EP. 20 — Trapped in a Life Built Around Other’s Expectations? Here’s the Way Out — With Al & Leanne Elliott

There's a job you've thought about leaving. A sabbatical you'd take if you weren't worried about being judged for it. Something you want to write, or start, or say out loud — and the thing stopping you isn't whether you want it. It's what other people will think. In this episode of Unbehaved, you’ll hear from Al and Leanne Elliott — the married couple behind the UK's #1 management podcast, Truth, Lies and Work — who’ve built one of the most enviable-looking lives you'll come across. Digital nomads for six years. Working together. Making a living doing what they love. All because they refuse to build a life based on what other people think.  At 19, Al Elliott sat across from a deputy headmaster who told him that if he worked hard for twenty years, he could have that man's job and earn £28,000. Al's internal response: *f\*ck this.* He walked out of teaching and never went back. Leanne spent from 28 to 35 waiting for the maternal feeling everyone promised was coming. It never arrived. It took her mother saying *"that's okay"* for her to believe it might be. Between them, Al and Leanne have refused nearly every script they were handed — about careers, children, where to live, and whether you should ever go into business with your spouse.  In this conversation, they walk through exactly what it looks like to stop making decisions based on what other people think — and start listening to what YOU want instead. *Content note: this episode includes a story about a suicide-in-progress call, at around the six-minute mark. Resources at the bottom.* What We Cover: - The paper airplane that said "help" — how they met on an overnight Samaritans shift (03:53) - Working with your spouse without wrecking either one (15:03) - The story of success you were handed as a child (24:01) - Money is a river: unlearning the family rule that you don't discuss it (27:41) - Waiting for a feeling that never came (28:23) - Nothing is wasted — relational beats transactional (36:13) - What's genuinely different about work in 2026: AI fear, DEI backlash, and "pick a side" (41:30) - The hardest truth Al ever heard: *"You're not that important."* (48:15) - The permission slip — and how to work out whose voice is calling your idea stupid (51:29) About The Guests: Al & Leanne Elliott host Truth, Lies & Work, part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. Leanne is a business psychologist; Al is a serial entrepreneur. truthliesandwork.com — and find Leanne on LinkedIn, where she answers every single comment. PULL QUOTES "Stop behaving in the way you think other people expect. Stop trying to make decisions based on what you think other people think is right or is the norm. Make decisions based on what YOU want and what works for you and your values." — Leanne Elliott "If you work as hard as you seem to be working right now, then in about 20 years time, you can be sitting in my seat and you can be earning upwards of 28,000 pounds a year. And I sat there and I went, fuck this." — Al Elliott "The way we talk on microphone is the way we talk in real life. That's kind of what people say when they meet us — you're just exactly the same as you sound on the pod. Yeah. Because we enjoy doing it." — Al Elliott "Nothing is wasted. Even when you find yourself in a situation doing work on something you're not really getting paid for or not very much for and it's taking more of your time. Our mantra is always nothing is wasted, because we're learning something. We're making a connection here." — Leanne Elliott "The voice that tells you you're wrong and it's a stupid idea — try and identify whose voice that is. Because if that's your parents, that's your grandparents, that's a friend — that's probably the person who's holding you back the most." — Al Elliott "The fact is you've got to fall in love with the medium. If you hate it, it's like writing blogs — you're not going to stick at it. You absolutely have to love it." — Al Elliott "If they've got my phone number, then they should really be talking to me. If they've not — I don't know them, whatever. And I think that's kind of how when you're creating content and putting stuff out into the world, it needs to be about, I don't know you, whatever." — Al Elliott (on trolls) "It's almost like a bank account. If I've paid into somebody's bank account with goodwill and helping them over the years, and they certainly need to make a withdrawal, they're much more likely to be there to help me. That's how the world should work." — Leanne Elliott "Just because you're a manager doesn't mean you're that important. You're not that important. You're disposable if you don't do a good job. He was right. Brutal, but right." — Al Elliott (hardest truth he's had to accept) CHAPTERS:  00:00 Cold open: "Fuck this" 00:35 Welcome + episode setup 02:55 The interview begins: how did you build this life? 03:55 How they met on an overnight shift at the Samaritans 04:51 The suicide-in-progress call 07:20 The 6am callback that changed everything 08:44 Why they were volunteering in the first place 10:13 Fast-forward: marriage, moving to Spain, Brexit, becoming digital nomads 12:12 Expert host vs. unexpert host: how their paths converged 14:37 Working with your spouse: the boundaries + osmosis framework 17:34 The honest truth about building a podcast from nothing 22:00 The 1% better principle 23:10 Childhood stories of success: what you were handed 26:00 Al's "fuck this" £28K teaching moment 27:30 Stories they had to let go of (money for Al, having kids for Leanne) 30:50 Currently in Bosnia — permission to live wherever 33:00 A typical week + how the podcast provides livelihood 35:14 Transactional vs. relational: being of service 36:13 The "nothing is wasted" mantra + the Nico story 41:30 Patterns in 2026: AI fear, DEI pushback, polarization 45:20 How to deal with trolls 47:54 Rapid fire: hardest truth 48:53 Rapid fire: biggest lie 50:43 Most outdated work norm 51:14 The permission slip to unbehave 52:32 Where to find Al and Leanne 53:14 Meghan's Unbehaved Lessons of the Day   RESOURCES MENTIONED - Truth, Lies and Work — Al and Leanne's podcast: truthliesandwork.com - Oblong — Al and Leanne's consultancy: https://oblonghq.com - The Samaritans — UK crisis listening service where Al and Leanne met: samaritans.org Content note referenced in the episode: - If you or someone you know is in crisis, please reach out to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US (call or text 988), or the Samaritans in the UK at 116 123. CONNECT WITH AL & LEANNE: Podcast: Truth, Lies and Work Leanne on LinkedIn Al on LinkedIn   CONNECT WITH MEGHAN + UNBEHAVED: Website Substack: Unbehaved Book: This Isn't Working LinkedIn: @meghanfrenchdunbar Instagram: @meghanfrenchdunbar   FULL TRANSCRIPT (CLEANED) *Lightly edited for readability. Filler words, false starts, and transcription artifacts removed. Al's, Leanne's, and Meghan's voices preserved throughout.* \[Cold Open — Al] *I remember distinctly, I was sitting in front of the deputy headmaster. I must have been what, 19, on my first teaching practice? And the deputy master says, "If you work as hard as you seem to be working right now, then in about 20 years time, you can be sitting in my seat and you can be earning upwards of 28,000 pounds a year." And I sat there and I went — fuck this.