How to Go From Surface to Soul: The Power of Deep Discovery and Purposeful Connection with Thomas Cumberbatch
Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTube
Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTube
“What I believe should define every human being is their SOUL.”
We’re looking at a beautiful set: a light curtain backdrop with a microphone peering through– the one you may have noticed on the esteemed NPR Tiny desk music sessions– two comfy cream chairs, a white plush carpet, and three cameras ready for their mark.
Meet Thomas Cumberbatch. The brilliant CEO of Godzspeed Communications and the chairperson and founder of Studio 20/20. In 10+ years of business, his team is laser-focused on uncovering a brand’s soul through its Soul Guide Process.
While I was in Ottawa, I had the pleasure of interviewing Thomas about:
The soul and how to incorporate it into your design process;
The art of listening and leveraging ethnographic tools in the media industry;
What it takes to bring your vision to life, and go from solo founder to building a team to achieve your big dreams.
Are you curious about how the soul impacts creation? Or how do you get to know your clients deeply so that design and strategy implementation are inevitable outcomes?
🎬 The interview was shot and produced by Tani Olorunyomi and Jodianne Beckford from Godzspeed Communications.
📍 The beautiful space that we are in is Studio 20/20
This episode is for you if:
You want to unearth and illuminate your soul.
You’re a creative professional who wants to use meaningful questions to drive results.
You desire personal growth and authenticity but struggle to connect deeply with others.
You’re going from a solo founder to building a team to achieve your big dreams.
Looking for a specific gem?
[3:00] As a child, Thomas’ Caribbean immigrant parents encouraged creativity, possibility, and using his imagination.
[3:04] Creativity starts with understanding.
[4:35] After many years, Thomas understood that being an athlete could not be his identity or define him as a human being.
[5:05] “I became a whole human when I started to unearth and illuminate my soul.”
[8:00] Building genuine bonds with people starts by truly connecting with yourself.
[9:15] Getting to the “marrow” of a thing over topical and transactional.
[11:45] Ask yourself, "When are you happiest?”
[13:45] The origin story of Godzspeed is rooted in thinking beyond current circumstances.
[17:05] Full circle moment: when Thomas' mentor joined Godzspeed as COO.
[17:36] How important it is to be YOUR FULL SELF.
[17:55] The saddest/realest thing is that most people don’t know who that true self is.
[20:15] THE SOUL GUIDE, Godzspeed’s trademarked brand strategy system.
[20:50] How Thomas went from working solo to building a team: the necessity of collaboration to achieve your big dreams.
[22:46] "Waking with People to Find Their Soul" - the pivotal conversation with Roberto that clarified his business purpose
[23:18] How asking deep questions revealed the true focus of his business
[25:15] THE POWER OF PURPOSE, SOUL AND COLLABORATION.
[34:47] I don’t look for people who studied business and brand, I look for wildly curious people who love fearlessly, who want to create something that is relevant forever. I look for people who can communicate meaning to someone else.
[38:35] Thomas introduces the concept of the real AI (alignment and ideas) as a crucial factor for growth.
[40:13] Your business may start with just you, but it's not about you. When you make it about others, you can say it's about (macro) US.
[42:00] My role as CEO is not to be someone's 'boss.' It's about being responsible for leading the vision of this company and ensuring it achieves what the business sets out to accomplish.
[46:05] Honoring and revealing the time I spend on this earth and ensuring that I always live on purpose.
Conversation Transcript
Naomi Haile: What is your origin story? What brought you joy as a kid?
Thomas Cumberbatch: I am the son of two incredible Caribbean immigrants. My parents came to Canada in the 1960s. My father was the first black employee at OC Transpo, Ottawa's transit system. My mother came during Expo 67 in Montreal. My parents are both very deep, creative thinkers, and they instilled the art of possibility in me from a very young age.
