadow board or an informal board to start with, or some business coaches, but you grew to a sizable employee base. I'm guessing 20s, 30s, 50s, over the course of months, maybe years. How did you find that challenge of growing from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32. You know, that exponential growth that you did. How did you find that challenge of growing? Actually, you Ed Johnson: say that we grew the team. Actually, the team stayed fairly small. What grew was the client base. And because it was software, it's scalable. And that had its own challenges where you have to become a bit more professional, not in the way that you do necessarily when you have employees, but. But you do it to a lesser or greater extent within the client base that's growing as well. I think the big challenges were things like process for us. And, okay, we were used to having conversations with maybe 10 clients, and we could talk to them all and invite them to lots of things and really understand their own unique position and situation and therefore adapt the technology and the software to those 10 clients. When you have 50 clients, that becomes more of a challenge. When you have 150, that becomes a real challenge. Because what we found was, whilst there were some core components to our software that everyone wanted, every organisation is unique. Every organisation has different mentoring programmes that have different requirements, and building software that can be customised to all of them becomes quite tricky and quite a challenge. And it's setting the expectations that this is out of the box software. There are loads of customizations and features within it that you can change, but there are always going to be some limitations. And those early on, clients who were used to saying to us, can your software do X, Y and Z? We would go back and say, not at the moment, but give us a couple of weeks and we'll develop that. It got to a point where we simply couldn't say that and we had to actively change those goalposts and say, well, look, we're with software as a service and we'll try and factor that into development. We have another client who is asking us for a feature that is completely opposite to what you've just asked us for. So that presented some interesting challenges along the way. So being able to say no, being able Joanne Lockwood: to manage expectations, otherwise you say yes to everybody and it becomes too stressful, I guess, completely. And I always wanted to say yes to everybody. I want to Ed Johnson: help people to get the best from their mentoring programmes and see those thriving. And it was a shift that we had to make in how we positioned ourselves. But we got to a point where we were good at doing that, but it took us the best part of two years probably, to make that shift and transition, but we were able to. You are a completely Joanne Lockwood: virtual business. So you didn't have big offices and people were working all over the world. Correct. We were totally virtual. We Ed Johnson: were virtual before COVID in fact. So my co founder is a chap called Gabriel, he is based in Romania. So we were definitely virtual and we were working remotely together. And then when the pandemic hit and lockdowns were enforced, it was then a case of doing what we'd always been doing. There was not really any change for us. The only change was that actually organisations were suddenly saying, okay, we need our employees to still be learning, let's give them virtual mentoring. So actually we saw an uptick in demand as the pandemic struck and I think that remote working that we'd always been doing put us in a really good position and also enabled us to be a global business very quickly as well. So we had clients all over the world and mentoring. It doesn't really change from one country. To another when we think Joanne Lockwood: about the culture of an organisation. Some of these, when we look at big corporate, global companies, they're so massive, it's really hard to create a culture that seeps into every corner. But you were able to grow a culture from day zero. How conscious were you of the fact that you were effectively driving the culture based on your personality and your style? Did you ever consciously think about the culture of your organisation and what its internal values were? I Ed Johnson: absolutely did. The reason, one of the reasons why I did, aside from it being incredibly important and something that I think is so powerful and really does shape a business, is I remember one of my first jobs where the CEO of the company said, I know that you won't work in this company forever. He said this to everybody. He wasn't singling me out. He said to everybody, I know that you won't work in this company, company forever, or you're very unlikely to, but wherever you go in your career, the one objective I would have is for you to always look back on your time at that company, at our company, he said, and know that you enjoyed your time there and feel like it was the best company you'd ever worked for. And I always thought, what a cool thing to say and aspire to, you know, it's not about revenue, it's not about growth, it's about the one place where you really enjoyed working. And so I always wanted to build businesses where people felt like that when they were working with me and for the companies that I was co founding. And so that was very much in the forefront of my mind. And then you start to look at, well, how does one achieve that? And you think, well, what would I like from an employer? What would I like to know that I can talk to them about or that I can get from the company and that they will give back to me? And it really starts with honesty and trust. I think that has to be implicit from day one. And so I would always talk to new hires. There weren't a lot. We were a small team, which makes things obviously easier when it comes to culture. But it was that total honesty, total transparency, and it