*   Meghan: *(laughing)* Hard pass.   Al: *There's gotta be a better life than that.* \[Meghan — Welcome]   Hello there, lovely human, and welcome to *Unbehaved*. I'm Meghan French Dunbar, and that was Al Elliott — one half of the extraordinary duo I get to talk to today. The other half is his wife, Leanne.   One of the reasons I'm so excited about this episode is that Al and Leanne are going to walk us through what it actually looks like to stop making decisions based on what other people think.   And I don't know about you, but this is something that shows up in so many aspects of my life. That tension where you know you want to do something, but then you start questioning yourself because you're worried about what other people might think. Maybe it's the job you want to leave, but you don't quite know what your colleagues are gonna say. Maybe it's the sabbatical you'd like to take, but you're worried you'll be judged for taking time off. Or the Substack or the podcast or the content that you want to start putting out there, but you're worried about what other people are going to think about what you have to say.   Whatever it is, I hear this from so many people — they aren't living the life they actually want because of other people's opinions.   Today, Al and Leanne are gonna show us what it looks like to listen to what YOU want instead of what others want for you. And for them, it's resulted in the two of them leading a pretty epic life. Together, they co-host the UK's #1 management podcast, *Truth, Lies, and Work*, which they record and produce from wherever they want. In the last decade, they've lived in different European countries pretty much every few months.   So today I got to turn the tables on them and ask them the questions. And our conversation surfaced one of the most touching meet-cute stories I've ever heard that I totally wasn't expecting. It also brought up refreshingly honest wisdom for anyone who's trying to build something from the ground up — whether it's a small business, an art studio, anything in between. We also talk about one potentially overlooked practice they lean on (and I do as well) that has become foundational to their success.   One quick heads up before we dive in: this episode opens with a story about a suicide-in-progress call from Al and Leanne's early days as volunteers at the Samaritans, a crisis listening service in the UK. If that's not something you're up for today, feel free to skip ahead — it's at about the six-minute mark in the interview. Resources are also in the show notes.   Otherwise, let's get into it. The interview begins Meghan: From where I'm sitting here in Boulder, Colorado, it seems as though you two have nailed life. You get to live wherever you want, you work together, you've got this free-flowing, gorgeous number one show in the UK — all the things. What the fuck? How did you do this? I want the unedited version of how you built the number one management show in the UK as a couple. Go.   Al: Pure dumb luck after one too many whiskeys.   Meghan: Same answer as all entrepreneurs. Okay, cool.   Al: Well, Leanne, tell the story. There's a whole story before Truth, Lies and Work happened…   Meghan: Let's start there. Do it. I want it all.   Al: Where's a logical place to start?   Meghan: How did you two meet? And then how did the show become a thing? Let's do that. How they met at the Samaritans Leanne: This is a good story. Go, Lee. So I met Al when we were both volunteering for a charity called the Samaritans in the UK. We worked at the Manchester and Salford branch — it's a listening service for people who are in distress or despair and maybe feeling suicidal. I went in for an overnight shift, 11pm to 7am.   I met in the corridor a guy called Rob, who was the chairman of our branch. He was like, "You're all right — oh, you're on with Elliott tonight. I think you'll like him." I went, "Oh yeah? Is he all right?" "Yeah, yeah, he's into property, he's really sound, quite funny. I think you'll really like him." I said, "Oh, nice — it's always good to do an overnight shift with someone you get on with, isn't it?" He went, "No, but I think you two will really get on. I think you'll really like him." I was like, "All right, Rob. This isn't blind date."   Meghan: No pressure.   Leanne: So I walked into the room and I laid eyes on him — and I know they sound so cheesy — but I looked, and I was like, huh. Okay. Yeah. All right. There's something here. Okay.   We sat down at separate phones doing our calls. And then Al got a call about 4am.   Al: Leanne was my boss, basically. I'm nearly 50 now, Leanne's just turned 40, so there's a big age difference. Leanne was my supervisor for the night, looking out for me, training me. I get a call. It's the most serious kind of call — you only get maybe one a week across a thousand calls or so. It's a suicide-in-progress.   By the way, you may have to put some triggers on this. The woman said, "I don't want to live anymore." I won't go into too much detail, but basically it was a long — an hour-long call — where she was in the process of ending her life.   I was like, oh my God, what do I do? So I threw a paper airplane to Leanne — I opened it up on her side and it said "help." And Leanne came across. She's able to listen in but not speak. So she was giving me notes on what to say and stuff.   Without going too much into the gory details, the line went dead. After about five minutes of silence, I put the phone down and I was like, wow. It was one of the most impactful moments of my life.   We went to the kitchen, we got a cup of tea. Leanne's like, "How do you feel?" I said, "I don't know — this has never happened to me before." Leanne was great. She was talking me down, asking me questions. The idea of the Samaritans is that if you take a difficult call, then another Samaritan will ask you about it and almost take some of the pressure off you.   Leanne: So that all happened. About an hour later, I got a phone call. The Samaritans is a national organization, but they typically try and route calls to the local branch. On an overnight shift, that's hard, because only maybe 30% of branches in the country are open 24 hours. So it's really rare that you hear any outcome to a suicide-in-progress call — either way, whatever happened. And it's very rare that you'll get a call back into the same branch on an overnight shift.   The phone rings at about 6am. I answer. It's the same woman that Al had been speaking to. And she said, "I don't know if it's possible, but if you can find the man I was chatting to, can you please tell him thank you? I've woken up, I've been sick, and I feel hope. I've called an ambulance and I'm going to try and live."   Every goosebump on me just popped out of my body. Al was on another call, so I couldn't even grab him over to listen. So I probably only talked to her for a couple of minutes. The ambulance arrived and took her away.   