Hi, well, hello and welcome to the Building Bliss podcast.
Today I've got Sarah Fox on as my guest.
So welcome. Thank you.
Now, I was going to try and introduce myself
and then I looked at your list of achievements and the things you've done
and all the different things you're doing and so I'm not going to attempt that.
So do you want to give me a bit of an introduction of yourself? OK.
So I'm a former construction lawyer.
I call myself former. I kind of still do a bit of law.
I'm also a qualified trainer and speaker and author.
And I developed the five in a word concept where we take massive construction
contracts and reduce in to five in a word just to kind of get across
the essence of what the parties need on a project.
I did what that was the thing.
I thought, is she a lawyer?
Does she still consider herself a lawyer?
I do consider myself a lawyer.
I do quite a lot of legal work in the sense of reviewing and writing contracts.
I don't do dispute work and I don't do anything that's a restricted part of law.
One of those legal services.
So yeah, I don't run a law firm.
No, but it's still in you, isn't it?
I think it's still in me.
I think it's hard to get it out.
Yeah, I know that from experience.
But you're also a professional speaker as well.
Hi, I'm indeed.
I'm a fellow of the Professional Speaking Association.
And do you do that as after dinner, sour speeches or more in your professional
capacity, more in my professional capacity, because after dinner
it tends to be human also.
I'm not great after dinner.
The adrenaline kicks me awake and I still like a good night's sleep.
So I tend to do it at conferences in order to get people thinking about contracts
and to fall back in love with something, which should be a tool that helps them
to, you know, share their expertise and earn cold hard cash.
Yeah.
Great.
And have you also written some books?
I've written five books.
Yeah, that is impressive.
Yeah.
And they're all about how to write contracts, because what happened when I said,
oh, you know, you could write a contract in 500 words, people, and I regret to say
mostly men came up and said, oh, I don't think you can.
It's like, I think you've either can go.
No, you definitely can't.
It's like, no, you can't.
I said, I have.
And they went to, you want it?
Can't work.
It can't possibly.
I just write, right.
I'm going to write a book to explain why it works and why it's important.
What happens if you put nothing in your contract on that topic and also to give
people simple language.
A lot of people came back and said, oh, you know, you can't give people the tools
to write their own contracts.
It's like they just copy and paste off the internet at the moment.
Why should I give them some words that are slightly better than just copying and
pasting random stuff off the internet?
Because the majority of small and micro enterprises in construction don't
have the resources or the skills to write contracts or legal, in-house legal.
They don't go to the big law firms.
So they're winging it at the moment.
Yeah.
So I wanted them to bring it with a bit more panache style and confidence, really.
Yeah.
We're giving people power back very, because I know from my experience that
either you get people who have copied and pasted several versions together,
which don't work, or yeah, you've got like 70 pages of a member,
yet to a standard form that was only 20 to start with, which is another one of my
booklets, we won't go too deep into this section.
But yes, I think that's great though, because did people say they can't be done
sparing you on even more?
Of course.
Of course it did, because they mostly thought I was just an annoying young
female who didn't know what they were talking about.
And probably by the time they were talking to me, I was 20 years
experienced at the contracts.
I thought, well, I want to empower people, you're talking about, empower
people to have more knowledge, to have to do it properly.
And I want to have a more balanced review of contracts.
So they're more mutual, so they're based on trust.
So I said, look, this is just a framework, but because it's not as comprehensive as
all the standard forms, people will need to kind of sit down and with their big
boy pants on, or their big girl pants on, have an adult conversation when things
happen that aren't listed on their contract.
You know, the pandemic showed us that it doesn't matter how many words we've
got on a contract, it doesn't cover everything that's going to happen to it.
So therefore, why not just keep it short and simple?
And instead of investing all that time running the energy into negotiating a
long contract, which gets shoved in a drawer or a file or a computer folder,
invest that in your relationship once the project starts.
Because that's, for me, the purpose of a contract is to help manage the project,
not to, and that annoy us to pick through the dead bodies once it's finished.
Yeah, stuff each other up at the end.
Yeah, we do.
So we'll move on to our first question then, which is the, I should do the five
pillars of bliss to remind everyone, which are bravery, laughter, inspiration,
spark and success.
So starting in bravery, can you pinpoint a moment in your life which you think
was your bravest?
So I've got two that I want to cover as my bravest.
One was when I actually gave up my job in a law firm.
I'd been offered redundancy and offered my own job back.
I went back to it, but the process had made me fall out of love with a lot of
aspects of my job.
So I gave up work.
My youngest son had a year before he went to school and I thought, well, I can
spend some time with him, let's see what happens.
And ended up setting up my own business.
I never thought I'd set up my own business.
I never thought I'd kind of become an entrepreneur, innovate and all this kind
of stuff.
So it was a big leap for me.
I'm quite, I like comfort blankets, you know, for a comfort blanket, it's in the
name, but so for me, that was quite a big leap of faith to do that and to give up
what was a well-paid job, which had stances, which had flexibility, which had
intellectual challenge and just leap into the unknown.
Yeah, it is a big move, if that's a big move, something that I'm sort of in the
process of doing, of transitioning from one field to another.
And it's scary because obviously as a lawyer, you're well paid, as you said, you've got that
comfort, but sometimes you've just got to jump out the plane and yeah, take a
leap.
I mean, take a parachute with you, but jump out the plane anyway.
Yeah.
So how long did it take you to get established with your new business?
A lot.
So I think I probably didn't take it seriously for some time because I had young
children and they were effectively my excuse.
So I set up a business.
I did a training qualification.
I did some workshops with people.
And then I think when I started to, when I would set up my little company 10 years
ago, I started to pay more attention to driving business and working for myself
rather than being an associate for training providers and stuff.
So it took a while.
I had a few mentors along the way.
Some of whom really, really helped me to see the value that I had that I wasn't
noticing and to take myself and my business seriously.
So probably it took me a good five or six years to really begin to say, yeah,
I've got something that other people value and something that might be good for them.
Yeah.
And it's a great experience though, actually setting up your own business.
And clearly you've got that freedom that when you work for a law firm, you've got
every second accounted for.
Why don't I serve a dude?
Yeah.
And I could bring my whole self to the business because I remember talking to law
firms years ago and say, why don't we translate all our documents into plain English?
And they said, well, we could, but clients don't want it.
So why would we put that?
So are you sure they don't want it?
And I would kind of try to set up spreadsheets to make their processes better.
And they went, we don't really do spreadsheets.
Look, they're now all into that kind of stuff.
But I was just ahead of my time and I just kept getting knocked back and thinking,
maybe this is not the place that it's going to fulfill all of who I am.
I can bring my whole self to work.
So yeah, setting up my own business has allowed me to play and do all sorts of
things that I didn't have a business plan for, but I've really enjoyed doing.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
Once you start, you sort of stumble into all different areas, take it completely.
Yeah.
So that was your first one.
You said you had two parades.
Yeah.
So my other one is probably by the time this goes out, me and my husband are setting
off on a five month sabbatical on our tandem.
Oh, right.
We're starting for my first miles around Europe.
Wow.
So that's quite a bit.
He's never taken time off work.
He's been working for his, he worked for a pharmaceutical company for 33 years.
I've had a turcy lesion and sick lease, but we're leaving everything that I know,
my home, my children and the children at university, but leaving everything I know,
my business and just putting it all on hold and going away and moving virtually
every single day to a new place.
So for me, that's quite a big, I'm beginning to feel it was almost about the whole thing.
We've planned it to the nth degree.
Yeah, it'll be fine.
But I'm starting to feel hollered sweaty just talking about it.
So I know that it's a mix of terror and excitement.
Yeah.
And I'm never quite sure at any point which one I'm missing.
Yeah.
Maybe just say it's excitement.