was saying, if you ever have any issues or challenges or you ever just want to talk about anything, please don't hesitate to do so. And also then instilling that flexibility early on. So if it was a sunny day and I knew that people were in London or in the UK and the weather was Great. I'd say, look, it's a Friday afternoon, if you finish your work, just log off. And it wasn't that we had a formal policy of a four day working week. It was actually, I understand what's going on and I remember a colleague who was really into football. I have to confess, I'm not, I'm not a huge football follower and fan. But England had got into the, this is going to show how little I understand football. They got into the quarter or semi finals of a big tournament, I can't remember which one. And I said, I said to this colleague, look, whatever the outcome, I know you're going out with friends tonight, don't worry about logging on tomorrow. Because I knew chances are I'd probably be having a few drinks and probably wouldn't feel very fresh in the morning whether England won or lost. So I said, look, just have the day off. And I think, you know, little things like that where actually as long as it doesn't affect work and doesn't affect the, you know, the experience that clients have or anything else and then you've got to obviously make those judgments, then actually you should be doing that. And he said that that really resonated with him and was something that he will always remember. So it's that building that sort of. Culture based on Joanne Lockwood: trust, does that scale easy for startup, easy for small team, but can IT scale to 50,000 employees globally? I think it can if Ed Johnson: you have the right managers of teams and that they have it instilled in them early on. I've always questioned whether it can scale but in questioning it I always come back to if you have the right team leaders who are aware of the team, who are aware of the challenges and the tasks and what's going on for the team, then I think it can scale. I think obviously you have to be mindful of if you've got a big project with a big deadline, then you can't say to people, well, you can take Friday afternoon off or I know that that's going on for you, but I think actually if those things happen then then when you've set the right culture in the first place, then actually the individuals who are in the team, the employees will think, well, I know I was given last Friday off or I, I, you know, was given time off and we've now got a deadline, I've got to work towards it and I'm, you know, more willing to work for longer hours on a Friday afternoon to hit a deadline. And I think when you've got that Mutual respect and mutual understanding from the employer to the employee and vice versa, then it can scale. The mantra I would probably use is the Joanne Lockwood: Ying as an entrepreneur is you work when you want, but the yang is you have to work when you don't want. So both are true. You can take the swings, you can take the roundabouts, but you have to balance it out. There are times where you're. I think actually I'm not feeling it today, or today's not going to be a good day. It's sunny, I need to clear my head, I need to get some creative thinking going and I just need to switch off and do something else. Other days you go, as you say, there's that deadline, the buck stopping with me. I've got no choice. It has to happen. No matter how sunny it is, no matter how rough I feel, it's got to happen today. So if you have that personal accountability and personal responsibility, then that can work, can't it? And I think what we don't always breed are artisan employees or artisan colleagues who have that creativity and that self management, if you like, self leadership, completely, definitely. And I think a good manager or a good leader will Ed Johnson: understand how everybody, how everybody in their team functions. They'll have that emotional intelligence to understand their team and how they, how they work and how they work best. And you know, I think I'd rather if someone wasn't producing very good work because they were exhausted or they just weren't feeling it that day, I'd be more inclined to say to them, look, take the afternoon off. You're not, you're not doing very good work because you're exhausted or because you're just not feeling it. And that's absolutely fine. We're all human. And hopefully in giving them the afternoon off or giving them an hour or two's additional lunch break, that they'll then come back feeling more motivated and therefore be far more productive. I think where some organisations get it wrong is they align productivity to the number of hours worked and they think the more hours you work, the more productive you are. And I just had never bought into that. I'd rather someone was really productive in three days. Yeah, we know the stories Joanne Lockwood: in the city where people would put the jacket on the back of their chair. So where's Frank? Oh, his jacket's here. He must be around somewhere. And they get lost in the system and really they're outside having a cigarette or gone to the pub or at Balls brothers having some champagne for the afternoon or something like that. And they sneak back in at half six in the evening when everyone has to gone home, pick their jacket up and go home. But that was kind of rife in the city. Maybe, maybe not recently, but maybe in the 90s and the noughties when I was up there. But yeah, we have to breed cultures where people are self accountable and trust is there. But we still find that many managers and leaders have been brought up the old way with lack of trust where they're micromanaged, they have to have to sit at their desk and that can't be the blocker that we're not really nurturing a new generation of leaders. We're just more of the same. Totally. And I think one of the other Ed Johnson: really interesting things is that there are some individuals not who like micromanagement per