Afterward, we'd shared not only this first incredibly intense moment — and it sounds so weird to people who maybe aren't ingrained in the Samaritans philosophy, but we're trained that it's a privilege to share that vulnerable moment with somebody. So to have shared that moment — and then to have shared an outcome that we rarely, rarely hear about, and for it to be such a positive outcome — it was very much a bonding experience.   That was the beginning. There you go. That's probably not the story you expected, was it?   Meghan: That's the best meeting story I've ever heard. I'm so glad we went there. Also — how old were you two when you met?   Al: I was 22. So I was 29.   Meghan: What type of humans are you that at 22 and 29 you're volunteering to stay up all night and help people in crisis? I mean, I know you're wonderful human beings — but this is deepening my love for you.   Leanne: I need to hold my hand up, Meghan. My reason was not selfless. I was doing my undergrad in psychology at the time — I thought I wanted to go into clinical counseling, and I was advised by someone at university to join a listening service. So I joined the Samaritans. I quickly realized I didn't want to go into that area of psychology because the emotional labor is so high — but I loved the work and stayed with the Samaritans for five years, long after I graduated. So my initial reason for joining wasn't that altruistic. Whereas yours was.   Al: No, she's being British. It was probably 70% altruistic and 30% — what's the opposite of altruistic? Whatever that is. Edit that back in. Put a fancy word in there, Meg.   But really briefly — it was the Year of the Volunteer 2007, I think it was, in the UK. And they were like, you should go and volunteer. It was like tithing of your money — 10% of your income going to the church. They were like, well, what if 10% of your working week went to volunteering? So I did a couple of volunteering things.   But anyway, being British — let's move on. Because that's a cool story, and we're very proud of the way we met, and we don't often tell it. In fact, this might be the first time, Meghan, we've told that story on somebody else's podcast.   Meghan: So honored. So how did we get from there to where we are now? Because this is now almost 20 years later?   Al: Yeah. Thank you for that, Meghan. We feel great.   Meghan: My husband and I just had the 17th anniversary of our first date. We can be — I'm not even gonna say middle-aged, I love this age, this is the fabulous age. We can be fabulous age together.   Al: You beautiful women are very far from middle-aged. I'm knocking on the door of 50, so I'm definitely middle-aged. I can't get out of bed without making noises. Real quick — please don't click that and take it out of context. Fast-forward.   So — 2007 to about 2012, ish. We were dating, living together, got married in Gibraltar, which is a tiny little enclave in the corner of Spain. Had a reception in Spain. Then a year later decided to basically put our life into the huge blender of random and say, right — we're going to go live in Europe. So we went to Spain and lived there for five years. And then Brexit happened.   Now, in case anyone's not sure — Brexit essentially meant that we, as Brits, couldn't live in Europe long-term. We still live in the UK. That'd be weird if we couldn't live in the UK.   Meghan: Right, that wasn't my understanding.   Al: Maybe I'm not qualified to explain what Brexit is. Basically, it would be much harder for us to stay in Europe long-term. So I had this idea: what if — because Brexit was going to take a couple of years to go through — what if we tried to visit every country in Europe before it becomes really hard for us to do that?   So we became what the kids call digital nomads. It was meant to be a six-to-twelve-month thing. We did it for six years, which is awesome. We traveled around Europe, went to Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand. It was wonderful. We were working remotely, but working remotely separately. And then around COVID time, we started working together. We set up Oblong, our consultancy — and then Truth, Lies and Work came from that. The expert host and the unexpert host Meghan: On the website it says Leanne, you're the expert host, and Al, you're the unexpert host. There's a bit of research and data on one side and the real-world experience on the other. How did the paths deviate and then come back together in terms of what you both were doing at that time?   Leanne: I was mainly working freelance for an Australian company doing recruitment management training for a fully remote team. Around COVID, unsurprisingly, I was getting asked more about remote work and how to manage teams that way. That's when I kind of started freelance.   Al and I would always talk about work, as any couple does over a glass of wine in the evening. And we realized that a lot of what we do is the same thing, but coming from a different perspective. Al was very much into sales and marketing as a serial entrepreneur — how do we sell a dream to people, how do we engage people in a product or an organization we want to sell, how do we create an experience they love and thrive from?   So it became clear that we were talking about the same thing, but from different perspectives. My concern with organizational psychology is that sometimes the lack of commercial focus makes it less relevant to smaller organizations. So we saw this as an opportunity to bring our skills together and make a way of working that traditionally lived in very large corporate or public sector available to entrepreneur-led businesses that are agile and enjoy change and experimenting with new things.   Al: Just to add to that — the books I read, Leanne thinks are boring and ridiculous, because they're all about how you can make a million dollars in an hour. And the books Leanne reads are boring to me because they use words and statistics I don't understand, and the people who write them have more names after their name than are in my name.   So we were like, hang on a minute. I translate what Leanne does, but Leanne keeps me on track to ensure it's rooted in science. That's been a really good partnership. It seems to have done us quite well, I think. Working with your spouse Meghan: So as you're thinking about building a consultancy together AND doing the show, every human around you is probably saying some version of, "What are you guys thinking? Don't work with your spouse. It's a terrible idea." How was it imagining, "I'm going to do this with you"? Did you have any agreements at the beginning about how the relationship would continue and how you would cultivate it while also working together?   Leanne: That's a good question. From a starting point, Al and I are in a slightly different position than maybe the majority of couples that might go into business together — because as I mentioned, we're digital nomads. So we were traveling together, living together, without much of a social network around us for big chunks of time. We were very used to spending every hour together and, when not working with each other, literally working next to each other. So we were already kind of used to that level of intensity.   