And then, yeah.
So what made you want to do that?
We can't remember why it started, but I think about 10 years ago, maybe a bit less,
we said, oh, yeah, maybe when the kids are grown up, we could cycle our tandem to Istanbul.
And there's just like a jazz in the background.
And then during the pandemic, we did a lot of cycling on our tandem because it was the
one thing you're allowed to do, go out and have your exercise.
And then we took it to the Swiss Alps and the French Alps and said, yeah, we can get
up all these skills that we're going to need to get up.
This is looking real.
And then really sadly about 18 months ago, a really good friend of ours had a brain
aneurysm and crop debt and she wasn't even 50.
And we were like, oh, maybe this is a sign that we don't know.
We could leave it until we was died, but we might never get there.
So it was for us, it was a bit of a do it now, because then there may never be another
time to do it.
So it was just a, yeah, let's just do it.
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing.
So many people retire and then within weeks sometimes they've passed away.
And then it's like somehow being either the adrenaline of their job is keeping them
going or they then suddenly completely lose their purpose because they are retired.
So yeah, I'm all for people doing them bucket lists while they're alive.
And I always say that I don't want to wait to get some sort of terminal diagnosis to
go, oh, right now I'm going to do everything.
Yeah.
My dad worked really hard.
He was a type one diabetic, but he worked hard to get pensions that he thought would
help my mum and him go travelling when they were in their retirement.
And he died two years after retirement and never got to see all that hard work of planning
come to any use for him.
And I, it broke my heart and I think it was just really sad that he didn't enjoy his
retirement.
He worked really hard for the last year to support his family and didn't get to enjoy
it.
So yeah, if we're going to go to the enjoying it then I'm buffed that.
Yeah.
Now I'm going to ask technical questions about Tandos because I've never been on a
Tandem and I'm very intrigued.
So does it make it easier having two people?
Yes and no.
Right.
So it's very sociable because you don't have that difference that he's stronger than me
and you know, all that kind of stuff.
We can talk to each other.
He's in charge and the geometry of a Tandem means the tall person has to be at the front.
And my husband is nearly over a foot taller than me.
So he's always at the front.
So he does the navigating in the gears and I just see that if I can pedal and look at
the views and just enjoy the whole experience.
So I have a slightly easier joining the sense that I don't have such a mental involvement,
but the physical involvement is exactly the same front and back.
Yeah.
You can, I can feel when he's looking at the map and he's slightly distracted because the
pressure on his pedals comes off slightly.
That's and I say, can you, it's sort of ease up and take it into now.
If you can, you can, you can really tell.
He knows when I'm taking a photo from the back because I'm not paying the same attention
to my feet as when I'm not taking a photo.
So it's really easy to tell when somebody I'm struggling or when somebody's just try
to take it easy.
Yeah.
So you're going to have all your belongings.
Yes.
Strap to the bikes or?
No, so we've got 25 kilos between us, including the bags.
Right.
So you've had to be very weak.
Have you with your path?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Everything's taking a weight.
We're weighing everything.
Oh yeah.
I was always say that you've got to push that weight then.
Nobody's ever got to the top of the hill.
I thought, God, I wish I had that set of weights with me.
That would, I could pump some iron when I got to the top because I'm feeling really good.
So no, you have to be really ruthless when it comes to packing.
Yeah, so you're going to cycle, are you getting a ferry up for Zoom?
Yeah, so we're getting a ferry because you can't put a tandem.
It's too long to go on a plane or a train.
So we don't really have a get out clause, which is one of the reasons why we're in the end
not going to Istanbul.
We're cycling to Albania and back.
So we're doing a circular week because you can't, we can get the tandem home.
So we're cycling from home.
So obviously you've got to cycle back.
We're literally cycling away from home, we're cycling all the way back.
And maybe the exit plan is to load the bike somewhere and just take a plane home.
But we've had this tandem for about 25 years.
So it's almost one of the family.
Yeah, you wouldn't want to.
Not on the same level as my kids, but you know.
Yeah.
Wow, that's so exciting.
So and what are you going to be staying in like?
I've already planned each stop.
No, because we wanted to give it a couple of weeks to settle down, to check
what progress we're making, you know, weather and all this kind of stuff.
So we normally book somewhere between three and seven days in advance.
Yeah.
So we have a replant because we needed to work out the Schengen area,
how long we were going to be in Europe, some nights, days.
So we've got our French Vinny's which cuts off in the first three weeks.
So we planned it all out on a tool cycle mapping tool just to see where we might go.
And also just to start kind of getting excited about places in the world to go to.
Yeah. So you want to actually take in places.
Yeah.
So we're not going to be selecting every single day.
No, but we've got some friends that we wanted to visit in France.
We've got some places we wanted to go.
Italy, we're spending seven weeks in Italy, decided a really witty way because we both love Italy.
So I've been learning Italian for the last five months just so that
we can stop to make conversation.
So yes, and the rest of it will be up in the air.
We've got a rough idea where we're going, but we know that no plan survives the first day of
wet weather on our icicle.
Now, well, hopefully you're coming into a better period of weather in Europe.
We'd say fingers.
I'd say without too many heat waves because heat on a bicycle is quite difficult to cope with sometimes.
Yeah, it's a spraved feed hot as it's raining, isn't it?
But we can always get up in the middle of the night cycle when it's cooler and then sleep all day.
Yeah. Well, you'll have earned your pasta when you're like turning well.
You'll have earned pretty much everything, every meal.
And are you going to like record it?
Are you going to vlog it or do some kind of record of what you're doing?
So I'm going to write a bit of an eclectic diary, but not a sort of standard diary.
And we're going to record it all on Strava just so we've got a record.
When we come home, we can go, actually, yeah, we did do 5,000 miles.
Just because I don't think we'll believe it almost when we go home because it'll all have kind of
gone so fast and it will be, oh, what are we doing on which days?
And then I'm also going to record an audio diary.
Yeah. Just so that I've got a bit more of a sort of immediate in the moment, but also something
that I don't have to carry because obviously, paper style takes quite a lot of time.
So yeah, we're going to try and keep it as simple as possible because we didn't want to create a job
on top of doing the trip. The job is quite a big, the trip is quite a big job just because every
day you've got to move on, find food, you know, find accommodation, check your reads.
So mentally, there's quite a lot of work to do on every single day without thinking,
have we posted today?
Just because, yeah, well, I think you might get another book out of it, though.
Might get a keynote out of it.
Yeah, we're in Portsmouth.
Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm thinking, I presume you've watched things like Race Across the World.
Yes. Yeah.
Did that inspire you at all?
No, we didn't have the idea.
Oh, really? We'd already had the idea.
And then a chap we know sent us a book called A Year on a Bike by a Dutch cyclist who just
basically set off a cycle for a year. He's out there in his off-road book, two years on a bike.
Right. But he's, you know, taken a much more photographic approach to his book. And we're
not quite sure how much photography we're going to do.
We'd enough to take a big camera, but the weight of the camera, the chargers, the lenses
and everything else makes it less attractive. Yeah, that's a bit tricky.
It is.
Well, I wish you the best with that.
Absolutely.
And I don't know if I need to ask you if you've got breathing as you've got older,
because I think doing something like that pretty much proves that.
Yeah, it does. Yeah. But have you got breathing as you've got older or have you always been
quite a resilient person when you say?
And I think, well, it's quite interesting. I had a bad accident in my 20s where I broke
my arm really seriously doing something which I thought at the time was really brave. And I
just turned out to be really stupid rather than really brave. And that pulled me off
physical bravery for a while. But I've had three boys and they really encouraged me in a lot of
respects because they kind of somewhat two of them at least have a bit of a what's the worst
that can happen, mum? Yeah. And I've seen the way we've done more active stuff with them and how
much joy they've had out of it, but also how much better they were outdoors and doing brave things.
