Do something. Anything.

“Do I have what it takes to build and grow a business?” The good news is, Karen Pine says, whatever you think you don’t have, you can get.

By Fiona Duffy
Chief Happiness Officer at the Happy Startup School
Interview with Karen Pine, Do Something Different

“You are what you do, not what you think you’ll do”

I’m joined by Karen Pine. The co-founder of Brighton based Do Something Different — a platform that helps drive behaviour change one do at a time.

If you’ve ever asked yourself “Do I have what it takes to build and grow a business?” The good news is, Karen says, whatever you think you don’t have, you can get. It’s about diving into behavioural flexibility.

Behavioural flexibility is your toolkit to success. It helps you ‘flex’ your core behaviours so that you respond to each circumstance in the most effective way.

Karen explains,

Tell us a bit more about your entrepreneurial journey so far:

I’m a Professor of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire but an entrepreneur on the side! Ive run a number of businesses (including Do Something Different which was established five years ago). I studied psychology to understand human behaviour and started Do Something Different once I understood how to change behaviour and to help people achieve what they want from life.

With your background in behaviour change, what advice would you give a budding entrepreneur with a business idea?

Do something. Anything. You are what you do, not what you think you’ll do.

So many people fantasize about their dream business but don’t make it happen. Often they’re worried about doing the wrong thing so they procrastinate and end up doing nothing. Just know that doing something, almost anything, is better than doing nothing. And then don’t do what you usually do, do something different.

You’ll be joining us at the Happy Startup Summercamp 2015, what will your workshop be about?

It will help people explore their own habits, and the barriers they might have that could get in the way of them kicking off their business or growing it.

By learning new behaviours and habits — or becoming more behaviourally flexible — you have more choice over how you react to different situations. You’ll find it easier to cope with what life throws at you and you’re more able to spot opportunities. To be really successful in business — and in life — we have to develop our behavioural flexibility. Behavioural flexibility is like having a toolkit that you go through life with. Sometimes that means behaving in ways that goes against your natural tendency — to take the brain down a different track.

We’ll be delving deeper at camp, and there’ll be lots of opportunity for campers to identify where they need to form better habits in their lives to push forward their businesses.

How will the workshop help people become better entrepreneurs?

I aim to help campers explore the toolkit they already have, their own ability to act on the world and not wait for the world to come to them.

I’ll be showing them how to uncover their own behavioural repertoire, and to identify where they need to flex. We’ll go through some of the skills and tools you need to do this, and see how, by using the Do Something Different techniques, we can all be less stressed in our work, more effective and up for almost anything.

What one ‘do’ do you think startups should act upon after reading this that will bring them closer to their vision?

DO: Start to infiltrate some groups. Find groups on social media where your potential customers hang out. Make yourself useful. Offer advice, share stuff, start building and nurturing relationships now.

Hope you enjoyed this post.

If you liked this you can learn the path from passion to profits in our free downloadable ebook and startup toolkit — “4 steps to build a happy startup” — chart your own path and do something different this year