When we started working together, it was pretty soon after that Al was like, "I think we might need to talk about boundaries" — which was impressive as a psychologist. I know, I know.   Al: I didn't really understand what the word meant. But we kind of said, well, I'm in charge of this bit and I have a budget for this bit, and Leanne's in charge of this bit and that's her realm.   However, what's been interesting over the last five years — and I'm going to use another word I'm not sure I know the meaning of — osmosis. Leanne will start saying stuff and I'm like, "How the hell do you know that?" I'm like, "Because I've sat opposite you for 310 episodes and you've talked amazing stuff." And then she'll go, "I've got a great idea for a potential product." And I'm like, "How do you know how to create a product?" She's like, "Well, because I've been with you for 17, 18 years."   The key thing is: define your boundaries, allow osmosis, and then don't hold on. Don't make your entire ego around "I'm the sales and marketing guy" or "I'm the product management guy." Because then if your partner comes in and says, "I've got a great idea," your instincts go, "No, no, no — stick to your lane." But if you've got a great relationship and a great working relationship, you're like, "Cool. Tell me." And you're a bit like, "I wish I'd thought of that, but God, I'm glad one of us did."   One of the best things we did in terms of trying to separate work and life — we're not always very good at it — but one thing we've consistently done for the last five years is every evening, if we're just sat chilling out, Al will say (or I will say), "Are you okay to talk about work?" And it's absolutely fine for the other person to go, "No, can we talk about it tomorrow?" Yep, no worries. If it's out of hours, you need to ask permission — and if permission isn't granted, that's okay. Building a podcast from nothing Meghan: So you're like, "We're gonna do a podcast." And at the moment I came on your show, it was the #1 management show in the UK. I'm sure that just happened overnight — just super easy success, like it was just luck. How did you actually do that? Especially for baby podcasters such as myself who are dreaming of one day having a full-time podcast and getting paid to do this thing that we love — I'm asking for all the other podcasters, not myself. I'm totally asking for myself.   How do you stick with it at the beginning, in the building stages, when you have a story of how much momentum you "should" have and all the things you "should" be doing — and actually get to a place where you have significant numbers and are making a serious impact?   Al: Can I take this for a second? First of all, if you ask us how we grew from zero to where we are now — six figures — we have no fricking idea. We've got guesses. But there's a famous quote: "I know that 10 of my advertising dollars out of a hundred work very well. I just don't know which 10." I think it's kind of that. So we just threw a lot of the proverbial at the wall. Some of it stuck.   Leanne is phenomenal on LinkedIn — that's one thing that really helped. There's lots more we can do. We should be clipping more. We should be posting more.   What I can say categorically is that the majority of baby podcasters (using your words — I'm not being provocative) get to episode 30 and go, "It's not working, let's not do it." Our first podcast, we got to episode 120 and nobody was listening. We got like 20,000 listeners in total over three years. But we LOVED having our podcast. We loved doing it. I'll be honest, probably a full 60 of those episodes, we were quite drunk. But we really enjoyed the medium and we built and honed our craft.   Just to be clear, our first podcast was about travel when we were nomading. It wasn't that we were talking about serious business stuff — a couple of bottles of wine, talking about travel.   Leanne: One bottle of wine. Let's tone that down.   Al: With the second one, one of the things that kept us going was that very early on, I applied for the HubSpot podcast network. It's kind of like VC where you get like a seed round, a Series A, and so on. I was exuberant and cocky, and I jumped on the website and applied. To my surprise, they replied — and it wasn't the reply I was expecting, which was going to have profanity. They said, "Yeah, we'd like to talk to you more about this." We chatted more and more. We went on maybe about episode nine.   That's what kept us going. We had to do it, because we were contracted to. We probably would have kept doing it — but I can't imagine we would have tried to make it better every single episode. Whereas genuinely from episode 20, we've looked at every single facet of it. We want every episode to be 1% better than the previous one. That's what drives us.   Also — the way we talk on microphone is the way we talk in real life. That's what people say when they meet us: "You're just exactly the same as you sound on the pod." We're like, "Yeah — because we enjoy doing it." This is not, "Oh my God, I'm going to sit down, record a pod, I hate my own voice, editing is so much work." The fact is: you've got to fall in love with the medium.   If you hate it, it's like writing blogs. People who don't like writing blogs, you're not going to stick at it. You absolutely have to love it. You need the consistency. You need the momentum.   Not everyone is going to be able to just apply to a network and get on to get the initial funding, accountability, support, and mentoring. We were very fortunate to get that so early. But what you CAN replicate is accountability. Partner up with other podcasters trying to build a show and commit to the schedule.   Network is so important. Just talk to anyone who loves podcasting or wants to be on podcasting — they'll share your podcast with everybody. One thing that worked really well for us was in-person events. We did three in-person events over 12 months where we literally turned up with a pod and recorded from there. I'm not exaggerating when I say each event doubled our numbers — because so many eyes in our audience. It was wellbeing shows, people and culture shows. They were our audience, watching our people do what we do in real life. That made a huge difference.   Leanne: But the reality is we love it. We have so much fun doing it. And it's really, really fricking hard. There are as many days we don't want to do it as we do. When you're 310 episodes in, it gets a little relentless. But you've got to find that joy, and you've got to find the conversation you're excited about. The old playbook and childhood stories of success Meghan: The thing about your show is: there's research and real-world experience. There's business acumen where you're getting insights, and there's humor and warmth and quirkiness and playfulness. I feel like it speaks to the broader theme I see from both of you, which is simply letting the old playbook go — this idea that business has to be serious. And there's the old paradigm story that you need to have a stable job and live in the same place, blah blah blah. And you all haven't done that either.   So this goes all the way back to your childhood. What was the story of success you were handed as a child? How has it evolved to present day, and why?   