My parents were very strong people; they always told me that what I could think of and dream of was possible. That's where creativity started for me; it was in how I felt about the world and how I thought about myself. You know, I always tell people that creativity doesn't start with the letter C, and they go, “You're crazy, man, you're hooked on phonics.”
“The truth is that creativity starts with the letter U. It begins with understanding.”
My parents created a beautiful frame of understanding, a foundation of understanding for me, a way to think about and see the world and myself. That has led to 600+ creative projects as a professional and 40 years of thinking about the world in innovative ways.
As a young child, the one thing is that my parents did well, and they did the best they could, but we only had a little. And I would think about everything I wanted to create for them and myself as I got older, as I became an adult. I used to dream about that a lot. What I loved as a child was sports. I loved playing sports. I started playing competitive sports at the age of nine, playing soccer, and then I ended up playing basketball, and then I ended up playing football and rugby. I played volleyball, I played a lot of sports, and I just fell in love with football. I think the physical challenge and the knowing that if you make a mistake, it could be very dangerous was exhilarating for me.
Ultimately, football became such an essential part of my life, and for many years, it became my identity, which I learned later on in life that it could not be. Because nothing material like that should define a human being, what I believe should define every human being is their soul. And I became a whole human when I started to uncover, unearth, and illuminate my soul. And I said to myself, I want to be able to do that with people for the rest of my life. Because this experience has been incredible, and it's led me here.
Naomi Haile: You said that creativity starts with understanding. I think this is the precursor to how you approach a lot of your work today. As a kid, what did that look like practically? What were the things that your parents nourished in you to seek understanding and possibility?
Thomas Cumberbatch: That's a wonderful question. You know what my parents did? They invested in impossibility for me. So, I would come to them and say, "I want to play soccer." And they'd say, "Are you sure? "Yes, let's go sign up."
"I want to learn how to draw." "Are you sure? Yes, let's go sign up."
"I want to play football. Are you sure? No, it was no. First, it was no, then it was. Are you sure? Yes, let's sign up.
My parents invested in my ideas from day one, and I also have a brother and sister who are older than me who also invested in my ideas, encouraged me, and taught me by example. You know, my brother was a great student-athlete. For a long time was considered one of the best basketball players to come out of Ottawa, period.
Not only was he good at sports, and he played all of them, but he was also a good student. He's older than me, and I saw the same thing in my sister. My sister is a math major. You have to be really smart and persistent to major in that. People around me invested in the possibility that I carried in my soul and mind. They invested in my curiosity, and that developed my creativity.
Naomi Haile: You talked about unleashing your own soul and unearthing it for yourself. I'm sure that's a never-ending process that we go through. It's part of our journey. At the core of what you do, what do you hope people learn by interacting with you or even just passing you by? What's at the core of it?
Thomas Cumberbatch: You're good at this question thing. At the core, I want people to feel utterly connected to themselves. When we can connect to ourselves, we can show up in any conversation, interaction, or situation, enabling us to build real bonds.
I have this amazing group that I work with, the National Arts Center, and we got to work on a really interesting project. I was tasked to come up with a vision for one of their projects. And the vision statement centered completely around building bonds with communities. And not only was that the right direction for them, but that actually came from a deep, unwavering belief of mine that you want to develop bonds with people, because out of those bonds come all the things that you're looking for.
In our society, everything is so topical and transactional that we don't get to the marrow of a thing.
“If I get to spend time with anyone, I want them to leave with the knowledge that they need to identify intimately who they are, and then they need to put that on display with honesty, courage, and soul.”
That's the type of interaction I try to have with as many people as possible, even if it's brief, even if it's someone I'll sit next to in an airport and we start a conversation. So, more often than not, we're both saying to each other, "Oh, that was interesting. I'd love to chat with you again someday." Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't, but that's what's special about life.
When we leave this life, we carry those bonds with us. We don't have material things. We carry those bonds, and you can only develop bonds if you get to the soul.