And we've done Fear for Artists with them and we've, you know, which is basically climbing
up mountains, structural wire. So I forced myself, in fact, in some respects to be braver.
And I had a bit of a fear of heights, but I tried not to pass it on to my kids because I know that
dad doesn't and his parents don't have any fears of ledges or ridges or heights or anything. And I
didn't want to influence them that this was something to be afraid of. I was just afraid of
it. And that's my thing to deal with. And they were lovely about it. And actually, one of them
was really, really helpful when we got to bits he knew that I was getting twitchy about. He just
really calmly say with me and we wouldn't talk or anything. He would just lend me through it. And
I think that was that really helped me to realise that I just needed a bit of support and I could
do it. Yeah. I think that's the same with most things is get you've got to push yourself,
but with the rights or things are achievable because I was never a very squirrely child
at all. I broke my arm on an aerial slide when I was 10 that had no, this is back in the day when
there was no safe. Yeah, I had no straps or anything just fine there on the floor. Yeah.
So I wasn't like that at all. But with the kids, I was not like I have become more daring. So I've
had to go like paddle boarding, seven round up and part of the 120 miles an hour. I mean, I do
I do drive quite fast anyway, but I think that's something that shocks me sometimes. And I think
it's good to sort of shock yourself. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I'm to the blind
lesson and a friend that took me up in I've been bidding an auction, a charity auction for a trip
in somebody's chipmunk. And he said, Do you want to leave the loop? We said, Yeah, he said,
not everyone's good with the, you know, looping the loop. And quite a lot of them find the
traveling sickness comes in anyway, we finished the loop. And it was a beautiful day. We nearly
made it. Alton Park, we're going out of Liverpool Airport. And he said, you know,
he was in front of me. So we were sitting tandem. He was in front. I was behind. And he was desperate
to know whether I was going to be sick and whether I'd gone green. And he goes, How was that? And I
could not speak because it would be so much fun. And we had an amazing afternoon, buzzing around
doing acrobatics in the skies of Bumbling. It was just, just brilliant. And I thought,
do you know what, that's not an experience I would have thought automatically that I'd have enjoyed.
But I loved it. And I suppose I do have history. I did get on goal engaged on a roller coaster.
I did too. Yeah. So I read that story. It was the eighth roller coaster of the day. My husband
had asked me to marry him in February on Valentine's Day, but I wasn't expecting it.
For some reason, we would go and see my parents and he said, we needed to get back nice and early.
And I thought, I don't know where this came from that we were going go karting. But he wanted to
get back because he'd ordered 50 red roses. So how much that must have cost him. I'm February the 14th.
God, I don't know. And we were in a rented accommodation and he gave them to me. He said,
will you marry me? And I went, no, we're going go karting. And I was like, oh, shoot, that's
what I'm answering. So it was quite awkward that day because he thought we were going to go out
for a lovely meal and all this kind of stuff. And I was just like, oh, I think I might have
messed that up somewhat. So we gave it a couple of months. So his birthday was in May and I,
we went to Blackpool for his birthday. And I thought, I quite like the idea,
not of getting engaged in a grotty rented accommodation, irrespective of the 50 red roses,
but actually getting engaged on a rented place is quite a good story. So I just kept bottling it.
Every time we'd be out, I was like, no, not this one, not this one. We would like on the eighth
of the day. And I thought, then this one definitely. So we were just going up to the top. And I thought,
I'd give him a bit of time to think it through. So that right at the top, he'd say yes. I mean,
he was just like, I said, will you marry me? He goes, yes. It's like, no, no, that's not quite,
the timing's great. If I just buy, it was just brilliant. I'm probably the only person who's
screamed for three straight minutes after getting engaged. But you know, I was that, it was a much
better story than the previous one. That's fantastic. Yeah. And like you say, a great story
to tell. I tell the kids as well. Yeah. So moving on to laughter then. It sounds like laughter is
very important to you when you enjoy laughing. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, a day without
laughter is a day wasted in my book. My father was quite a witty person. I was one of four,
so I've got a twin sister, I've got an older brother and older sister. Our house was a house
of laughter. I like to think, I hope my kids think our house was a house of laughter, but
you'd have to ask them to find out how I love this too. But yeah, no, I love comedy and I love
laughing and all that kind of stuff. And do you use laughter a lot in your training? Yes, to a
plenty. And in fact, it's one of the most frequent comments I get back from people who'd been to
training or been in the audience of one of my speeches ago. I didn't think anyone could make
contracts sound funny, but there's so much humour in the stories to do with contracts. There's so
much humour in the lies. I think, you know, it's a really good way to engage people in a topic.
And actually I want people to end up having learned something, but also feeling better at the end of
either a workshop or a talk. So yeah, laughter is really important to me. Yeah, there's nothing
worse than going to a really dry presentation and that you just, yeah, not a day without. I thought
it was going to be dry and dusty, but it wasn't. And that to me is exactly what I want them to
think. I want them to say, no, actually, there's something in this. Yeah. And they'll probably,
I think you remember it more because again, you're creating an emotion associated with what you see.
Yeah, absolutely. And it's not an emotion they're expecting. So there's also the element of surprise
because nobody thinks, oh, contracts are funny. Just they're stevious, they're illegal. Yeah.
You know, I've had feedback that says all of them. Okay. And you, in my first user guide for my
final work contract said, now you sign this, go away and have fun doing the project. This is a
serious legal document. It's like, yeah, but that's too short to get that serious, surely.
You know, I thought, yeah, well, I think, yeah, it's interesting because I struggled with that
as a young writer of thinking that I have to be serious all the time. And I think probably
I suppressed my personality a lot, but yes, a bit. I'm actually one of my clients who I said I'd
decided to do comedy with. Most of the really thought of you as a funny person. So after I
took the knife out of my arse, I was like, oh right, but that was how it worked, which I'd actually
unifest myself. And it's unbelievable. It is unbelievable. And I remember vividly when I was
about 10 years qualified, we did a mediation in Birmingham and it was between a large major
company and their Japanese contractors. And they were halfway through a project, which was going
badly. And there was a lot of dispute. We were in the second day of the mediation and we were
really struggling with the cultural issues. We were struggling with, you had the decision making
powers, the fact that things were going wrong and neither side wanted to admit that they were at
fault. And one of the chaps who was our client for the automotive company sent them a big
common video, which was relatively coarse, quite a lot of swearing at. And I have no idea why they
thought it would work, but it did. It really broke the, maybe the kind of stiffer politeness,
with the, you know, the issues that were going on and allowed us to get a mediation and a settlement
later that day. But it was a genius idea. It just had break the whole tension that was going on and
been going on for months and months and months and had been taken into this mediation. And it
worked. And I just thought, actually, there's some really good lesson here that sometimes it is,
we need to create a change in people's emotions to get a new decision rather than a change in the
data they're getting or all this kind of stuff. And I think this, you know, jams with a lot of
what people talk about, you know, emotional connection is really important rather than
let's get too logical and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I think laughter is great. And now that
I run my own business, I can laugh as much as I like. Yeah. It's an avarice, isn't it?
No, not actually. No, I did always think when I was thinking of doing a meditate the mediate
business, you got people to meditate, get into a then space and then because, well, like anything
where there's conflict, it's generally between two people. It's not the businesses. It's two people
who have got egos, who are butting heads all the time. But if you can take that out of there,
it might be a good idea to look at, you know, and say, let's get real. We're not, we don't all need
to fall out about. Yes. And you do get that breakthrough then. Yeah, I think that's right.