Leanne: Oh man. I think I have clear ones actually. Two things: I was the youngest of three girls. My dad was born in Liverpool in England to Irish Catholic parents who got divorced. He came from a very poor upbringing, with a lot of judgment at the time — solo parent family, Catholic Irish, there's a lot in there. So he worked really hard to get an apprenticeship, get himself to university, become an electrical engineer.   I always say my dad is the first feminist I ever met. He was like, "I've got three girls, and you can do whatever you want. You don't need to rely on a man. You don't need to rely on anybody. You pick your profession, you work hard, you make sure you can stand on your own two feet." And his belief was that education was behind that. So education was important. We were expected to go to school, to university, to pick a profession. And we all did. My eldest sister is a head teacher, my middle sister is a chartered accountant, I'm a psychologist. Education was baked in as a lever of success.   The second thing: there's a bit of an age gap between me and my sisters. Before I was born, my family spent five years living in Saudi Arabia, where my dad worked as an electrical engineer. The stories I heard from that and the adventures they had living abroad — that was something I always wanted to do. That was another pillar of success for me: being able to work abroad and take your life somewhere else while building your career.   Those are the two things from my childhood I took with me. What were yours?   Al: Similar kind of thing with education — my parents were pushing me. Well, I say pushing — encouraging me to become a teacher. This was the early 90s. I did my GCSEs (which is like year 11, kind of like freshman year in the US — about 16 years old). I did all right in them. And they said, "Right, you're going to be a teacher." I was like, "Okay." They said, "Go and do these A-levels."   So I did four A-levels and I failed three of them and got an E in maths. So I was going to be a maths teacher, because that's the only level I passed. I scraped into university in the North, and they were like, "Okay, yeah, I suppose you can come in."   And I remember distinctly — I was sitting in front of the deputy headmaster. I must have been 19 on my first teaching practice. We were in a school, doing eight weeks teaching practice. And the deputy master says, "If you work as hard as you seem to be working right now, then in about 20 years time you can be sitting in my seat and you can be earning upwards of 28,000 pounds a year."   And I sat there and I went — fuck this.   Meghan: *(laughing)* Hard pass.   Al: There's got to be a better life than that. And I hate kids as well. So I was like, yeah, let's not do that. I blew it all up, left university, went into sales for like three years — door-to-door, phone sales, all that kind of stuff. Started a business, went well, didn't go well, went bankrupt. That story is on the episode you referenced when we first chatted. But basically I was like, "No — I'm not having that kind of life. Thank you very much." Stories they had to let go of Meghan: Were there any stories that you were handed as children, adolescents, that you had to let go of — or that held you back from actually living into the life you have right now?   Al: Yes. I want to be really careful when I say this — I'm not blaming anyone in my family. But we came from a family where it was forbidden to talk about money, particularly at the dining table. It was rude to ask how much someone earned. Money was something nobody ever talked about. And I have to be honest — that's something I rebelled so hard against, and went way too far the other way. Because that story of "money is dirty" — I had to work with, like…   I read something — I'm sure it was Norman Vincent Peale or Jim Rohn or Tony Robbins — where they said, look at how the people around you describe money. They say, "He or she is filthy rich." They say, "Money is the root of all evil," when the quote is actually "the love of money is the root of all evil." There's resentment, all that — and you have to let it all go.   Deepak Chopra, I think, said that money is like a river. As soon as you try to keep it, it stagnates and damages the entire cash fund. But if it's like a river where you can dip in anytime you want, take as much as you want, then it's cool. So that's why: when you get money, spend money, give it away. Don't feel like it's something you're never going to get again.   That was really freaking tough. Took me 10 years of reading all these wanky self-help books to understand and change my language and thoughts around it. I don't blame my parents — that's just the way stories are handed down. But that was mine.   Leanne: I was pretty fortunate, actually, as the youngest. By the time it got to me, my parents were like, whatever — as long as you go to university, you're cool. So probably the only thing was around having a family. I guess I — I'm an old millennial, I'm 41 — I always assumed I was gonna have kids. Go to school, to uni, get a job, have children, maybe go back to work part-time, or try to figure out that dynamic. And as I got older, I was waiting for that desire to kick in — "I'm ready to have kids, I want to have kids now."   And it never really did.   I felt really uncomfortable, probably from age 28 to 35, when it's like — this is the time — and it never kicked in. I remember driving to see my friend, and my mom was with me, and my friend had just had a baby. My mom just said to me, "Do you ever think you'll have children?" And at that point, I was probably about 35. I said, "I've been waiting for that feeling to kick in — that maternal feeling — and it just hasn't happened." And she said, "That's okay."   I think that was a moment where I said, "Okay, maybe it IS okay. All right then." Since then, it's just been something that isn't going to be a part of my life. At this point, I don't think it was ever meant to be. But when I was younger, I guess I assumed — or felt pressured — that it should be. Permission to live wherever you want Meghan: Sometimes it's the stories where we need someone else to just say "that's okay." And sometimes it's ourselves who need to say that's okay for you to just do the thing that you want to do. Where do you live currently?   Leanne: Bosnia and Herzegovina, near Croatia.   Meghan: Every time I talk to you, you're in a different place. Do you feel like you've had to give yourselves permission to do this? Or has it ever been something you've worried about?   Al: I'm not sure I've ever worried about that. Have you? What I've worried about is that a lot of our friends will describe our life as, "It sounds amazing. I mean, it's not for me." And that is a very odd thing to hear — someone go, "Well, it clearly sounds cool. Not for me." It took me a long while to realize that they were essentially closing that door so they didn't feel like they were missing out. That's my interpretation.   This is typical white male privilege, isn't it? Deciding how other people are thinking. But this is what I was thinking — that potentially that's what they're doing. Just like I've probably done the same with children. I've gone, "It's not for me," because then I don't need to worry about it anymore, don't need to regret it. I'd rather regret not having children than regret having them. So — okay, cool.   