Antidoters Podcast Jess Butcher

It’s been a while since I’ve shared ‘my story’ (thank God). I used to do this a lot in my ‘Female Entrepreneur’ days to rooms of early-career women or invincible first-time founders. Years before ‘35 things I learnt by 35’ became popular clickbait, I had curated an entertaining monologue of anecdotes and life-lessons from across my career - something for everyone… (so thought my flattered ego).  Since retreating from London with a young family, I’ve gotten better at saying no, plus have had fewer reasons for self-promotion, but suddenly I find myself committed to an encore - the first in 5 years - and frankly, I feel a bit embarrassed.
So I’m killing birds this week by using this post to try and think out loud on how to bring my story up to date and maybe draw out some different conclusions with more years under my belt.   The previous version, delivered to graduating girls at my old school in 2018 can be found here and as I commented in the blog-blurb at the time: 
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My inner philosopher came out …slightly patronising and preachy in tone I realise on re-reading — but as an exercise, it was an invaluable one. I’d love to write one of these every 5 or 10 years and see how my rules and advice would change… as even re-reading this 2 years later, some of these ideas have moved on.  
Hello, 6 years later.  
And yet I hesitate. Because increasingly I find the presumptuousness of the whole ‘what I want to tell you about life’ trend gives me the ‘ick’ - at least from anyone under the age of 65 or who hasn’t been seriously confronted by their own mortality.  The older I get, the more aware I become of how much I have to learn, let alone impart…  
Life lessons assault us.  As previously discussed I feel an almost physical aversion to the modern cult of ‘personal brand’ and the narcissism I fear it encourages but it now seems to be a prerequisite for authors, musicians or creators to bring a ‘following’ with them should they want to go ‘pro’.  Even start-ups now only seem newsworthy if their founders’ stories are newsworthy. Above all, it has struck me that my lessons - borne from my interests, my background, priorities, values, family-life and financial circumstances - are only really relevant to… er… me.   The value in stepping back to consider these lessons is always greater for the story-teller than the listener.   What is it they say?  That we should not compare ourselves with others, but with who we were yesterday.  We should be our own competition. 
Strong sentiment but surely we can’t help but look for mirrors in the faces around us- whether close at hand, or in the spotlight.  Chat shows, biographies, Desert Island Discs and podcasting wouldn’t exist and be so popular if this wasn’t the case. Stories are the most powerful way of influencing people; shared fears, hopes and experiences are the glue that connects us.  
We seek inspiration for ideas we can borrow and combine into mash-up role models:  prioritise like her, write like him, parent like her, financially-plan like him, command speaking fees like her etc.   The problem is that huge success in one field for any one of these people has usually come at the cost of something… breadth of knowledge, family, friends, mental health, balance...  How many of us are actually willing to make those sacrifices?  And yet how many of us still end up feeling like failures because we don’t? 
Scott Galloway (NYU professor, author and entrepreneur) spoke brilliantly on this at a recent podcast recording I went to  - admirable (if a little unlikeable) for his single-minded focus on wealth and status-creation, which he was honest enough to admit came at the expense of knowing his children when they were young.
He asked everyone in the room the question: what is ‘rich’?  It brought to mind a socia

Been pondering age this week as I watched the stoic, moving interviews with D-day heroes and then observed Joe Biden, staggering, confused and slurring in recent public appearances.  Contrasting these with the coverage of young, ‘passionate’ activists disrupting campuses or destroying works of art or with all the young faces we see around us daily- eyes down in digital worlds and the generational differences today can seem starker than ever.  Yet another line of polarisation.
With the exception of veterans and maybe presidents, respect for our elders now seems deeply unfashionable and it’s no wonder given how few of us mix outside of our age-demographics.  We inhabit entirely different cultural siloes: we listen to different music; get our news from different sources; binge different dramas; use different colloquialisms and admire celebs or ‘influencers’ that other generations will never encounter.  Many of these have always been the case but never before as mutually exclusive by generation.  Most of soceity would been vaguely aware of most major national/global celebrities when I was growing up, but ask my mother who Mr Beast is or a teenager who Jeremy Clarkson is and they’ll both just blink blankly.  
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In the absence of actually knowing (m)any, it’s little surprise older people are frequently derided as out-of-touch: blamed for Brexit and Trump, high house prices, and much of our economic inequality (until that is, they age beyond being ‘dangerous’ and inexplicably, patronisingly become ‘cute’).  Simultaneously young people are branded lazy, angry, materialist or ‘snowflakes’ in outlook by many elders.  As ever, antidoters…  neither are fair or accurate generalisations. 
Of course, the political polarisation of young and old has been well documented for generations. 