I think maybe comedy and collaboration would be a good way to do it. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. So
some of my clients have said, can you tell us jokes after we've gone through the pain of this
dispute? Yeah. So you said there that you were a twin. I am a twin. Yeah. And how was that growing
up? Well, I've never known anything different. It's difficult for me to identify what's different,
but we were very close. So we, I was the last, so I'm the youngest of four. But me and my twin
sister were very close and we did this thing called twin talking when we were little. So twin
talk is a form of gambling, which is taking some just sounds, but also some basic words and then
structuring them so that we understood each other, but nobody else could understand us.
It's sort of in your high chair. So sort of 18 months to two and a half sort of thing. Yeah. And
at the time I know there'd been some twins who'd gone to school and it wasn't until they were eight
that they started speaking English to everybody else. They'd been so insular. My mum was slightly
concerned that we were going to be that sort of slightly weird twins thing, but we did learn to
speak English, obviously, but we grew up, but we just had a ready-made friend, a ready-made
confidence, someone to play with, someone to share things with. It was just brilliant. And I think
it wasn't until we got to our teens where every teenager wants to be individual. When you think,
oh, hang on, this is a bit difficult. I've got a shadow. But it's been great. And we come back to
being very similar. We've married similar men. She's got a couple of kids. She now works in my
business with me. It's great. I probably speak to an email several times a day. Yeah. And it's been
great when we lost our parents. We both grieved in a very similar manner, which was actually quite
comforting because in families, people tend to grieve very differently. Some people get very
insular and want to hide away. Some people treat it very illogically. Some people, you know,
soft-sink at other people. And for us, we just found it a really great comfort to have each other
at those sorts of moments. So yeah, we've been there for each other when it's been the highs and
lows of life. Yeah. It's great to have someone by your side for that. Yeah, absolutely. So did you
have the matching outfits and all that kind of thing? Or are you identical? We are identical.
When we were little, my mum said, look, I know people think I'm doing this because it's cutesy.
She said, but if I buy you the same stuff, you won't argue. Yes. So we did have matching outfits
because it made it easier for her. Because when we got different things, it was a bit, she's got
that. I've got that. It's like, right, stuff this. We're not going to do this. And we were about sort
of 10, 11 when we probably went to high school, that she started allowing us to choose our own
clothes. So we did try and choose things that were different. But on my mum's 75th birthday,
we turned up at family party wearing literally identical outfits. The same earrings that we
bought at the same trial fair several years before. We had not chatted to each other at all.
But when almost identical, people went, did you do that to me? No, I swear we did not. But we have
very similar tastes. So it just so happened we both found us wearing this and so stood it.
So a few weeks ago, I had my 10th birthday party and she came along and said, I'm bringing you up
because I want to know what you're wearing so we don't do the same thing. But there's still
quite a lot of my clients had never met her and still went, gave a big hug and went hi. And she
had a little card that said I'm not Sarah. Sarah, I'm not Sarah on the bad news. So have we got the
psychic thing? I couldn't be sure that we have the psychic thing. But I remember about 20 years
ago, it might be slightly longer than this. I got a telephone call. And I knew it was my sister. I
said, I don't know what the answer is. I don't know what your question is. But I know the answer is
yes. She said, but I haven't asked you anything yet. I said, no, but I know the answer is yes.
She goes good because my marriage has just broken up. I want to come and live with you. I said,
the answer is still yes. So you definitely, I somehow that I knew instantaneously and it may
have been, you know, a brain just picking up on tone or whatever. But you know, I knew that the
answer was yeah, whatever you need to, I still in school. So did you make each other laugh as?
Oh, yeah. I think I drove my mum mad because we'd sit in our hijack laughing at each other
and she had no idea what we were laughing at and kicking at and stuff like that. But my mum used
to tell the story of putting us in the bathroom when we were tiny, when we were able to sit up.
So it must have been sort of 18 months or something. And running her finger down one of our backs and
the other ones would wrinkle. And she went, wow, that was kind of freaky. But we don't,
I can remember, it was well too soon. But yeah, we used to, there's lots of pictures of us sitting
in this kind of twin buggy, which at the time was basically just an extra wide buggy. There was
nothing to start with, just giggling. And I think she really enjoyed being a mum of twins because
we would just, we would make each other laugh. We would literally sit around the dinner table
with my dad and my brothers and sisters and we'd be howling that we'd be hurting because we were
laughing so much. And sometimes it wasn't that we'd said anything, it was just a look. And nobody
else kind of could get in there. You know, it's about a sort of atmosphere. So I don't know what
it's like being a brother or sister to twins. I imagine it feels quite like you're on the
downstairs, the killing dot in the club. Yeah, for us. And we didn't mean it to be, you know,
like sort of exclusive club. It just, it just was how it was. Yeah. It's really interesting,
isn't it? Because did you pull the prank, the switching? Oh yeah, we've done that.
We switched pranks with a boyfriend. He didn't notice for a while, so that didn't last around.
I think the one thing that I know that is going to be difficult when we're away for five months
is not being able to chat to my sister every day. Yeah. And not having our birthday, being able to
be near each other. I'm hoping she might come out for my birthday. That'd be nice. Yeah. So
why was that? You said that in May? No, our birthday's in August. August is the birthday's
in May. Oh right. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in August, baby. It's 28th August. I'm the 17th, so right. Yeah.
So we're both at the younger end of our classes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Which always makes a
difference. I think it does. Yeah. So it sounds of laughter now. Who makes you laugh, is it other
than people you know, any sort of comedians? Yeah. So I've been seeing a lot of comedy. I've seen
people like Tim Thine and McBrown and Greg Davies. I quite like observational comedy because I think
there's so much in life that's very funny. I quite like a lot of female comedians. I don't like
coarse comedy. Yeah. I used to be referred to, or I used to refer to myself as the foul-mouthed nanny
if there was swearing involved. Oh, that must be the foul-mouthed nanny. We know I had a nanny,
so it's always been me. But at the same time, I kind of quite like my comedy to be pretty
observational and not rely on shock so much. But yeah, I've done comedy courses and I have
done a little bit of stand-up. I think at the Professional Speaking Association, they introduced
a comedy night and so you could do a five-minute set. So I've done two five-minute sets and yeah,
both terrifying. But I'm glad that I did them because it's quite a discipline to make people
laugh quickly, to keep them on your side, kind of have an arc and tell a story or just have some
sort of theme running through and then just having the courage to keep going because it's really
tough. But all your eyes are on you and they want to be entertained. It's not like a keynote
speaker and they're not expecting to entertain them. They are fantastic. Whereas this is the
other way around. If you don't entertain them, they're cross. Yeah, not happy. So yeah, I didn't
want to go into it because I'm not good at the evenings and the adrenaline was just making me
not sleep. But I think it's a great skill to know how to keep an audience happy and entertained and
laughing for fun. Yeah, and I think the only way you can do comedy is by doing it. There's
very few things these days where you can only learn whilst people watch you be really quiet
in the pitch. And you've just got to get through and you've just got to keep going and going and
you know that there'll be other people that are rubbish before or after you and you're just hoping
you're not on the bottom of the rubbish pile. Yeah, I sit there and I think I'm better than them. I
think I'll do better than them. So yeah, so did you enjoy it though when you were able to do it?
I loved doing it. I loved doing it. I wouldn't do it again. No, why did you? What were your themes?
So my first thing was about being a twin, right? And I kind of told the story of being inside my
mountain and telling the story where we were in a dark place and all this kind of stuff. We could
see a light and so it was kind of a bit of a play on all that kind of stuff. And the second one was
about something to cause and my kids and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, it sounds great.
Might have to get you out of my comic in there. Yeah. Anything's mid afternoon. I do think there's
a big call actually for afternoon comedy. Mine does start early and finishes by 10.
For the other because I want to be in bed because I'm not good at late nights but comedy involves a
lot of driving for two hours. Yeah, 10 minutes there and driving back for two hours. So, but I
think there's a big call for afternoon comedy because there's like tired mums, you know,
or people who can't get babysitters. Or just people like me who don't really like being out too.