I suppose the bit that did bother me at first was — I was one of those ex-pat idiots who'd come back and be like, "I forgot the name for this. What is it? I knew the Spanish word for it." I was trying to make it work too hard. So I was a bit unbearable.   Leanne: I think during that time — maybe it was my context — I was working for Fleur, and the MD and her husband were in business together and working remotely and traveled. Members of the team traveled and lived in different places. So I was in an environment where lots of people were doing it. It didn't feel like I was very unique in that. Within our friendship group, yes — but not in terms of people in my work world. A typical week + livelihood Meghan: How is your livelihood made up right now? Are you working full-time? What does a typical day or week look like?   Al: When we first started doing the pod, we were doing 30 hours each a week on the podcast. I had Final Cut Pro up with side chains, adding effects, cutting everything. We've realized there's an 80-20 to that, and we've managed to get it down to probably 10 to 15 hours each week. Typically Monday and Tuesday are podcast days — we record, we do two episodes a week, so we record those, prep whatever we need for the coming week. We'll maybe do two to three interviews a week. So it's part-time, the podcast.   Leanne: Consultancy rolls in and rolls out as the nature of any consultancy or freelancer will know. Sometimes it's busy, sometimes it's not. The key thing for us in that downtime is constantly thinking about three things:   One — how do we improve the podcast? How do we continue to innovate it and make it interesting so people still listen? What formats are getting tired? How do we appeal to a broader audience? Do we go back to video? All these big questions. We probably spend as much time talking about podcasts as we do creating it, in terms of how we can make it better, who we want on as guests, what we want to be talking about. That includes a lot of research and reading what's happening in the news and the world of work.   The second thing is products for our consultancy clients. We have our own employee engagement product that we've had for a while. We're currently developing a management training product, which has been taking up some of our time.   The third thing, if I'm being honest, is around life planning. How and where do we want to live is a fair conversation we have most weeks — especially when you live abroad and you're battling with visas and the Foreign Office doesn't know and you have to leave the country for three months and go to Bulgaria. Some of our choices and our working week is filled up with, "How do we stay in this country we're currently in?"   That's how our time is split. And being completely transparent financially — right now, the majority comes from the podcast. Transactional vs. relational Meghan: That's a dream. One thing you mentioned on the podcast I listened to — I'll put it in the show notes — was that you see the show as a vehicle for highlighting other people and celebrating them and making them look good. I feel like this is a common thread throughout a lot of what I've heard both of you talking about, all the way from the Samaritans through where we are today — which is helping other people.   It's part of a transition I advocate for — moving from transactional to relational, being of service to people and not trying to squeeze the most out of everyone you meet. For the humans out there who want to push back and say, "Well, you could get more out of those relationships" — how do we help people understand the profound beauty and value of being relational instead of transactional?   Al: First of all — read your book, because your story around the magazine you built, everything you've done — it just seems so relational.   I think a lot of people are self-centered — because that's the nature of being human. You have to look out for yourself. But if you can start to expand away from that and go, "Right — I'm going to be okay if I can help as many other people be okay as possible," magical things happen. That quote I keep saying and cringing every time — something like, "The quickest way to get what you want is to help other people get what they want."   Think about sales. Demonstrate you can help someone by actually helping them. If I went to you and you said, "I want to grow my pod," and I said, "Tell you what — have a look at your analytics next week," and suddenly you had an extra 5,000 listeners and I said, "I did that. Do you want to give me five grand a month and I'll get you another 10,000?" — you may or may not say yes, but you're certainly not going to tell me to go away. You're going to consider it. Because I've helped you. I've demonstrated I can help you BY actually helping you.   I feel like I've gone a little bit 70s hippie here — we should be passing around a wet cigarette. Lee, can you put a little skin on those bones?   Leanne: A mantra Al and I have is: nothing is wasted. Even when you find yourself doing work on something you're not really getting paid for — or not very much for — and it's taking more of your time, our mantra is: nothing is wasted. Because we're learning something. We're making a connection.   There have been so many examples where later down the line, by nurturing that relationship, by giving that time to somebody, it has come back — in terms of either a paid job, or a connection to somebody else who becomes a client, or just the opportunity to have conversations with people who feed you, especially in times like this. Even in the bad times, nothing is wasted.   I'm a big fan of positive psychology, and I can get a little bit woo with it. I don't get woo often — but I do with this. Because you have to train yourself to be positive. You have to train yourself to be grateful. And you have to train yourself, through that, to be resilient.   Like I joked before about getting kicked out of Bosnia and having to move to Bulgaria for three months — we did that last summer, and we had two days notice to uproot our entire life in a house we'd rented for nine months and wouldn't get the money back for. We had to find somewhere.   Three years before that, when we were nomading, we were in Bulgaria with a guy called Nico — lovely, a bit chaotic, a bit crazy. I loved him. Describe him as a toddler with wine — and a helicopter. Crazy guy. We put our time in with him. We really enjoyed spending time with him — though I think he enjoyed spending time with us more than we did with him at times. But we welcomed him in and kept that relationship going.   So when this happened to us — and we hadn't seen him for three or four years — we messaged him: "Nico, bit of a pickle, we need to leave the country. Any chance we can stay in that house you rented to us six years ago?" He's like, "Yeah, of course you can. See you in a week."   