se, but who actually appreciate a bit of clarity around what accountability looks like. And I think there's a danger that organisations can go the opposite way and they can say, well this is the big picture, this is where we need to be in 12 months time, make sure it happens. And for some employees who've maybe just come out of college or university or school thinking, okay, what do you want me to do today? I don't, I don't have any clarity around what's going on. I'm not saying I want to be micromanaged but I would like a bit of structure and I'm working from home so I know I've got a call at 9am but well, I can roll out of bed at 5 to 9 and then I'll be on that call from 9 till 9:30 and then what? I'll check my emails and actually they probably want to be a bit more productive. They want to have that clarity but don't really know what they're doing or will think, okay, I've got five things to do, I don't really know how I'm going to do them. They haven't got the discipline at any age but may be particularly prevalent in people who've been used to the education system and the structure of a timetable and you know, bedtimes and that routine to go from that to then a 9 to 5 job where you kind of log on in the morning, you go right, I've got these tasks, how am I going to do them? You know what, what am I doing really is, is the opposite, which can be a danger as well. So I think there's that, it's really important that there's that self accountability but it's also important that an organisation presents Their employees, their team, with clarity around what accountability actually looks like. There's a. There's a book, I don't know Joanne Lockwood: if you've ever read it, it's called Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall. And they have this list of eight insightful questions to ask, how to measure belonging. And one of them, I can't remember if it's two or three, is at work. I know what's expected of me and what you just said there is I need to know how I win, how I lose and how I please you. If I don't understand that and you say, I can't work in a vacuum. I need parameters, I need goalposts, I need edges to my world to know where my interfaces are. So by having that expectation about when I'm doing great and when I'm not doing great, I can then manage within those frameworks and depending on the person, we can either shrink that down to a cage or we can create a safari park and people can wander more freely within their safari park because they know what the parameters are. So about trying to find the right size of guides, if you like, when you go bowling with the kids, you put the guides up there and stop the bowling ball go down the galley. It's just putting those little nudge points in there to say, right, okay, we're still trying to hit the first pin, get back in there completely. And Ed Johnson: there will be some people in an organisation and in their job who know already exactly what's expected of them and they know how to do it and when. And then there will be other people who will need a bit more. It's going to be very rarely going to be a one size fits all as well. So it's giving people the tools and the resources to be able to have that structure and support should they want or need it. And then there will be inevitably some individuals who say, do you know what? I'm good, I've already got this covered. I know exactly what I need to work with. You said earlier Joanne Lockwood: that one of the signs of a great organisation is that you will always think it is the best place you've ever worked. There's that tear in your eye and you reluctantly have to move on to develop your career and find something else. You've done that recently with pushfar. You had an exit plan, VC investors, or however you sort it out. Was it the best place you've ever worked? Ed Johnson: I think that's a really hard thing to say about a company that you are the founder of. I Suppose it definitely was in that it was seven years of my life and previously I'd only been at jobs for a year or two at a time before moving on. So it was probably the best and the worst, if that makes sense. And as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you all know this. You know, you have days where you think, oh, my gosh, this is really hard, I don't know what I'm doing, or it's all going wrong. And then you have days where you're on top of the world because you've just won a brand new contract with a multinational company and you suddenly think, wow, my software is going to be rolled out to tens of thousands of people. How cool is that? We're working with some incredible brands. The cherry on the cake is it's not just software, but it's software that makes a difference to people. And that's a really cool thing. I would say it was the best and the worst place that I've ever worked as a founder. And, yeah, I'm incredibly proud of what we've done and it was wonderful and I hope I can do that all over again. The day Joanne Lockwood: after they changed your password, took your email address off the system, took your security badge back, did you wake up the next morning going, I miss it? I woke up the next morning and set up Ed Johnson: a new email account for the, for the new business. So I sort of thought straight out of one and into another. But obviously when you set up a new business, you don't have many emails coming through. I'm still in the habit of checking my inbox every five minutes and going, oh, no new mail, there's nothing. And then I sort of think, that's because no one's heard of you. And that is a sort of, you know, cold shock to the system. You know, the cold reality and the cold light of day, it's a bit of a shock to the system where you think, right, I've actually got to build this brand now. I've got to get people to hear about it. So it wasn't, it wasn't that I missed it because I, I'm, I, I was ready, I think, to move on, but it was very much a case of ready to move on, but aware that I'm not very