So I think, yeah, I think that leads to me my next campaign is for afternoon comedy. Yeah,
I'd be up for that one. So if you've done comedy, got to ask you if you've got a favourite joke.
I do have a favourite joke and it's an oldie but I just, it just tickles me every time.
And it's what did the zero say to the eight? We don't know. My spend.
I like it. Yeah, actually most people have done the oldies and they have been the better. Yeah.
But I was saying to, I think it was Jess who was on the podcast the other week, that you don't seem
to get jokes, any like joke books with jokes in as much as anyone like, and I as a kid,
I'd buy a joke book and I'd learn them all. And then you could drop them out at parties and stuff.
And you put, I don't think, I think the next generation is learning. My dad was a great
joketeller and he would string them out, but we would sit and listen to his every word as
kids with a transfixed by his joketemper. Yeah. So that's obviously definitely been
instilled in your, I think. Yeah, absolutely. So moving on to inspiration then,
who or what inspired you? That's a really, I see, I really struggled with this one when I was looking
at this, cause I don't, I didn't have role models apart from probably just my close family.
Now my dad was type one diabetic, hated diabetes, hated injections, but you know,
kept going because he had to and overcame quite a lot. My mom was a teacher and she worked really
hard to keep her family together and to work and just instill a good family life in us.
So I kind of, we were quite, I think because I'm a twin, we were quite inward fencing and people
would say, you know, who do you look up to? She wouldn't really have that approach to life.
And so I haven't had that approach for years. There was a lady who was a speaker called Joy Marsden,
who sadly died about five years ago. She was unbelievably lovely lady, really good speaker.
She was somebody I aspired to be and really, really aspired to be her. But generally I kind of get
bits from lots of people. So when I see something, I tend to be inspired by things or events rather
than individual people, because I think all people are flawed. They have great times,
they have bad times. And I think sometimes if we raise people up on the pedestal too much,
and then find out that they're not the people we thought they were, that can be quite difficult
for us to ascend. So I quite like people who do inspiring things. So, you know, there's a lot of
comic relief going on at the moment and love all that kind of, 30k last year, I mean, tears.
Oh yeah, singling, and you know, I think I tend to be inspired by people who I can really relate
to. So they're probably more like my age. So that will change as obviously, and get older, it changes.
People who just don't allow the norm to be there every day. So do something a bit different,
you know, maybe they move to a foreign country, which I still think is we underestimate the
challenge of moving to a foreign country. Setting up a new life, or just, you know,
despite this time do something inspiring and don't allow the status quo to be where they stay.
Yeah. But in terms of your idea, it's simplifying, did that come from a moment of inspiration,
or was that literally, you just were seeing day in and day out, what wasn't working, and that inspired
you to make that change? Yeah, so there was a couple of things. Actually, my twin sister
had a conversation with me over a terrible cup of coffee, and waiting for a train at Easton,
and we were talking about, you know, how can I, you know, create a brand that makes sense,
you know, what was I interested in doing? I was doing a lot of training on construction contracts
at the time. At Eid when I had the lawyers in the audience, and we were talking about one of the
standard form, you know, contracts like JCT or EDC, I'd say, okay, so who knows what this contract
says? And they kind of go, what? All of it. And you think, well, so you haven't read this. And then
I'd say, well, let's just deal with some big issues. Like, what does it say about time? What
does it say about quality? What does it say about performance? What does it say about risk? And they
go, really? No, I'm kind of like, this is just mad. It's mad that we're spending so much time,
energy and effort on these massive long contracts, which we haven't read. But we're still spending
hours and too much of our lives on wasting. It's like, okay, can I do something that's like just
completely nudging it in the opposite direction? And I'm not saying 500 words is, you know, what
you should be aiming for. It was just an amount of it seemed like a really massive challenge. Because
if I said, oh, I'm going to reduce this to two and a half thousand, everyone would go, yeah, that
seems like really simple. But I was like, no, no, what could I get it down to? So my sister sent me
the challenge. As my company is called 500 words, you can guess I managed it. But it took me a long
time to work from scratch. What did I need? What didn't I need? What should go in? What can I
safely take out? And I still get emails from people go, oh, I think you've missed this out
of your contract. Okay, that's a really good point. But what would you like me to take out so I can
fit your idea in? And I never get a reply. No, because they haven't got that answer. They just
know that their favorite bit is not in it. Yeah, it's like, yeah, but that's it. It's not a toy box.
You put all your favorite toys in and just gets bigger and bigger. This is a limiting scope. We
have to make it work. Yeah. So I was mostly inspired by seeing too many people go,
oh, we really know what this contract says. I don't see what a waste of opinions like.
What if we could make it easier for everyone? Yeah, combined with people saying it couldn't be done.
By the way, people tell me they definitely couldn't do it. So at which point it's like,
make that as good as a double dare to me. Yeah, red rags for the bull.
So how would you like to inspire others with what you've done? I'd like them to inspire,
to inspire others, kind of just think about what they would like their business to look like from
the outside to other people, because it's easy for us to get to kind of this, my business is
how I deal with it. And it's not perfect, but it works for me. You're only a small business.
What about all the people you relate to, all the relationships you're building? Are they
relationships that are based on trust and care and, you know, working out whether or not when you
send something to someone, you're making them happy or sad? Because so many people send me
their contracts and they're, well, don't read it. Just, if you could just fill in it and scan it
and send it back. It's like, you do what I do for a living. I need contracts for a living.
And if it's a terrible contract, why are you sending it to me? What's this idea that we could
apologetically send a contract and go, oh, it's a bit rubbish, but don't worry about it. It's like,
that'd be like giving someone a dinner and go, I burnt it, but be grateful anyway, because I've
made you dinner. But why would I be grateful for something that you could make so much better? I'd
rather be a sort of taste in a burnt, you know, muesli or whatever it was. You know, I think it's
too easy for people to kind of be apologetic about it, as if it didn't matter, then it's not
their thing. But, you know, because it's a contract, that's somebody else's job to sort out.
And they've had a lawyer or law firm or a consultant to draft it and it's a bit rubbish,
but they paid a lot of money for it. So they're getting used to it. And I want people to go,
no, it doesn't have to be like that. They know their business. They can draft their own agreements.
It's nothing magical about the words lawyers use. It's not like we're sprinkling magic dust around.
They're not always sprinkling a lot of word soup, but you know, it's not really quite as nice
for everyone else. So I just want people to kind of have the courage to start looking at their
business and go, how would I like this to look to other people? I can take control of this. I want
to be empowered to do it. I can have confidence that this works. And this will be a simpler way
of running my business than what I'm currently doing. Yeah. And in a wider context, you think
you've inspired people on the way with your, you know, your speaking and the way you go about
things. So it sounds like from the feedback you've had from people, that's happened. Yeah. I think
people have genuinely turned around though. I used to hate the idea of contracts. I'll tell you a
story that I met years ago when I first started my speaking business, I was going around the PSA
region, so the professional speaking association regions. And I went to Yorkshire to speak and
there was a lady there who was part of a five generation family business and they were
undertakers, but they knew that the old generation, the new generation needed to,
the strategy wasn't working. They needed to split up this family business. And she was terrified.
It was going to cause a family rift that would last forever. And I was talking about the fact
that your T's and C's could produce TLC. You could have tender loving care as well as a contract.
They didn't have to be separate. They could be the same thing. You could love your contract
because it helps you to do what you want it to do. And she came up to me and she said, look,
I think this is a really powerful idea. I'm going to do it. A year later, she came back and said,
you changed the way we split our business because we realised that if we gave it to lawyers,
we might lose control of the whole relationship thing and people's vested interests would get,
you know, narrowed and they'd have lawyers working for different parts of the family who
all had these interests. She said, we kind of agreed what we were going to do. We agreed the
structure. We then gave it to a law firm. But we said, we kept being part of a family and
looking at the relationship, making sure that the agreement didn't drive the relationship.