There are always things you're going to come back to when you need help. If you've helped somebody, if you're paying it forward — it sounds so cheesy — but it's just the way humanity works. It's almost like a bank account. If I've paid into somebody's bank account with goodwill and helping them over the years, when they need to make a withdrawal, they're much more likely to be there to help me. And that's how the world should work.   Al: I like that. So you're saying: pay into your bank account before you try to make a withdrawal, or they should be overdrawn on goodwill. That should be a book.   Leanne: I think it probably is. I think I stole it from somebody else.   Al: Also, just a really quick practical thing for your listeners: if anyone's considering creating a podcast, or already has a nascent one — stop making it about you and getting your name out there. Make it about getting other people. The number of people who — you can email them and they're like your Level 4 and they're Level 100, and you go, "Would you like to come on the podcast?" And they go, "Sure." And you're like, "How the hell am I speaking to this person I've been worshipping my entire life?" You're obviously nodding. You know exactly what I'm talking about.   Meghan: I mean — I was 29 years old and I sent a cold email to John Mackey, the co-founder of Whole Foods, and said, "Do you want to be on the cover of my business magazine? PS, it doesn't even exist yet. I'm gonna crowdfund it this summer." And he was like, "Sure." And I was like, "Okay. Cool cool cool cool." And then I had to do it. And then he was on the cover of the damn magazine — and that's how we got into every Whole Foods in the country. Patterns in 2026 Meghan: Speaking of helping people — you all take lots of people's questions in your workplace surgery segment. What are some of the patterns or trends you're seeing in 2026 that feel different than the last couple of years?   Leanne: Fear around AI. And I mean fear — it's not stress, it's not insecurity, it's fear. The livelihoods, the professions, the identities people have built over decades being taken away by something we don't quite know. I think that's been a big shift.   More nuanced — a couple of years ago, talking about wellbeing and DEI was a very positive space to be. Now, wellbeing has become a bit of a buzzword. DEI — the pushback is brutal. People are feeling that. We had one recently about somebody whose DEI programs were being rolled back and values being changed on the website and how do they respond?   A lot around identity. Before, work was part of our identity — with things wrapped up in that, especially around burnout, which could be very difficult for entrepreneurs to deal with. But in terms of threats to identity, a depth I've not seen in my career.   Al: I'd add to that — the polarization that's happened. It happened on social media. Now it's happening at work, where people ask, "I'm now working for a boomer. How am I supposed to deal with a boomer, because I'm a Gen Z?" And it's like — you probably have grandparents. How do you deal with them? You have to go over and reset their router, replace the batteries in the remote control. But otherwise, you know how to talk to them.   Why are we making it all about "them and us"? That's one of the things that's so sad about the DEI stuff — DEI was meant to bring us together. Now it seems like, "They're the kind of company that does DEI, but we're not, because we are smart." And then you see it all like — you know, that man, are you against that man? Are you this? Are you that? Boomers versus this? Pick a side.   People say, "Stop being sheep." It's like — hold on a minute. Sheep is lovely. Sheep is how we existed for 10,000 years — as an entire herd of people, of organizations. That's how we protected ourselves. Now we're going, "Well, Europe's crap because they do this," and then Europe's going, "Yeah, but if we break our leg, it doesn't cost us anything, does it?" Wait — aren't we all just nice people trying to get along in the world and do the best with what we've got?   That's where we get most of our — we don't get trolled very often, unless we mention certain words. The T word. Every time — trolled. Even if it's just been passing.   Leanne: For engagement, though.   Al: Yeah, it's good for engagement.   Leanne: But we get trolled on things we more recently — anything around diversity, inclusion, belonging. We did an episode on transgender rights. My goodness — the comments we had on that episode. Between 2022 and 2024, we would talk about these things openly and people would be supportive, would comment, share. Now all of those topics have become — you're absolutely right — points of divide. People just want to stamp where they stand. And it's a bit frightening. Dealing with trolls Meghan: How do you deal with the trolls?   Al: First of all — when we start getting trolls, it means we're getting attention. It means we've probably made it. Yeah, no — we don't mean like "made it," but you know what I mean. The opposite of love isn't hate — it's ambivalence. So we're still on the spectrum of love and hate. We're on that side. People care enough to sit there and go, "I'm going to write to these very strange English people and tell them the man has got a face like a melted candle."   Leanne: The only trolls I ever rise to are the ones who question the evidence. If it's a point of opinion — that's fine. Unless it's discrimination or hatred. Then you're not welcome here. I think I've only ever deleted a handful of comments, and most of those were on the transgender episode — because they just don't need to be in the world and our guests don't need to see that. But it's around the evidence.   So I get into arguments with people who — like, I'll talk about diverse teams and how diverse thinking and demographic diversity can also be good for team performance. And someone was like, "Cite your source." And I was like — fair. I didn't mention my source. Here you go. Hold my beer.   Meghan: Yep. Receipt, receipt, receipt.   Leanne: Exactly. So that's how I push back — with evidence. Otherwise, it's people's opinions. Unless it's discrimination or hatred, which we just delete and remove. As Al said — let them go. It's engagement. They tend to tie themselves in knots more than we do. They don't need our intervention most of the time.   Also, Meghan — you probably notice this yourself. I know you're nowhere near as old as us, but when you get a little older, you're sort of like, "I don't really care what you think, if the truth be told." If I know you, I still probably don't care much about what you think about me. But if I don't know you? I couldn't give a shiny shite.   Al: I saw Tom Holland — I'm not a big fan, but I don't dislike the guy, I don't know him — he was on Instagram and somebody asked him about handling criticism. He said, "If somebody says something bad about me, my only concern is: have they got my phone number? If they've got my phone number, then they should really be talking to me and saying, 'That's my face.' If they've not — I don't know them, whatever." I think that's kind of how, when you're creating content and putting stuff out into the world, it needs to be about — I don't know you, whatever.   Meghan: Also, Leanne and I are exactly the same age. So I just got into the "genuinely couldn't give two shits" stage. And it is glorious and wonderful. Rapid fire round Meghan: All right, we have our rapid-fire round. Truth, lies, work. Hardest truth you've ever had to come to terms with.   