good at sitting around, doing not a lot and relaxing. So I was ready for the new challenge and the new chapter. And it was quite literally the next day that I started doing that with my, with my same co founder, Gabriel. We both exited at the same time and have gone on To a new adventure. Joanne Lockwood: I remember when I sold my IT company back in 2017. I woke up the next day and I felt a little bit lost for a while. Even though I was embarking on a new journey, a lot of who I was or am was tied up in an identity of technical director of IT company, business partners, staff, customers. I knew who I was. And as you were saying, the phone stopped ringing. People weren't talking to me, they were talking to the business. And I happened to be the business. Suddenly the world goes very, very quiet and you talk about this new employee. If there's too much vacuum of. Of what to do now, you sit there going, well, nothing's happening. What do I do? Do you gone from a position where you're. You're looking at a bank account going up and up and up and up and stuff happening. Bat bills, corporation tax, all the things you have to worry about as a business owner and suddenly you're sat there watching your bank account go down and there's no revenue coming in. In fact, it's worse than that because you're spending money on stuff completely. It's one of those things Ed Johnson: where I think the only solution for me has been to create a list of all the things that I know I need to do now for the new venture, for the new business, and not distract myself because I don't think it's necessarily that I need distraction because it felt like the right time to leave pushfar. But it's more a case of needing to stay busy because I'm not very good at not doing much. I get immense satisfaction at the end of the day when I reflect on the day from knowing I've done good work or created something or worked hard on something, even if it hasn't gone right, I'll think, well, at least I've spent 8 hours doing something as opposed to 8 hours reading a book and staring out of the window. So for me, it was a case of keeping busy. And it's something I really enjoy, I think, as an entrepreneur, creating new ventures, creating a new brand. That's the most exciting part. That was certainly the most exciting and in equal measure terrifying part of Push for. And I'm certainly finding that again with URoutine. So we shall see what happens. But I'm really enjoying it at the moment. I have two Joanne Lockwood: children and I remember when we had our second child thinking, we've done this before, we kind of know the game. And you bring the second child home and you think, blimey, that was three years ago. I forgot Blimey. They make a noise, you've got to feed them, they're suddenly dependent on you. And all this stuff that you think, I could have forgotten all about that. Has that happened again? So, you know, you've given birth to a new organisation. Ed Johnson: Absolutely. Is it. Did you have sort of Groundhog Day or was it a case Joanne Lockwood: of, oh, my God, I've forgotten all about this stuff? A bit of both, I Ed Johnson: think. There are certainly quite a lot of things that I've forgotten from the seven. You know, that seven years have passed since we started Pushbar. So there are definitely some things I've forgotten. And there are also quite a lot of things that have changed in the tech landscape. You know, AI wasn't really something that anyone knew about or knew much about seven years ago. And now we've got AI tools and software at, you know, the push of a button that are very easily accessible. So there are certainly things I've forgotten. There are certainly things that I remembered which is good. I've remembered some of them and been able to do them and adapt and adopt them quickly. And there are some things that have changed since last time. So it's a combination of the three, I would say. But interestingly, the ones that I've forgotten are probably not, unsurprisingly, the more mundane tasks. The things like, oh, remind me of, about articles of association and company memorandum, or I was dealing with HMRC when we were getting our first investment round in what on earth was I supposed to send them? And kind of reminding yourself of the more mundane things that, that are, you know, important and take quite a lot of time. Yeah, those are the things that I forgot quite quickly. Joanne Lockwood: And yeah, you, whilst you can duplicate the processes, you know, copy and paste what you had before, you don't necessarily have the people around you either the process, you know, you say, I've got an idea, fire off an email and someone makes that idea happen. Or you got, you know, suddenly you go, but everything stops with me if I don't. You know, if not me, then hope there's nobody else completely. The perfect example. Ed Johnson: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the perfect example I would give of that is social media. Jesse, who is our content marketing manager and did an amazing job at Push Far and continues to do an amazing job at Push Far, was in charge of everything social. So all of our social media content on Pushfar and there was a lot of it. There were a number of channels, we had a number of our clients following us and now I'm going, okay, we've got Social channels that URoutine because we need to get the brand out there. What are we going to post on there? Okay, we need to create some articles and when I say we, it is just me. So I'm stumbling around on Canva going, is this how you create a social post? Or we should probably be on TikTok or what do we need to post on there? And what are the ad formats? And so, yeah, it's all the things that I now need to know how to do that. When I was at Pushfar, pick up the phone to Jessie and she would do an incredible job of just. Learning again, I find some of Joanne Lockwood: that really fun because it allows you to slice your day up into different bits. And I can have a