The relationship drove the agreement. So it was so life changing that she'd managed to keep this
family business and the family together, even though the business, that's when she changed.
And I thought for me, that was a really powerful testimony to doing things differently, you know,
and not allowing a lawyer to drive your business, but to drive a lawyer to do what you want them to
do. Yeah. It's a reflection of the, we've always done it this way. Yeah. So it's the most dangerous
sentence in any business, isn't it? Just being able to take a step back and go, is there another way?
Well, there's always another way, isn't there? Yeah. But I think lots of people haven't heard
of there being another way. So for me, I'm kind of trying to inspire people by being a light going,
there is another way. You know, it's not perfect, but this could see your business as well as,
wait, yeah, just think about it. Have you felt like you're a bit of a lone voice in the wind at
sometimes? Yes. Yes. When I first started, I really did feel like a lone voice in the wind,
but there's such a lot of people that I've met in the contract simplification, the contract
visualization, the legal design community, lots of apps and tools coming out. So there's a much,
there's a big global phenomenon. And lots of people are interested in this. Big companies
like Google and Amazon have realized that they can't contract with smaller innovative startups
because their contracting process has become overlauered. So they reason movement to move
towards tools which actually help them do business rather than just tie them up in legal meetings
for ever and ever and ever. They need to start with the terms and conditions where they say,
accept this, when you have said it in that, as a lady, actually, like, yeah,
nobody reads those terms. Someone posted them out, weren't they? 800 payers or something,
Apple's terms and conditions. Not quite as long as that. So, so,
Apple's were about 25,000. And there was a chap that did a comic book based on the
Apple terms and conditions. The Norwegian Consumer Council once read all the terms
and conditions on a smartphone that are pre-loaded, albeit terms and conditions for
those apps took them 33 hours. There's nobody and that was literally from start to finish,
they didn't have any breaks. But nobody sits down, opens a new phone and goes,
tell me what I'm just going to check what I am, the terms and conditions. We don't do it.
I don't. Well, I don't either. And the thing is, that means that terms and conditions,
which are part of contracts, which are part of agreements, have got a bit of a bad reputation,
then we can't do anything about them. So we might as well just tick out of
here and ignore them. Yeah. And yet that's also not a good way to run relationships and businesses.
So, you know, we need to kind of focus on what we can change and then not worry about some.
Okay. And do you think AI will have a big influence on that going forward?
I think there's two. I think it could have a big influence on it. I think at the moment,
a lot of the contract review platforms are just comparing bad apples with bad apples and going,
yeah, it's as wrong as the existing apples, which is not necessarily a great thing.
And if you offer them an orange, which is maybe a really simple visual contract,
they're all, it doesn't look like the bad apple. So we reject it. However,
if they have a slightly more sophisticated approach, where they go, you need a paragraph
that talks about parties, you need a paragraph that talks about the scope, you need a paragraph
that talks about time, you need a paragraph that talks about this. If you've got a kind of structure
and you're saying, does it have all these things in? I think that's a much more sophisticated
approach because it allows simpler documents to also get exactly the same rating as a complicated
document. So I think it's going to get more sophisticated. At the moment, we're just comparing
bad apple to bad apples. Yeah. So do you think your journey on your tandem is going to inspire
people once you get the AI? Your story out? I think it probably will. I think if we make it
to the end, it certainly will. But I think there'll be lots of lessons that we learn along the way
that we'll bring back into our lives. And we've said, we don't know how it's going to change us,
but we know it's going to change us. Yeah. And that's a great legacy to have from the tricky.
Moving on to Spark then, what gives you your spark? That's a really good question. I am very much an
outdoorsy person. So I find that just being outside, I always find something that's interesting or
exciting or new. And I've taken a kind of a preach that involves having an adventure every day. And
some of that is literally just touching a plant that you've never seen, that you haven't seen for
ages. Because I think we can get hung up in adventures being massive, you know, find them a
ton of tricks around Europe. And actually, every single day, we probably see something new or hear
something new or smell something new. And we don't record it. We don't stop enough to pause and go,
actually, that's really interesting. And I think one of the things I learn also in my business is
that actually, I find a lot of inspiration and spark from other parts of other businesses. So,
you know, rather than being too construction law focused, just seeing what is out there that might
be something that I can draw inspiration from or get a spark from or, you know, start an idea.
So yeah, I kind of, I'm quite sparky in the sense that, you know, I would go off on tangents.
But I think, in my own business, I'm able to do that. I kind of will follow threads that interest
me and say, how can I relate that? How does that work? And, you know, which story am I going to
tell? And what's going to change as a result of this conversation? So I just think there's sparks
everywhere. We just don't spot them enough because we've got our dark glasses on most of the time.
Tunnel vision focused on what we thought the day was going to involve. And driving here, I was like,
oh, we're not very far from Portson. We've never got time to pop in on the way there.
I kind of think, you know, museums and art and all that kind of stuff is really fascinating. I think
I read a lot. I decided I'd start logging in on Goodreads this year because I read so much that
I forget what I've read. You know, I read, but quite disposably in the sense that people will say,
what did you read last week? I go, oh, actually, we've been done three books on from last week. So
Robert Blaine. That would be nice. I just devour books. And is that nonfiction or fiction?
Or both of them. Yeah, a bit of both. So yeah, all sorts of books. I've kind of,
I suppose you might call a book slutry. In the sense that I read almost anything.
I sometimes have the point where it's like I read too many, you know, dark political books. I need
to have something a bit light and fluffy. But yeah, I'm a big fan of reading. Really interesting
what you say about the small things, because I always say, one of my favourite, I think it's
from Oliver, is small pleasures, small pleasures who would denies these. And I don't know if that's
something as you get older, you perhaps think more, but I'm like, you know, just to walk in the woods
and then have a delicious coffee, sit outside, looking at the water, which is near here. To me,
that's like perfect. Yeah, it's joyous. But we could just pass that by, couldn't you? You could
just go on, just go on for a walk and just get around. I think so when my youngest son was six
weeks old, no, middle son was six weeks old, I had a two year old and a six week old, I slipped
two discs and I was in bed for six months. I couldn't sit, I couldn't walk, I couldn't hold
my children. I couldn't feed myself very easily. Didn't go out of the house. Didn't feel the wind.
I couldn't have a shower. So after that, I remember the first time I stood up in a hot shower and I
was just in tears thinking, I'd never really thought about what privilege it is to stand
in a shower, just feeling the water going over you and not be in pain and, you know, have all
that kind of stuff. And that was, it was such a powerful and such a long period of my life,
six months, quite a long time, you know, to be, you know, unable to move. But if it's what else
was going on in the household, you know, I've never forgotten how grateful I was for that.
Yeah. But also when I had my third child, I ended up with a serious infection that nobody
picked up and ended up with a massive amount of blood loss and nearly died. And realized that
actually being able to see my kids grow up was also a privilege. Because the day after I'd been
rushed to hospital, and they were going to give me a blood transfusion because I'd lost such a
lot of blood, the consultant came in and went, well, Mrs. Box, yes, maternal postpartum bleeding
is a major cause of death in the vascular arteries. It's like, I don't even know about breakfast yet
and now I feel really quite polished. Just what you said has just gone, basically you could have
died. Yeah. And I was like, oh, oh, that is really quite safe. Really, that's, so I think
both of those together have given me a really great appreciation just for the little things in life.