Naomi Haile: Yeah, I needed to hear you say that, and the audience needs to hear you say that because it sets the foundation for everything we're discussing today.
Bring us back to 2010. I was listening to a conversation you had with the incredible Jodianne Beckford, and you talked about your first contract under Godzspeed. In an interview, you asked, "Will you hire my company and not me?" I thought that was so bold, and it also made me wonder what you were thinking about at that time.
Can you bring us back to that interview and first-ever official project under your current company, walk us through that journey, and show us where you were then?
Thomas Cumberbatch: Cool, I got a fascinating story that's going to blow your mind by the time I get back to the end of it.
I'm 26. I just realized that my dream of becoming a professional football player will not happen. I went through this existential crisis, borderline depression, and I knew I had to figure out who I was. I understand who I am by asking myself a question, which I think are some of my favorite things in the world.
Naomi Haile: Me too.
Thomas Cumberbatch: That was a great question. You're great at them.
I asked myself when I was happiest when I was not on a football field. And I said, with a camera in my hand. And that's how all this started. And out of nowhere — seemingly nowhere — I know that God has such an influential role in all of this to me; I get this call from a hiring firm, a headhunting firm, and I was jobless, and they said, "Look, we have an opportunity for you. We looked at your resume and think you'd be good for this role." "I'm like, what resume?" And they're like, "Your resume on Monster." I'm like, "What's Monster? For sure, I thought it was a prank call.
When I was in university, I took an entrepreneurship class, and they taught us how to put a resume on Monster. This was probably three years before that. I forgot I even did that. Anyhow, I ended up at the head-hunting firm, where I did a test. They say, I think you're good for this role so that we will move you on to the next phase. You're going to meet our client, the person hiring for the role."
So I'm waiting in a little office at the bottom of the Canada Post building at the corner of Riverside and Heron. And this guy comes and says, "Thomas, follow me." I'm in an interview with him, and he asked me a few questions. We talked a bit about our mutual affinity for sports, and he just said, "Look, you're actually not the most experienced person I've interviewed, but if I were to hire you, why would I hire you?"
Let me use this story to explain why it's so important to show up as your authentic self. I wouldn't have the courage today to answer the way I did back then. I must have been really trying to move my life forward.
I said to him, "Because when you ask anyone else to perform a task for you, when they may not be able to do it, they will be knocking on your door and bothering you and asking you how." I said, "I won't do that because of who I bring to work every day. And he's like, What are you talking about? I said, "I bring God to work every day, and I'm going to sit at my desk, and I'm going to figure it out before you can ask me what I'm doing."
And he just looked at me and said, "Hmm, okay," just like that. "I thought I blew this interview, that I was done. He thinks I'm from outer space."
But he gave me a test and said, "You have two hours to do it." I did the test, and afterward, I got a call from the head-hunting firm saying they went with my application.
And just out of nowhere (and it was really out of nowhere). I asked, "If I had a company, would they hire my company instead of me?" And they said, "Yeah, do you have a company?" I said, "Yeah". They said: "What's it called?" I'm like, "Godzspeed". They said: "Can you send us your Articles of Incorporation?" and I said, "I'll do that when I go home."
I go home and google "Articles of Incorporation." To me, I said what in the world are those? So, I ended what I did that day by myself. At 26 years old, I incorporated my business on my own online. Today, I would never do that because I understand now that you typically get a lawyer to do that or someone who did the work I did flawlessly. My corporation has had and has no issues.
What's very interesting is that the person who hired me ended up introducing me to this world of comms and a brand, taught me, and gave me the foundation I needed. He was the right type of leader — and I don't want to offend anybody — but I can't stop it. If you're offended, I will just say what I need to say. This was a different era where people were less concerned about everybody's sensitivities. I needed somebody who wasn't concerned about my sensitivities but would tell me what I needed to hear so that I could move things forward. I needed to be a little afraid every day that if I didn't operate at a certain level, it could be my last day, and I had that type of leader. He's the Director of Social Media at Canada Post, who carved out his role when people didn't even know what Facebook was. He went to the Director of Communications and said, "We need a department. This social media thing is no joke. I can lead it." So, he created his own role and became the director. They did a fantastic job and hired me. He taught me what I needed to know, and here's where it's going to blow your mind.