Why is it people typically move right as they age and what does this mean for politics in a rapidly ageing world?   Is it, as often assumed, that people tend to gravitate towards more self-preservationist politics… for their assets, customs or the social conventions that they fear are in terminal decline in a world evolving so rapidly without them?  Or might it be that their more extensive life-experience provides them with more data points, experience and realistic insight into human nature?  Are conventions and traditions experiments proven to work over generations, discarded at our peril or is tradition “one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking.” (Warren Ellis) or ‘the democracy of the dead’ (Chesterton)?  
In a world that seems to prioritise ‘lived experience’ over data and evidence, it’s curious that the biggest proponents of this world view - the young -  can be so dismissive of the opinions fostered over decades-long lived experience.  
It is assumed that the passionate activism of youth reflects greater concern and empathy for the world.  Yet In his defence of ‘respecting our elders’ at an Oxford Union debate, quotes a myriad of research that consistently demonstrates that older adults are generally more ethical, more cooperative, and more trusting than younger adults with the latter displaying “a greater propensity for deceit, manipulation, and selfishness compared with older people”. 
On the question of ‘wisdom’  he comments:  
The very fact that we can even ponder this question suggests that we live in a society of relative comfort—a luxury secured through the efforts and decisions of previous generations…
Not all old people are wise, but almost all wise people are old…. 
True wisdom is not just about making good choices; it also encompasses the ability to retain sound judgement across a diverse array of situations, especially unfamiliar and challenging ones. …
Only by respecting elders enough to listen to how they made their decisions, i

This week I saw someone edit a Linkedin post because of feedback that the person they were quoting was a ‘troll’ (irrespective of the evidence within the quote);  I observed three people sharing a Piers Morgan soundbite with the careful caveat ‘it’s rare I agree with this guy but…’ ;  I saw someone else I respect get chastised for liking an X/ tweet from a persona-non-grata; … and I had a long, (depressing) conversation with my 10 year old about why it’s wrong for children to chant ‘Furry!’ as a slur at another on the playground (!?).  
Whilst I didn’t immediately connect the last to the others, it occurred to me that many adults now also need this reminder.  
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When did ad-hominem and who’s saying something become more important than what is being said?  It’s particularly tiresome in an election period.  Discredit the player (or throw a milkshake at them) and the substance goes unevaluated.   Undeniably, it’s effective as the more x-ist, nutty or ‘extreme’ someone is branded, the fewer platforms they get. The problem is that it typically forces them further to their extreme, often taking many fans with them, so counteracting the efforts of the ad hominem detractor.
A test for you.  What’s your gut response to the following quotes? 
“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place”
“Words build bridges to unexplored regions” 
"It takes less courage to criticise the decisions of others than to stand by your own."
“The really strong have no need to prove it to the phonies’ 
‘I believe in one thing only, the power of human will’ 
‘Better to live a day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep’ 
‘The great thing about letting people be true to themselves is they often do very good things indeed.
What do you think about them if I tell you that they’re from Goebbels, Hitler, Attila the Hun, Charles Manson, Stalin, Mussolini and Katie Hopkins respectively?   
And yes, the image above is another.  It’s from a 10-year old Pinterest page that strung inspirational Hitler quotes over Taylor Swift images and received 10s of 1000s of Swifty likes and shares (and you can still play this who-said-it-game here).   ‘Misinformation’, or an excellent mind-game to challenge our instincts? Sadly it proved far too dangerous for the young inventor to continue. She was hounded into closing her accounts (more). 
Wild times. Even I now have to be careful about who I ‘follow’ these days with my equalities role…  which seems madness.  Surely understanding better those with whom you might disagree is a critical part of forming a fuller world view? When did we get so comfortable playing the player, not the ball despite the oft-used Solzhenitsyn quote that reminds us that ‘the line separating good and evil passes…  right through every human heart”. 
It’s this type of thinking that leads to package beliefs:  the knowledge that if someone thinks ‘this’, they’re also highly likely to believe ‘that’, ‘that’ and ‘that’.  It’s profoundly unhealthy and lazy tribalism, albeit reassuring.  
It’s good for us to remember in the current climate that party politics doesn’t have to mean signing up to everything in one side’s manifesto, but simply making our own evaluations as to which package is, on balance, better and likely to do more good than harm.  We’re allowed to (and should)  prioritise different things within the packages or interpret our hopes or fears about the long term ramifications according to our experiences, world-view or knowledge (with the rapidly declining field of ‘History’, often providing the most unfashionable steer).   
One way of reframing this that I have enjoyed is ’s concept of ‘star manning’, which I’ve mentioned previously, but is worth a reminder during a

Hands up if you’d be up for a quick drug to fix the biggest problem in your life. 🙋Unless you live under a rock, you will have heard that this is now available for one of the most sizeable (sorry) facing Western populations: Fat.  And the ramifications could stretch much, much further than waistlines.