When you've had little children, they are fascinated by everything. Yeah. You know,
a spider, a leaf can go for a walk with a four year old and it could take you hours just to
get you down the road because they're fascinated by everything. So I know all of those things,
I kind of, I don't want to get to the point where I treat every day as just another day. No,
it's a privilege to wake up in a warm house, you know, all that kind of stuff. I think we have to
keep that sort of tiny moments of inspiration and spot all the time so that we're always
not taking it for granted. Yeah. And it's so easily done because we live in a fast paced world now
and we're all glued to our phone screens to some degree. And I obviously see that with my children
and both, as you say, as small children, my daughter was a notice set, you know, like you say,
a nice leaf, a twink, and then we'd collect them all. And you're like, it's a shame that we somehow
lose that, isn't it? Yeah. And they take something dramatic to perhaps remind us of it. And I think,
you know, we need reminding that, you know, every single day is, well, should be full of joy and
wonder and adventure. So how did you cope in that six months? What did you do for your sort of mental
health? Did you try and have a mindfulness practice or was it the thing that... It was the thing,
you know, it was about 20 something years ago. My sister, who's a nurse, came and she used to kind
of get people around to give me massages and stuff like that to try and make me feel like I was like,
I did a lot of cross stitch. I started doing cross stitch and patchwork. And thankfully,
the World Cup was on that year. So I was be single match. Literally, I had nothing better to do.
But I started doing a patchwork and it was a memory patchwork with squares from, you know,
my dad's ties or, you know, fabric that I had in the cupboard. I'm just about to finish it 22 years.
But I did start my first patchwork and I did decide it was going to be a king size bread spread. So
maybe I could have gone smaller. I wasn't going to first ever do. But, you know, so I suppose I was
being mindful doing cross stitch. I did do some sewing and it was all hand done and it was just
something that was light and I could do lying down or lying on one side because I couldn't sit up for
six months. So, I mean, yeah, I think having the two kids was in some respects a distraction
because I knew I had to get better at the room. I knew that I wanted to walk before my new son did.
Yeah. And I wanted to sit up before he did. He beat me to sitting up but I beat him to walking.
So, you know, it was a bit of a competitive. So, but did you know how long that was going to be?
Or was it you saw all this right dig for weeks and up? I had no idea. But I know my mum had
sit her discs. She'd been in a rabbit hole. The rabbit was not her favourite pet after that.
But I don't remember how long it had taken. I know that she had been pulled in. We had an
all come and stay to look after us. But I don't remember how long it lasted by, you know, kept
going to the surgeons and the consultants to go, well, we don't know how long it's going to last.
You know, pain is like that. We just have to wait for it to settle down. We could give you surgery,
but there's no evidence that in two years time, you'll be better off than people who didn't have
surgery. And the surgery carries a massive risk that they understand these slides through a nerve
and you end up paralysed. So, it's like, do we have to do it? But, you know, they would just try to
manage my pain. They weren't actually trying to resolve the underlying issue of a bulging disc.
They were just trying to take me out of pain so that hopefully my body would solve the daughter
sub-fab. And is that what happened? Yeah, it did in me. It receded to the, or receded out. Then I
could walk again and thankfully, you know, it hasn't repeated itself. But yeah, it was a very
uncertain time. Do you know why it doesn't sound like you've like restricted yourself, wrapped
yourself in cotton cloth? No? Sorry, for all the things you've done. And to be honest, I worked
hard with an osteopath to make sure that when I started doing, I started running and everyone
came to intuitively said, oh, you can't run with a bad back. It's like, it's been the best thing,
you know, the running and the cycling and being active and being fit and all that kind of stuff
has been the best thing for my back. She pushed and I've loved a lot of taste at 10 years and all
that kind of stuff. So, you know, I focused on what I could do. I couldn't stop my disc from
bulging. If it decided to have a moment, the dishwasher was the snapping point. But I knew
it was going before that. So I knew that my back was very soft and the problem with births is it
makes all your muscles soft in order to assess the process. But at the same time, that means that
you're more at risk of injury. Yeah. It's that I've had problems with my back and it's the most
innocuous things to do. And you just feel that twitching and you're like, oh, I've had sacroiliac
so you can lose your layer and you're like, oh no. But I think a lot of stress goes in your back,
doesn't it? And it's literally the burden that's on you as it takes your weight. So, you're here.
So do you think that if there's difficult days on your trip, how are you going to find your
spark? If you're feeling a bit tired and fatigued or are you not under that much pressure that you
need to keep moving? We're not under that much pressure because we've got a lot of time and we've
deliberately designed a wiggly route so that we've got plenty of ways we can cut it short. So if it
looks like it's going to be torrential rain for a day, we can just sit and read a book and we'll do
something else. So there's no pressure to get anywhere in particular by any particular time.
Got to get back in time for my husband to start work again. But you know, we've got quite a lot
of time to do that so good. I don't think we're going to feel under pressure. We've done a practice
tour and we went to France to do a practice tour in September last year. And we had a day when it
was drizzly but actually we had some really lovely day because it was less traffic. Actually the
views were spectacular because we have no cloud and we were getting wet and our kit wasn't getting
wet because we had all the kit. So it was actually a really lovely day. So I know that not all the wet
days will be that lovely but we know that we can get through it. We've done it before. You can draw
on that. Yeah, we can draw on the good days and we know they won't last forever. In five months
we're expecting a few bad days, probably a few mechanicals but we'll get through them. We'll get
together. Yeah, sounds perfect. Do you think it'll be a once in a lifetime thing this or would you
like to do like Canada or Australia or something? You know, it's a really good point but because
you can't put the tandem on a plane it's really difficult to do it too far away unless you take
the tandem boat over to the States. It was quite a long board. We can't decide whether we come back
and we'll just go that was great. We can do long holidays again or whether we'll go, right,
we can give up work and do that for never. Yeah, cycle around the world sort of thing. So
it's difficult to know. We're open to all options when we come home in September. Still,
you know, what will happen. Yeah, it'll be really interesting to see how you feel. We might have to
do a follow-up interview when you get back in September. Yeah, about your experiences on your
trip. Yeah, that would be good. Right, then moving on to success. So what does success look like for
you? So it's really interesting. You should ask me that because somebody asked me on a previous
podcast. I said to me the definition of success is having fun meeting your goals. Yeah, and I'm
not particularly goal driven so I don't have goals for my business. I don't have financial goals.
I weirdly, even though I was very driven, I suppose as a lawyer, I've just been really interested to
go with the flow and see what has come up and projects I never imagined would fall into my lap
have fallen into my lap. So for me, as long as I'm having fun and enjoying my work, then that's
success for me. So, you know, I'm in a privileged position. I don't have to earn the majority of
income coming into our household, but I have done for a few years. So I don't really have those
sort of really clear goals, but I've created a mission earlier this year where my mission for
my life is to have freedom to have fun, to be active and to go on adventures and still be cycling
when I'm 100. Wow, that's a pretty good life ethos. Whether or not I'll still be cycling when I'm 100.
Well, it sounds like you're pretty fit and if you keep doing your long trips, then you never know.
It's something to aim for. Yeah. So even if you fall short, at least you've thought about something
you would like to be doing in later life rather than getting to your 50s and going,
best part of my life is over now. Actually, maybe the best part of our lives is still to come.
Yeah. I think that's a great way of looking at it. And I think perhaps people in their maybe
late 20s and 30s think that your life's going to be over when you get hit for the seat.
But actually my life probably did start in the best form it has when I was 40, then even 45.
And as you say, really, hopefully you're actually only halfway through your life.
And as you maintain your health, because it's about the quality of life, isn't it? Not just
the length of your life actually living. So you can still do stuff that you're meant to.
I got a couple of friends and we've been at a little mastermind group for some years.
And one of them kind of started this like this phrase to do with menopausal lady or
middle-aged ladies going, we should be vibrant, confident, mysterious. And I'm really like that.