social day or I can have a newsletter day, I can have a content creation day and I can have a business day. Quotes and conversations and networking and it makes every day different, doesn't it? I think as an entrepreneur, as a single solopreneur myself, I can pick and choose what I want to do, but I come back to that. I work what I want and I also work what I don't want. The times I actually think, okay, I can't do the fun stuff today. I've got to put down Canva for five minutes and actually crack on and deliver a bit of work completely. Yeah, Ed Johnson: it's great that you've got so much variety at the start of a venture or as an entrepreneur. But then as you say, a, there are going to be times when you don't feel like you have to or like you want to, but you do have to. But B, there are always going to be tasks on that list of things that you know you need to do which are less exciting. So social media posts and creating things on Canva is probably quite an exciting thing. Cash flow, forecasting, VAT returns, all of those things, not so exciting. I'm sure some people find them exciting. Not for me though. And so you've always got to do those things. So it gives you variety, but you then you always have to do things you don't necessarily want to. I've Joanne Lockwood: noticed that the posts, I've seen your new posts on LinkedIn and I can't say I've looked on other platforms, but I certainly on LinkedIn you have a different Persona than I've seen you before. You're more human, you're more relaxed, you're more fun, outwardly fun and there's a lot more depth to you and personality at these, which maybe when you have big customers, big corporates you have to kind of tone down who you are and become socially acceptable to everybody and that you're being judged in different ways. But at the moment you've got the luxury of just being you and having a bit of fun doing this. It's really interesting you say Ed Johnson: that because it's not something I've consciously thought too much about. But I'm sure you're right that subconsciously when I was at Pushvar, particularly in the latter three, four years, I was very aware that we had clients of all shapes and sizes. We worked with public sector organisations, we worked with police forces and NHS trusts through to then huge global brands like Sony and Samsung. And there are certain things that I wouldn't necessarily have felt comfortable posting and also I think you have less time when you've got all those clients. So actually I'm now really enjoying having that time back again, feeling able to be myself again, where I'm creating something new and fresh and I suppose I am being more human about it but not thinking too much about it, which is probably why it's coming across as more human. And that shift is something I'm really enjoying. I'm really enjoying connecting with people again and in a way that I just didn't have either the time to or didn't feel able to in the latter years as a business goes from being a startup to a scale up and having more clients. You Joanne Lockwood: mentioned one of the things, significant things that's changed in the last seven years is AI and its impact across the board. You know, We've just seen AI OpenAI ChatGPT launch, image generation. They came for the coders, they came for the copywriters, now they're coming for the graphic designers. And we can see the trajectory where AI in its various forms is becoming part of our everyday lives in the same way the Internet became part of our everyday lives in the noughties and the iPhone put it in our pockets, everything else. How hard is it for you to keep human? Because it's very easy to let AI take over your business and do everything with AI. But you've got a human platform, how can you stay human? Really interesting Ed Johnson: question. I'm not sure I necessarily know the answer in a very eloquent way, but I will try and answer it. I think the most important thing for me to do is to be present in my business. And the example I'll give is I learned so much at pushva by being the customer support representative at pushva for the first three, four years a because we couldn't afford to hire anybody else. But B, because actually, more importantly in this case, back to being human and being present rather than letting AI take over. You learn so much from those conversations that you have. You learn so much from picking up the phone to a client or a client picking up the phone to you and saying this part of the website isn't easy to use. Or I was doing this and I thought this was how you interacted with this software. And actually all those things that if AI was talking to the customer, they wouldn't feed that back in an effective way, or you'd miss that and. Or you'd hear something in a conversation where you think it's really interesting that you've just described our platform as this, or maybe all of the markets would describe our product or our software as this and maybe we can then use that in marketing. So I think being human is really important and I think the way you do that is by talking to people. I know it sounds obvious, but not letting AI take over those conversations. And then there are smaller things that shouldn't make a difference, but I think and probably don't make a difference to anyone else. But I try not to use AI on any of my social posts. It's really easy to think I'm going to ask ChatGPT to create a social post, that it's engaging and talks about X, Y and Z. But on a personal level, I take more pride when I get a like or it's reshared if I think I've written that and no one necessarily knows other than me, but I feel better about myself as a result of that. And so I think that's important to continue to do. I completely agree and I have a blended approach. Joanne Lockwood: I write a good chunk of what I do, but I also use AI to augment that or take what I have written and spice it up a little bit. Sometimes I always put me in IT first. It does help. I wouldn't consider