Al: You're not that important. When I got my first management job, my HR director sat me down and went, "Just because you're a manager doesn't mean you're that important. You're not that important. You're disposable if you don't do a good job." He was right. Brutal, but right.   Leanne: Wow. That is so much better than mine. Mine's really cheesy — money doesn't make you happy. The lack of money doesn't make you happy. Yeah. I'm going to leave it there. There's so many tones on that I don't need to go into.   Meghan: Okay. The biggest lie you've ever been told. Or the best lie you've ever told. We both look at Al.   Al: Okay — biggest lie I ever told, Meghan, was that I was running a legal off-license that delivered alcohol. When in actual fact, what I'd done is basically ordered everything for every single person in the world and printed out an order sheet. I had literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper. So if the police came in and said, "Why did Meghan order three bottles of wine?" I'd go, "Give me a minute, I'll go find it." And I proved it. That's probably the biggest lie I've ever told.   Meghan: This was to get around licensing restrictions.   Al: Sorry — yes, I should have given that context. That's also very niche because that's English licensing law from like 2001. Who cares about that? The point is, the licensing man said no. And I went, "Hold my beer. I will print out every possible order should I ever get audited." If you can imagine me as a much more British, not as good-looking, slightly less cool Mike Ross from Suits — that was my role in that business.   Leanne: I'm not sure anyone told me this, but I think it's a lie that I believed to be a thing — that psychologists have to be very professional and put-together and speak well and not swear and remember the big words and present themselves to the world in an Oxford, Cambridge, Ivy League way. I've learned very recently that that's a lie. People want authenticity — how it is. And I don't use the big words, because I can't remember them. And I'm from the north of England, so I don't sound posh and fancy. But hopefully I can talk about psychology in a way that makes sense to people who aren't psychologists.   Meghan: Most outdated work norm or practice that you wish people would change.   Leanne: Myers-Briggs. Myers-Briggs. Please, for the love of everything in the world — can we put Myers-Briggs in the bin already, please?   Al: Yes, I think you know what Leanne feels about that. I would probably say the whole return-to-office thing — where offices in certain cases do make a big difference, if you're in a very creative environment where you need to be around people. Mad Men, for example, wouldn't have worked if they all worked at home. The permission slip Meghan: If you were to give people a permission slip to unbehave around anything — a societal script, a workplace script, whatever — what is the permission slip you wish you could give people to stop behaving in one certain way?   Leanne: Stop behaving in the way you think other people expect. Whether it's in your life, your career, where you live, how you work, what you do. Stop trying to make decisions based on what you think other people think is right or is the norm. So — you have my permission slip: make decisions based on what YOU want and what works for you and your values and the way you want to live. Do that.   Al: Wow. I cannot beat that. So I'm just going to add the tiny thing of — if you say, "I'm going to go and live in \[not Bali, but] Lombok, or something. I'm going to go for nine months to Germany," and the voice that tells you you're wrong and it's a stupid idea — try and identify whose voice that is. Because if that's your parents, that's your grandparents, that's a friend — that's probably the person who's holding you back the most.   Permission to pursue the stupid ideas.   Meghan: Look at that mic drop. Where to find them Meghan: We've mentioned the podcast many times. Where do people find you? How do people best support you?   Al: Basically just search online — *Truth, Lies and Work*. We come up any way you look. The website's truthliesandwork.com. Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, search for Truth, Lies and Work. And more importantly — go search for Leanne Elliott on LinkedIn, because she is the LinkedIn queen. She responds to every single comment, good or bad. Don't search for me. Eventually, it sometimes takes me a little while — but that's where you should go.   Meghan: Thank you, thank you, thank you.   Al & Leanne: Thank you so much for having me. Amazing questions. We love you so much. We do love you so much.   Meghan: I love you guys. \[Meghan — Outro / Unbehaved Lessons of the Day]   Alright, my friend — before I sign off for the day, here are my key Unbehaved Lessons that I took away from today's episode.   Number one: sometimes that "fuck this" moment is the most important career decision you're ever gonna make. Al's moment sitting in front of the deputy headmaster at age 19, hearing about his £28,000 future and firmly saying "nope," is pretty much the seed of what he and Leanne have built — the ability to listen to that voice inside of you that pushes back and tells you something is wrong or not for you, no matter what you feel like you should be doing.   Number two: authenticity is the name of the game. Al put it best: "The way we talk on the microphone is the way we talk in real life." That's what draws people to their show. Every attempt to manufacture a more professional version of yourself is a barrier between you and the people who would actually resonate with you. This is how they built the UK's #1 management podcast — by refusing to sound like every other management podcast out there. Leanne's closing line speaks to this as well: "Stop behaving in the way you think other people expect. Make decisions based on what YOU want, what works for you, and your values." That IS authenticity. It's the whole shift. Every big decision that changed their lives came from letting go of seeking external approval.   Number three: true success is built on being relational instead of transactional. Leanne talking about how nothing is wasted, especially when it's in service of other people or helping someone else — you never know when it's gonna come back around. Think of it as paying into that bank account with goodwill. Every relationship you nurture without expectation of return compounds and creates a better future for you AND the other person you're helping.   Number four: when you're in the trenches building something new and it starts to feel hard — the key steps they brought up were: fall in love with what you're doing, make sure you're having fun, strive for continual improvement (just getting 1% better each time), and do it your own way.   That's all for today. If you liked the episode, maybe share it with someone who needs it. And check out Truth, Lies and Work and Unbehaved on any major podcast platform. And maybe even subscribe or write something nice. It would make my entire damn day.   Until next time.