There is something I want to say about building I’M MORE that probably matters more than another article about our mission, another statistic about unemployment, or another explanation of what we hope this organisation can become.
Building this is testing me too.
I have spent more than 35 years in business. I have built companies, advised business owners, coached executives, developed people, created brands, worked alongside entrepreneurs and helped others navigate some incredibly difficult periods of change. Yet creating I’M MORE has reminded me of something that experience can sometimes make us forget.
Whenever You Step Into Something New, You Become a Student Again
I’M MORE has taken me into a world involving unemployment, NEET young people, Universal Credit, employment support, government policy, funding, community organisations, employers, education, training, social impact and the very real human consequences of people becoming disconnected from opportunity.
I knew why I wanted to create it. The reason came from somewhere very personal. I could see too many people becoming defined by circumstances that should never be allowed to define the rest of their lives. That story sits at the heart of why I created I’M MORE, but having a reason to build something and actually building it are two very different things.
The Part People Rarely See
When somebody visits a finished website, walks into an event or sees an organisation operating, they see the end product. They rarely see the hundreds, sometimes thousands, of decisions that came before it.
They don’t see the research at midnight. They don’t see the website pages that were rewritten five times because they still didn’t feel right. They don’t see the phone calls, the funding research, the policy documents, the discussions about safeguarding, employment programmes, partnerships, messaging, eligibility, delivery models, technology, marketing or how everything eventually connects together.
They certainly don’t see the moments when you are sitting at your desk looking at a screen and your brain simply has nothing else to give.
The amount of research involved in entering any new sector is extensive. You start with one question and that question creates another five. You learn terminology you have never needed before. You discover organisations you didn’t know existed. You start understanding systems that initially seem unnecessarily complicated. You listen to people already working within the sector and sometimes realise that assumptions you made at the beginning were wrong.
That is not failure. That is learning.
I have had to remind myself of that repeatedly while developing our mission and working out where I’M MORE genuinely fits.
Experience Does Not Make You Invincible
There is another part of this journey that I think it is important to be open about.
I am only human.
During the period in which I have been building I’M MORE, I have also been dealing with significant problems with my health. There have been days when physically I have felt awful, days when my energy has disappeared and days when my mind has wanted to continue working long after my body has made it very clear that it cannot.
That is incredibly frustrating for somebody like me because my instinct has always been to execute. If something needs doing, I want to get it done. If there is a problem, I want to find the solution. If there is an opportunity, I want to move towards it.
But your body does not always care about the size of your ambition.
Sometimes the bandwidth simply isn’t there.
You can have a head full of ideas while feeling physically exhausted. You can know exactly what needs doing while being unable to concentrate properly. You can be passionate about something and still have moments where you wonder whether you have taken on too much.
Those moments do not mean the dream is wrong. They do not mean the mission should stop. They mean you are a human being trying to build something while life continues happening around you.
Purpose does not remove pressure. Sometimes purpose creates more of it because you care so deeply about the outcome.
Macy Has Seen the Reality Behind the Idea
Macy has been alongside me during much of this journey and, without realising it at first, she has probably been receiving one of the most valuable forms of training possible.
She has seen the messy middle.
She has seen ideas change. She has watched things be created, questioned, changed and created again. She has witnessed frustration, exhaustion, excitement and those moments when something suddenly clicks after hours of trying to understand it.
She has also seen me when my physical and mental bandwidth has been pushed hard.
I think that matters because the world often gives young people a completely false picture of success. They see finished businesses, successful people, polished websites and confident leaders, but they rarely see what happens behind the curtain.
They rarely see doubt.
They rarely see exhaustion.
They rarely see mistakes.
They rarely see somebody saying, “I don’t know the answer yet, but I am going to find it.”
Macy has written about some of what she has seen from her perspective in The View Looks Different From This Side. Her view of this journey is important because she has not simply watched an organisation appear. She has watched it being built.
The Danger of Trying to Hold Everything in Your Head
One of the biggest lessons I have been reminded of while creating I’M MORE is how dangerous it can be to look at the whole journey at once.
If I sit down and think simultaneously about the website, CIC governance, funding, partnerships, events, employment programmes, government policy, NEET research, Universal Credit, marketing, content, sponsorship, press, employers, training, technology, measurement and everything else we want I’M MORE to eventually deliver, my brain can very quickly make the whole thing feel enormous.
That is when overwhelm begins.
And I think the same thing happens to people everywhere.
Somebody who is unemployed doesn’t simply think about applying for one job. Their mind races ahead to money, bills, interviews, rejection, their CV, their age, their qualifications, what their family thinks, whether anybody will employ them and what happens if nothing changes.
Somebody considering a new career doesn’t just think about learning a new skill. Their mind jumps to whether they are too old, whether they can afford it, whether they will succeed, what happens if they fail and whether they should stay with the familiar even though the familiar is making them miserable.
Our minds can take one step and turn it into an entire mountain.
That is why I have had to keep bringing myself back to something much simpler.