myself a competent programmer, but I'm a competent systems analyst and I can pseudo code. I can spec stuff out of what I want. ChatGPT has helped me write stuff that I would never have embarked on. Some of this stuff I'm looking at going, wow, that's brilliant. I can do this. It's helped me create WordPress plugins and modules and stuff. I could have probably downloaded it cheaper, I could have probably paid someone 30 pound a year for it. But I've got immense satisfaction by being able to build my own tools if you like. And I guess when you're looking at your platform, which is SaaS platform, it's got code in it, lots of HTML5 and JavaScript and other things are probably in the back end. It allows you to maybe prototype things quicker and then put the human design on top of that. Definitely. And I think the AI, definitely. Ed Johnson: And I think the power of AI is that you can generate things quickly and the things that don't matter as much whether they're human or AI generated, such as basic code, as long as it's obviously secure and everything else and you've done a code review on it, those sorts of things, AI is really powerful and really good at doing. I think where things were obviously human before, it's important that they continue to be, Such as social posts that you're putting out there, not necessarily the business. If you wanted to sort of speed up your social media content and using AI to generate those sorts of things I think is fine, But I think when it's your own brand and your own personal articles or content, then yes, absolutely, using AI to help speed up that process is really valuable, but making sure that it's got your touch on it is, I would say, still really, really important. Joanne Lockwood: So we touched earlier about the fact that when we're looking to create a team, that everyone has to understand what's expected. Your new venture, URoutine is about creating personal expectations, personal accountability, isn't it? And across various aspects of your business, do you want to just talk a bit more about the idea, the goal? Yes, certainly. So Ed Johnson: URoutine is a social network that really is aimed at helping give people a bit more structure and a bit more accountability to their life. And it's about those things that we all want to be achieving, but either don't get round to or don't do as much as we want to, Whether those are personal or professional goals. So a professional goal could be, I'd love to get down to a zero inbox at the end of each day. And people talk about doing that, but either never do or do it once a month. They feel great about it and then they let it slip. And a personal goal could be, I'd love to eat more healthily, I'd love to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, whatever it is. And when we tell ourselves that we're going to do something, there's a chance we will. But the psychology of accountability is when we start telling other people what we want to achieve, There's a lot more of a chance that we will. It's the same psychology behind why people will have a personal trainer 99% of the time. It's not to show them how to use the gym equipment, but it's to get them to the gym in the first place. And so URoutine really is about digitising habits and goals and a routine and because it's a social network, it is by its very nature social. So your friends, family and or the wider world subject to your privacy settings, can then see what you said you want to be achieving. They can comment on it, they can like it, they can also copy it. So they can say that's a really good idea, I'm going to add that into my own routine or even that whole routine with all those goals and objectives looks great, I'm going to copy that whole routine. So it becomes a bit like a playlist for routines and goals. And the idea really is to just help people to achieve more of the things that they want to be achieving. And I relate. I mean I have Joanne Lockwood: disparate apps that create my routine. I've got my Apple watch and I'm looking at my rings. I think attend to the hour if my wrist vibrates and it's all if to stand up. So go and stand up and have a cup of coffee and I look into the day. I'm thinking it's told me if I, if I do another five minutes worth of work, I'm going to close my red ring. Right, okay, let's get, let's go run up and down the stairs a couple of times. So there are, there are nagging type accountability apps I'm using already. I'm, I've lost 8 stone in weight over the last 18 months using a food diary which I account for everything I eat and I've got a digital scale that bluetooth to my phone and logs my weight whenever I stand on it and my blood pressure monitor does the same. It logs it straight to my app. So I can now build up a metrics of my life, of my intake, my blood pressure, my weight. And I've got these graphs now and so that gives me a target, something to aim for rather than before maybe I was drifting going about this, about that. I know exactly that I'm 96.4 kilogrammes this morning and I know that that's the lightest I've been ever since I've started using app which is at least eight years and they think, wow, I've now got telemetry, I can map my life and I say my goal weight is 80 kilos and I can tell you that on the 10th of October, if I keep doing what I do, that's where I hit my goal weight. So I've now got. I know what's expected of me, go back to that belongingness. I know what's expected of me. I've got accountability. My wife, I and our daughter, we all share the same calorie app so we can see what we're all eating and say, oh, I saw you had that last night and you had that last night and we're trying to get my mum on it as well. So we're already doing what you're suggesting here in this other app, but you're doing is you've got to bring all of this together outside of just maybe a single, a single function here and give me that telemetry on my, on my life. Ed Johnson: And congratulations, by the way. I mean, you're, you