So we've actually created 50 challenges to do in our 50s that make us feel either vibrant,
confident, or fearless. And it's been really interesting because they've been really
eclectic. Everything from sort of doing a skydive with the red arrows, which we haven't yet done,
but just getting one of, getting us all to eat an lemon or play chubby bunnies or
go to eat goat's glass or learn to crochet. They've been really eclectic. But then things that
pushed us out of our comfort zone some more or things that we've always wanted to do,
but haven't had the courage to do. And because we do them together, it's a really nice atmosphere.
So yeah.
Yeah, it must be wonderful to have a community like that.
Yes, that keeps encouraging you encourage each other. So even if one of is down,
then you'll get picked up by the other. Yeah. And it was interesting because we set the goals
back four years ago when we've kind of gone, to be honest, maybe these aren't as good a stretch
goals as they could be. Maybe we need to think bigger. Because, you know, because the process
of doing them has kind of changed us in some ways, it's been really interesting to see.
But it's really lovely to have other people who are prepared to go, we should do this. So
they're going to meet me in Albania for a weekend of girliness. But they're going to go walking in
Albania, both of whom have never been on a hiking holiday before. They're both very fit. But they've
never thought of going to Albania. They never thought of going on a walking tour. They never
thought of, you know, going with a group of people that they don't know, all that kind of stuff. So,
you know, I like to think that actually the adventure has already inspired people to do
things that they've never done before. Yeah, certainly. So you've got a skydive planned.
Planned but not booked yet. Right, because that's, I keep using the skydive analogy on my podcast
for stand up, but right up until the moment you do it, you don't want to do it. But then you do it
and you're like, well, that's brilliant. Yeah, but I've never actually skydived. And I keep saying,
why do I use this analogy? I've never done it. And I don't think I ever will, to be honest. I
don't know. I don't think I could do that. I don't know, but I find out. Yeah. Tandem,
obviously, would be a tandem, wouldn't it? Yeah. I feel like I would say, well, maybe if I was
an Arab celebrity and, you know, I was strapped to someone and I knew that they were competent.
Yeah. You've got no choice. I'd be an A.O. So, wow, that's really exciting. So has the idea of
success changed from when you were younger? Yeah, I think when I was younger, I was probably trying
to plead with my parents. I was probably doing the good girl thing of, you know, getting the
qualifications, going to university, being a success, getting a proper job, all that kind of
thing. But I'm not sure, I think that success works for them, but I'm not sure that worked for me.
I think being a lawyer, I really enjoyed aspects of it, but I think the mould of lawyering and,
you know, the old fashioned, fairly male, pale orientated firms didn't necessarily
make me feel that I was fooling myself. But I kind of didn't feel unhappy until I'd been through the
redundancy process when I kind of looked at it objectively and go, it's not all I want. Maybe
it's not everything I've cracked up to be. So I think my idea of success when my kids were little
was just for my kids to grow up happy. And I didn't care what they did and, you know, how
successful they were. I remember having a chat to a friend of mine and she goes, what, you really
think that, you know, happiness is a goal? I said, well, you can't be the best at everything. So you
can't say be the best. You can say be your best, but you can't, if you give them goals to be clever
or get to a university or become, you know, a lawyer or whatever, you're setting them a task that
you don't know fits their personality. So I just wanted my kids to grow up happy and, you know,
do feel that we were there in case they wanted to branch out and do something completely different.
And that we didn't want to give them a job of making us proud. Yeah. Because I thought that was
a job that can be damaging. My parents were quite keen on, my mother was a teacher. They were quite
keen on academics. And my brother went into the Navy, got a degree from the Navy. My sister became
a nurse, but because she didn't get a degree, there was almost a feeling that she wasn't quite
as good because she never grew in everyone else did. And I thought, well, shame she's doing amazing
stuff. She was a children's nurse. She was saving children's lives. She wasn't saving anyone's lives.
She did her job. You know, my brother wasn't really saving lives as such. So I didn't like that sort of,
some jobs are better, you know, some children are better than other because of, I just thought,
no, no, they're just them. They just allow them to be them. So I think when, you know, when my kids
were little, my definition of success was just a happy age. Yeah, that was it. Didn't need anything
else. Job was a nice to have. Yeah. Don't get me wrong. I needed the intellectual stimulation,
but I wasn't really focused on that as a career and being, you know, the mind be all unendled.
The family came first. Yeah. And why didn't you choose the law? Did you have a burning desire,
because I always about, or this is a safe profession? No. Quite the contrary, actually,
when I was 16, I went to a career evening because I didn't have absolutely what I wanted to do.
And my mother was going, well, maybe you should, you know, go into a profession. You could be like
a lawyer, a doctor or a vet. It's like, mate, I hate this. I did blood so two of those seemed
really unlikely. And I remember going to the law college one and there was this bloke who was
probably a newly qualified lawyer saying how awful the exams were and how hard they were and
everything else. I already hated exams. I was quite good at them, but the first exam would make me
throw up the whole evening before I was really nervous about exams. It's like you really put me
off law. And then I was quite poorly at sixth form. I had Down to the Fever. So I just was doing
months further maths and chemistry. I thought like the pretty much anything I can do with that is
maths degree. So I'd go and do a maths degree. And I was lucky enough to get into Warwick where
the basically you could do half maths, half anything. And I loved maths and I was good at it,
but I couldn't see a future in it. And you could see a maths job that kind of attracted me.
So I did half anything else. So I played with lots of different topics. I was lucky enough to
learn Russian for a couple of years. Don't ask, it's just, I was fascinated by languages. I thought,
hey, this seems like good fun. But I did a law course as part of that and got really interested
in the law and how it works and the logical bit of, you know, working out answers and looking at
why one case with guilty and the other one wasn't and I just got sucked into it. So you've brought
a maths brain really to the law haven't you? Yeah. A real logical sort of, you know, step by step
approach. And I think that's probably why I, you know, ended up creating a really simple contract,
because I knew that maths is all about simplicity. It's all about reducing things to something that
we can understand from world is extremely complicated. And if we can create a nice little
simple model of it, then that helps us to understand it. And I kind of think all of all
the things that I've done over, you know, my past, I've bought it all into this idea of
simplifying and creating things that are really easy to use and good tools for people. Yeah.
Fascinating to hear your route into it. Random. Yeah. I was mindless because I watched LA law.
And then I was sadly disappointed to find out that the English legal system does not resemble
LA law. Not really. Not like that. Yeah. The first day on the bar course, the barrister came in and
said, so why do you want to be a lawyer? And I said, because I want to assert rights for people
who can't assert yourself. And he's like, what? But that's an answer. The only reason you become
a liar is to make money. I'm like, oh, so yeah, whoops, I'm clearly in the wrong place here.
So, but yeah, it's interesting what routes you take into the ethics, isn't it?
Yeah. So wrapping up then, what would young Sarah say if she could see you now and everything that
you've done? I think she'd say you've done good girl. Yeah. And that's probably it. Yeah. And
she probably said, I'm willing to think she's still friends with that thing. Great. Shout out
to the sweet. Perfect. Well, thank you for coming on the podcast. Have you got anything
that you'd like to promote? You want to know about your books or any other podcasts that you've
been on? So I've been on lots of podcasts, there's enough talking. I try and keep it short,
but 500 Words doesn't make a great podcast, but yeah, I've got a website, lots of free stuff. So
if people want to find out more about contracting, they can look at some of the checklists, some of
the free stuff on there to help them to understand more. Lots of stuff on my blog too. People might
understand a bit more about all contracts and some books, which are also available on my website.
Perfect. Well, thanks for coming. It's been really interesting. Again, it's someone I've
known you, but I had no idea about your life story. So really interesting to hear all that.
Thank you for your time. Thanks.