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Obesity has become the biggest cause of preventable death in the West.  In the US it contributes to the premature death of more people each year than all American deaths in battle ever (source: Johann Hari).  In the UK, over 60% of the population are now overweight - a contributing factor in more than 50% of cancers and with preventable diabetes now costing the tax-payer 10% of the NHS budget.   In But the miracle solution is finally here: GLP-1s, e.g. ‘Ozempic’- injections that suppress appetite and trick your brain into ‘satiety,’ (a new favourite word).   It’s the reason why most of the celebrities you have seen pictures of recently are looking increasingly hollowed out. 
Given the evidence for its efficacy this could be the greatest antidote I have ever and will ever cover on this blog.  But there’s an oft-quoted saying that there are only two types of drugs:  drugs that don’t work and drugs with side effects.  The question is whether the benefits outweigh the side-effects.  And for this one, we need to look at the potential of far-reaching ramifications across the whole of society and the economy... not just those in the human body. 
The problem is, our politically short-term silo-ing of issues means we’re very bad at this, instead playing sticking-plaster wack-a-mole on unwelcome side effects as they arise.
Implications for Healthcare 
In the US, people have fewer barriers to getting their hands on anything that they’re prepared to shell out for.  Not so in a tax-funded health system.  
In a Spectator article by Max Pemberton this week, he discussed how this innovation - being rolled out rapidly across global health systems - has the potential to bankrupt the NHS, diverting resources from other conditions and potentially removing incentives to embrace healthier lifestyles.  He considers how far weight should be considered a ‘disease’ vs. a ‘lifestyle issue’ and how this might be evidence of more ‘mission creep into the realm of personal responsibility for our wellbeing’.   Such conversations come up frequently around issues like nose jobs, hair-loss and IVF and are challenging to draw lines within. 
Dear Government,
Fix us please. 
It’s not our fault (or responsibility?),
Kind regards,
The Electorate.
But if not tax-funded, might we not see an even starker socio-economic divide with poor access to such drugs for the less well off (already over-represented in the statistics)? 
The implications for the economy 
So let’s think this through looking at the US market where two thirds of adults are considered either obese (70 million) or overweight (99 million)… a mere 169 million. 
Imagine half of these were on the drug and dropped their calories intake by 50%...  Wow.  The impact of that on the convenience food industry.   Coke, Nestle, McDonalds, Krispy Kremes, Chocolottalatte frapacccinos….
The literal and almost over-night shrinking of half the population may be fantastic for the individual, but for industry, it requires agile forecasting and the ability to pivot rapidly to avoid mass industry demise (something few big businesses are adept at) = mass job losses. With the agricultural and food sector employing 10% of people in the US, ‘thin, but broke’ could be a very realistic possibility for many.  I’ve no doubt the food industry lobbyists are on the case.
Few product industries would be immune to this significant a change, but of course there would be benefits too:  the fashion industry would see a huge boost in demand

Entrepreneurs are optimists by nature and masters at turning problems into solutions.  Many of the best harness counter-intuitive thinking that plays on human emotion rather than rationality - as best articulated by the Prince of behavioural interpretation (who may or may not appreciate being verbed).  So how can we harness his antidoter ways of thinking to solve the teen smartphone problem? (or get him in a room with Jonathan Haidt for a brainstorm - I’ll make the tea and take notes).
My career has been shaped by seeking to fuel the innovations of optimists.  It’s why I’ve invested the last three years at Sweatcoin, an exciting business which took the huge problem of our increasingly sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles and turned it into an opportunity.  They believed (and have since proven with over 150M global users) that incentives and rewards can represent a paradigm shift in how we think about movement:  the difference between choosing to stand on a moving-up escalator or walk up it; of taking the stairs rather than the lift or proactively getting off a bus a stop early.  Each additional step = points which can be spent on a range of goods and services.  It provides daily nudges that have the power to impact life-long behavioural change.  
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Ultimately, the Sweatcoin vision is to create a ‘movement economy’, one to rival the attention economy - but unlike the latter, offering a win-win for all, connecting brands and users in a marketplace of reward and benefit, with the potential to save the taxpayer billions on preventable diseases. (Type2 Diabetes costs the NHS £14Bn a year, >10% of its total budget and more than the police, fire and judicial system put together(!!).  With news this week that diagnoses are up 39% for Under-40s in just 6 years, move more, people. Move more).    
Being a small part of Sweatcoin’s success leads me to wonder how such incentive-led solutions might be harnessed for other problems I care about.  Working closely with such do-ers also explains my frustration with the opportunity cost of so much navel-gazing social discourse and the negativity of tear-down strategies.  Too many super-smart people get stuck in awareness-raising-mode (often misdirected by biased data) or rage, seeking to dismantle rather than build to take bites out of problems. 