know, you're doing fantastically well. You're looking very well as well. So, yeah, it's obviously working and yeah, think. I think that's absolutely. What we're trying to do is trying to give people that support and that structure across health, fitness, well being, financial goals. You can kind of use it for anything and that's what's really wonderful. I've spoken to so many different people who've thought about how they might use it in different ways in the last two or three weeks alone. I was talking to someone who said, oh, this really great for working parents for the school holidays to give their children a bit of routine or give themselves routine so they can manage that, manage their children. This would be great for students for study, study leave and routines around study time and study revision. This would be great for people who've recently retired, who have a load of hobbies and interests, but don't really have the discipline to kind of get on with them. So there's so many different areas where I'm hopeful that this is going to really have a positive impact. And as you're talking now, I'm thinking, this is where AI Joanne Lockwood: can augment this for you because suddenly AI can help you ideate on ideas for kids in school holiday or help supplement your thoughts and go, I don't know what I'm doing next week. It's 10th of August, what can I get my kids to do next week? Poof. Here's 10 ideas and you go, ah, great. Can you map out number one for me? Ed Johnson: Poof. And you've got a routine. And I think you're ideally placed now to be Joanne Lockwood: able to augment human and automation to help people Ideate, I think that's time is right, I think for that. Fingers crossed. Yeah, Ed Johnson: I think so. But I mean at that point where you never really know until you launch it and then there'll be lots of iterations, I'm sure along the way, but it's certainly an exciting point in time where I think it's the right time. What do you do when you're not ideating and building companies? Joanne Lockwood: What's your downtime? What sport do you enjoy or hobby? Ed Johnson: I go running a lot. I love running. I also love the fact that running gives me time as well, whilst I'm running to think about things and to recalibrate my life and work out what my goals are and what I would like to be achieving the next day or the next week. Try and go running. Most days I spend quite a lot of time reading, but not reading professional workbooks. So I've been invited to a number of entrepreneurs events to speak on them. And the question I always get asked is what books would you recommend? And I sit there and think, I have so many books that I recommend, but none of them are professional, none of them are related to entrepreneurship. They're my downtime where I throw myself into a fictitious world with these amazing characters. And so I love reading, I love fiction and then yeah, yeah, walking, running, socialising, seeing friends or travel quite a bit. I love the south of France. I've got a real passion for the art and the history and the culture in that part of the world and then really the rest of the time is just thinking about and building a business. I suppose it comes back to that time and time again. It can be tough Joanne Lockwood: to find a life work balance and not a work life balance. Do you battling with that yourself or do you think you've got it nailed? Ed Johnson: I used to battle with it at Push Far. Looking back, I like to think I've got it nailed. But maybe I'm only saying that because we're at the early stage of the business and it's very easy to feel like you've got a work life balance when things aren't busy, you know, ask me again in a couple of years time when hopefully we've got lots of clients and we're busy. And I think there are certainly things that I'll have learned from Push Far that I will, that will help me in my work life balance. We'll probably hire a few more people at an earlier stage, but it's easy to say that now and then when you look at cash flow forecasting and you Think, well, we didn't hire an additional person and instead I did that job as well. Then we'd have X amount more in the bank. So that's easy to say, but to actually do it, we'll see. Well, we're almost midway through Joanne Lockwood: 2025. I remember five years ago we were saying, trying to project 2030 by looking back on the previous decade. We said earlier, Facebook became very ubiquitous. IPhone, we've now got AI coming out the mid decade. Where do you think the world's going to be in 2030? What big changes are we going to see in terms of the world of work and society? That's a question. Sorry to chuck that on you out of the blue. No, no, no, it's Ed Johnson: a really good question and it's probably quite good that it's out of the blue. I think there'll be a lot more autonomy in technology, so there'll be a lot more. The obvious things like driverless cars will be the norm, or certainly more of the norm than they are. I think everyone will have more of a structure with a routine or new routine. But of course, I would say that I think that flexible working will continue and organisations I would hope will be better at dealing with that and across the board, better at dealing with that. There are some organisations that are already brilliant at it, but I think other organisations are still struggling to work out what their position is, let alone how they then adopt that. And I think that technologies will help them to do that and help them to go along with that movement. I think the content creation side of things and content creators economy, the gig economy there will continue to grow. I think we'll see a lot more entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, freelancers than we are even now. And we're seeing more and more people go into that line of work, but I think that will continue to grow as well. And then more globally recognisable brands that have a very small workforce. So at the