Build the next piece.
Not the entire organisation.
Not the next five years.
The next piece.
One webpage. One conversation. One funding application. One meeting. One piece of research. One problem solved. One decision made.
Then you move to the next one.
Over time, something quite extraordinary happens. You look back and realise those small pieces have become something much bigger.
You Do Not Have to Solve Your Entire Life Today
That lesson reaches far beyond I’M MORE.
If your life feels overwhelming at the moment, stop asking yourself how you are going to solve everything.
Ask yourself what the next useful action is.
Maybe it is updating one section of your CV. Maybe it is applying for one job. Maybe it is phoning somebody. Maybe it is researching one training course. Maybe it is asking for help. Maybe it is finally having a conversation you have been avoiding.
One action does not solve everything.
But it changes your position.
And transformation is ultimately about changing your position.
You move from confusion towards clarity. From inactivity towards action. From fear towards belief. From isolation towards connection. From where you are now towards somewhere different.
That is the thinking behind Discover. Believe. Become.
None of those words promise an overnight transformation. They describe a process.
Overthinking Can Protect You, But It Can Also Stop You
I overthink things myself.
There are times when that serves me extremely well. I analyse situations, anticipate problems, question assumptions and think through consequences. In business, that can prevent expensive mistakes.
But overthinking has another side.
If we are not careful, thinking becomes a substitute for action.
We convince ourselves that we need one more piece of information before starting. Then another. We imagine every possible thing that could go wrong. We worry about what people will think. We anticipate rejection before we have even asked the question.
Eventually the negative voice has enough space to take control.
It tells us we are not ready.
It tells us somebody else is more qualified.
It tells us we will probably fail.
And sometimes we listen.
That is why I believe there comes a point where you have to move.
Not recklessly. Not blindly.
But forward.
Try. Fall forward. Fail forward. Learn. Adjust. Move forward again.
I will make mistakes building I’M MORE. I already have. There will be decisions we revisit. There will be ideas that work brilliantly and others that do not work at all. There will be applications we win and applications we lose.
Six months from now, there will almost certainly be things I look back at and think, “We could have done that better.”
Good.
That means we learned something.
Failure Is Not Always Falling Down
I sometimes think we misunderstand failure.
Failure is not necessarily trying something and discovering it didn’t work.
Sometimes failure is never trying because fear persuaded you to stay where you were.
Sometimes failure is allowing somebody else’s opinion to become the limit of your ambition.
Sometimes failure is convincing yourself that your current circumstances are permanent.
And sometimes failure is simply doing nothing.
I would rather attempt something meaningful, make mistakes and continue learning than spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened if I had tried.
That philosophy has been behind a huge part of my life, and it sits inside I’M MORE too.
We are not telling people they will never fail.
We are helping people understand that failure does not have to be the end of their story.
There Are People Who Can Help You
There is one more lesson that matters enormously.
You do not have to know everything.
You do not have to solve everything alone.
There are people who know things you don’t know. There are people who have walked roads you haven’t walked yet. There are people who can challenge your thinking, guide you, teach you and sometimes simply listen when your mind has become too noisy.
Find those people.
Speak to them.
Trust does not mean giving somebody control of your life. It means recognising that another human being might be able to help you see something that you cannot currently see yourself.
And when you feel stuck emotionally, physically or mentally, don’t sit alone inside the darkness of your own thoughts convincing yourself that there is no answer.
Reach out.
That is one of the reasons we created I’M MORE.
I don’t want unemployment to become somebody’s identity. I don’t want rejection to become somebody’s belief system. I don’t want a 20-year-old to decide their life is already going nowhere, or a 50-year-old to decide that their best years are behind them.
I don’t want anybody to believe that because they cannot currently see the road ahead, there isn’t one.
I Am Going Through a Transformation Too
People might eventually look at I’M MORE and see a fully functioning organisation.
I hope they do.
I hope they see programmes, events, partnerships, people finding work, businesses getting involved and individuals beginning to believe in themselves again.
But I will know what it took to get there.
I will remember the days when my body hurt, my brain was exhausted and there was still another problem to solve.
I will remember sitting with an idea that initially felt far bigger than my ability to execute it.
And hopefully I will remember something else.
We kept moving.
Small step after small step.
That is how most meaningful things are built.
That is also how people rebuild themselves.
If you want to understand more about the person behind I’M MORE, you can read my story as founder. You can also explore The Voice, where we are beginning to have much broader conversations about unemployment, confidence, opportunity, belief and what it really takes to change direction.
And if something in your own life feels overwhelming at the moment, you can always reach out to I’M MORE.
I am Bradley Chapman. I have spent more than 35 years helping other people navigate change, but I am still learning, still being tested and still going through transformations of my own.
That is perhaps the most human part of all of this.
None of us ever truly finish becoming.
We keep discovering.
We keep believing.
We keep becoming.
And whatever happens, we keep moving forward.
Best Wishes
Bradley | About Brad