Rory Sutherland is the master of positive alchemy and counter-intuitive thinking. He wrote the book on it.  He is one of the most erudite, amusing and potentially irritating podcast guests, with his hosts struggling to get a word in edgeways as he goes off on tangents of whimsical anecdotes to highlight insights into behavioural science E.g. here, here, here  (lesson to podcasters: just let him rip).
He is particularly strong on how simple reframing can solve problems. E.g. repositioning the annoying bus that arrives to unload plane passengers as a VIP chauffeur direct to immigration to avoid the queues; how a fraction of the money earmarked for HS2 rail could have created greater opportunity if it went towards upgrading existing trains with greater comfort and reliable wifi for relaxation and deep work opportunities; or how the Uber live-map functionality is ‘a psychological moonshot’- not reducing waiting time but making it 90% less frustrating.   
As an Ad-man, he frequently references the many brands that have successfully played with perceptions, turning weaknesses into strengths - think Guinness’s ‘good things come to those who wait’, Stella’s ‘reassuringly expensive’ or Marmite’s ‘love it or hate it’.    
Some favourite quotes: 
“Engineers, medical people, scientific people, have an obsession with solving the problems of reality, when actually … once you reach a basic level of wealth in society, most problems are actually problems of perception.”
“The skill you need to win an argument

This week I’ve been overwhelmed by ‘bounce head’.  My term for something every working mother will understand:  the feeling of holding more to-dos and conflicting emotions in your head at any one time than it’s possible to get down on a list; that sees your focus bounce back and forth constantly, within seconds from the most mundane lifemin to the most important family, friend or working-life priorities.
Sometimes known as ‘the mother’s mental load’, here’s mine this week in no particular order but as they bounce around my bounce head:
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A CEO Linkedin strategy; de-flea-ing an unhappy cat; 2 x two-page-long packing lists for school residential trips; replacing a rotten window frame that has just fallen off its hinges; inviting 20 Health-tech leaders to an event in Amsterdam; messaging eight mums re. dates for a birthday sleepover;  two more chapters of the book draft I’ve promised a publisher by end of June; booking a summer holiday; (damn it, and camp bookings between those dates); a 5-page business award nomination; puppy training for a dog that won’t stop rolling in sh1t; getting the final slides in for a main-stage talk at London Tech Week; replacing cricket whites that now flap around the calves; refunding unhappy guests in a tired, requiring-update Airbnb; 378 pages of board-paper reading (and more importantly, thinking);  four waiting loads of washing; trying to find a pitch template I saved 2 years ago to share with an impressive social entrepreneur I’ve just met;  buying four birthday party gifts;  follow ups to four exciting meetings;  a marketing strategy for the local town market; walk the new puppy; and all this around the existential emotional worries: an act of utter carelessness that has hurt a much-loved friend; that one child has received next to no 1:1 attention of late or that another’s academic confidence is in decline -  oh, and a blog to write.  And it’s only Tuesday.  Aaaaaaaand breathe. 
Bounce head is not actually about the sheer volume of the to-do-list but the head f*ck that comes from moving from one highly emotive or important issue to five other mundane, urgent actions in the space of a single minute.  And I bet many mums could meet or raise me on that list in any given week.  Our heads are a constant melee of emotion, guilt, frustration, irritation, deadline pressure and exhaustion - we’re Neo in the Matrix, dodging bullets that just won’t stop coming.
We’re left with an inability to prioritise the deep work that is really important until we’ve cleared some of the mental load of the urgent - with much of the latter triggered by immediacy - a call from the school nurse; a customer complaint or the sports kit left in the footwell of the car that is required prior to the away-coach leaving at 1pm. 
This is the reason that I lose patience with the ‘productivity’ industry (primarily promoted by childless men).  Yes, it would be lovely to eat the frog, time-box, read more self-help books or just do the three important things that day.  To choose not to worry about the washing piles or the kitchen table covered in a detritus of scrunched-up uniform in bags, dropped flower heads and sticky stains - but for most mums, the urgent can’t wait for the important.  The sh1t hits the fan when it choses and it’s impossible to push the little irritations into the back brain to enable deep focus elsewhere.  Decks must be cleared. 
And much of this is female.  It plays out along gendered-lines in so many family homes around me and all over the internet with men stepping over the optimistic pile on the bottom step or able to focus perfectly well on their laptop amidst the scrunched up uniform and on top of the sticky stain.  (Here’s Sally from Home & Away crying as she has this phenomenon explained to her by a psychologist, quoting how much more biologically