moment, generally speaking, the larger organisations that larger in terms of brand have a larger workforce. So the big companies that we all know about have a huge workforce. I think what we will see in 2030 is there'll be huge companies in terms of brand, but they'll have maybe five or 10 employees. And this isn't necessarily new, but I think it will become more acute. So one example is, you know, Instagram, when it sold to Facebook for I think it was $20 billion, they only had 20 employees. And actually arguably they could have continued to grow with maybe 30 or 40 or 50 employees, but not Hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands. So I think AI will make that more possible to a lesser or greater extent. What about you, what do you think? Yeah, I think it's very interesting. I think I agree with Joanne Lockwood: you and I think I've seen those stats. I was at a LinkedIn conference last week, week before, and one of the keynote speakers there was talking about the evolving age dynamics of the world and the fact that we're. In order to sustain population growth, women need to give birth, something like the rate of 2.2 children per woman in order for the population globally to grow. And we're currently reproducing at 1.2. So the populations globally are shrinking. Every country, every country is globally shrinking in population. What we're seeing is Gen Zs Gen Alphas being the smaller demographic than millennials and Gen Xers and boomers. Millennials turn 50 in 2031, 2032 or something, and the over 50s will suddenly become the biggest demographic in the workplace. And I found this really insightful that most people will not be able to retire until they're 80 odd because just by the way, the economy's work, we don't have the money, we don't have the resources. My parents are probably the last generation that will leave a legacy to their children because we're going to be spending it on nursing and ageing, healthcare and whatever it may be. So I've got to prepare for a world where I'm working till I'm at least 75, 80, to be able to afford to carry on living in the way I want to live. So we've got to think about how we're adjusting our outlook towards a more 50 dominated employee base, customer base, lifestyle base. And whilst we've spent a lot of time looking at Gen Zs, Gen Alphas and what the emerging technology needs to be forgetting about, there's a huge great legacy of older people. Having listened to that, I thought, wow, you're right and I'm 60. So I thought, hang on a minute, I'm right in the sweet spot. I'm starting to look more into this ageing population and I think we've got to adapt to a world where we will have people in the workplace into their 70s and 80s and that's the reality. And we've got to look at these transferable skills, retraining, career pivots, whatever phrase you want to use to allow people to continue to be productive and not be aged out of organisations. So I think that would be my hope. We start to really see the Growth of the vintage worker or the classic worker, whichever. I like that vintage Ed Johnson: worker, absolutely. But I think with that, lots of exciting opportunities as well. Yeah, I'm. I'm looking forward to. Yeah, I'm still living my best Joanne Lockwood: life. You know, I've had multiple parts of my life and done different things and pivoted and wiggled and waned between them. And I think wanting to be useful and productive and creative is important to me. Other people want different things, obviously, but yeah, I. AIs given me another lease of life to be able to ideate differently and to explore stuff. And I go with you on this content creation gig economy around content creator, multiple different income streams. I think that's really powerful when you are a free spirit, a solopreneur, and you can start slicing yourself up into different areas which either overlap or they can be completely different. I've just got myself a drone, so I'm going to start doing a bit of drone photography and go out there. And it's of course between a hobby and a business. I want to do more content creation where I talk to the camera while I'm out for a walk and I can have the drone follow me and spin around and take some different shots and I can try and create more humanity around some of my speaking and some of the videos I create. So again, it's an opportunity to do something different. Fantastic. Ed. We've been. We started yakking about an hour and a half ago in the green room and I can't wait when we get a chance to have a coffee sometime in London and have some more time to catch up. How can people get hold of you? Just give us a. Give us a bit more of your URoutine pitch if you like, and how to sign up or how to, how to stay interested. The best way Ed Johnson: at the moment is LinkedIn, so connecting with me on LinkedIn. I'm certainly posting regular updates about URoutine. We do also have a URoutine company page on LinkedIn that you can follow as well as the other social channels that we're on. So Instagram and TikTok, and then URoutine.com will be where you can sign up and at the moment you can, you can register your interest and then we'll hopefully be launching the first version. Yeah. Later this year. Wow. Later this year. Fingers crossed. Joanne Lockwood: High expectations. Well, I'm going to go and put myself on that list. As we said at the beginning, we've known each other seven or eight years now and I've always enjoyed following you, having conversations with you and I'm really excited to see where this goes for you and the world. And the world. Ed, thank you. As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to Inclusion Bites and become part of our ever growing community driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter. Got thoughts, stories or a vision to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with more information. Enriching narratives that challenge, inspire and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.