You've already met Brian, the person who hired me and gave me a chance. Who is our COO and Managing Director at Godzspeed. We've been friends ever since. And you know, I was only there for two to three years. And you know, full circle, that person is now working with me to help grow Godzspeed and take it where it needs to go.
If I didn't answer authentically that day, what I didn't understand was that the same [spirit] that I brought to work every day, he did, too, and that was what connected us. I didn't know what I was doing, but I walked in there, and I was bold enough and unafraid enough to put it on the table, take it or leave it.
“If you don't like it, please don't hire me because I'm not going to come in as anyone else. And that's how every brand in the world should operate—every brand in the world and every human being in the world.
Have enough soul to be your full self because, ultimately, you're the one who's going to go to bed every night going: ‘I wish I could just be my real, my true self.’”
The saddest thing, and probably the realest, is that most people don't know who that true self is.
My job and my calling in life are to journey with those people alongside my team to help figure out what that is because it frees people, and that's what gives me purpose in life.
And as I mentioned to you earlier, I spell purpose with a "U-S" at the end, P-U-R-P-U-S, because if your purpose doesn't connect with someone else, it's not a real purpose. It's not a deep purpose; it's not a meaningful purpose. It's not a legacy-leaving purpose. So, for me, that's what's important. That's why I asked if you would hire my company. Somewhere in my subconscious, I knew I wanted to build something with this. And here we are today.
Naomi Haile: Wow, sharing why you get up every day is the same thing inside of me that made me feel compelled to start this show and talk to people about their why. When you talk about Leonardo da Vinci trying to draw the soul and figure out where it was in our body,
And what I've read about the soul and like have come to understand and appreciate is it's so closely connected to what your purpose is. So for you to think about U-S in purpose is very beautiful.
For you, at that moment, when did you realize it was time to bring other people on to bring your vision to life? And what was that turning point for you?
Thomas Cumberbatch: Another great question. So, I explain to all of our clients when we're discussing and building the Soul Guide, our trademarked brand strategy system. I always explain to them that if your vision feels achievable, it's not a vision. At the end of the day, it needs to be so big.
At Godzspeed, we call the vision the big dream. Typically, people think of dreams as not reality. It has to feel that big. I got to a point where I realized, you know what, even my vision for the work I'm doing here, this particular project, is too big for me. I can't achieve it. I'll never achieve this dream. I realized at that point I couldn't do this on my own. I needed to bring other people in who could take on pieces of that dream and turn it into reality.
And I've never reverted to working on my own. So after I hired the first person, I've just kept hiring. It's been a journey because I've hired well, and I've hired poorly. I've had people who were great to work with, and I've been great to work with others, and I've hired people that have been bad to work with, and I've been bad to work with, for others. But one thing remains:
That I need people.
That people need me.
Our clients need us, and their clients need them, and on and on and on.
It's a cycle of US. And that's really why I hire people: We need us, the big (macro) US.
Naomi Haile: This idea of digging deep with people. This came up in one conversation that I had with Susan Odle, a technology business leader here in the city. She's in the business of helping businesses make a profit, and a lot of that involves change management and helping transformation happen within a company. She shared that 70% of transformations fail in businesses. And she said she sees the same thing with people in their lives.
There are several reasons why, but one of them is that people need to dig deeper beneath the surface.
She said, "The gray that exists beneath the surface is the very thing that trips people up. Just do the work. Do the work right at the beginning." After researching how your company operates, the discovery process is about digging deep. What is this discovery process, and how did you know that this is what we need to do before we even start doing what people would think are fun design activities?
Thomas Cumberbatch: I've been blessed to land on our philosophies in very personal and real ways. When I started Godzspeed, I was a guy with a camera and a backpack. I was doing commercial photography and shooting films for brands at the time. When someone hired me to create, shoot a campaign, or shoot a brand film, I always said I needed ingredients to develop a concept. So, I would just ask them questions. And every single time, Naomi, they would say those questions were the best anyone's ever asked. "Those questions were better than the questions our agency asked us." and "Thomas, do you know that the questions you just asked solved some of our corporate issues right there in that meeting?" "Did you know, Thomas, those questions you asked unearthed stories from my business partner that I've known for 20 years that I never knew?".
And I was going, wait a second. This is actually my business. The film is ancillary. The photography is just the end result. I've learned that the 80 of the 80:20 is the understanding.
So, I decided to actually put a method to my madness and develop a system of asking questions that would lead me somewhere.
At the time, I didn't even have the language. I didn't know where it led me. I just knew it was to the place I needed to be so I could make this film or shoot these photos. It wasn't until maybe a year or two after that that the language of the soul came to me, and it came to me in the most beautiful way ever.
A good friend of mine, his name is Roberto. He's a great photographer and brand strategist. He was asking me questions about my business and what I do. I said, "Well, we take photos and make videos." And he said, "No, what do you do?"
We ended up getting into an argument, and I just yelled out. I asked, "Dude, why are you doing this to me?"
“I help people. I walk with people to find their soul."
Then we stopped and stared at each other, and he said, "Thanks for telling me what you do."
This is what discovery is all about.
Naomi Haile: That gives me chills.
Thomas Cumberbatch: This is what I and now the proof of what I was saying when I started answering this question. I've been blessed with real-life situations that have led us to our philosophy. It's not just me thinking in a room and theorizing and writing a bunch of things down; it's not that bad, but for me, everything has come to experience.
So next thing you know, we're working with these, with businesses, and using my system. I used to keep a box of tissues on the table in front of the clients because eight times out of ten, these very serious, stark people wondered why we were doing this: "I just want a darn video." They are bawling because they finally understand for the first time why they're even doing this, or they find out that they shouldn't be doing this and that they don't care. I was like, I'm on to something. And 600+brands projects later. Here we are.
Naomi Haile: Those same questions apply to individual people. And actually, you believe that brands are not institutions. They are people.
Thomas Cumberbatch: 100%. We have this saying that "Brands are individuals, not institutions." And then you think about a brand, or you think about a company, or you think about a business-like, you walk into the business, what do you see? Is it just machinery, or is it people operating machinery? Who greets you at the door? A robot? I know that's coming, but typically, it's a person you know who came up with the vision for this place, who pays the bills. It's people. Businesses are people, and they help people. Without people, they're nothing. So, yeah, yeah.
Naomi Haile: The reason I asked that is because I'm curious what some of those questions are for the people who are sitting down and thinking, what would make a grown man cry by the questions that you ask?
What are some of those questions, and what is critical to understand before you start any endeavor?
Thomas Cumberbatch: I'm gonna take you through something right now, but you have to answer so that they can see what those here, what those questions are, and what that results in, okay, "So imagine you decide that you're going to stop doing this podcast, not because of something sad, because you're moving on to a new opportunity, and you have a party with all of your guests, and you're saying, Look, I'm going to move on, and there's a microphone they all get to go up to on the microphone and say something to you about their experience being on your podcast. What are some things you would want them to say about their experience with you on the podcast?
“That you made me feel seen?”
I have actually asked people to write to me about how they feel. I get a lot of feedback from people after they've been on the show, and what resonates most with me is people feeling seen that my questions helped them understand something about themselves that they they couldn't recognize before, patterns from their childhood that speak to who they are today and that they know how what they're doing contributes to the world and helps other people.
Thomas Cumberbatch: So by your own admission, in your words, you want to leave a living legacy, where people that come into contact with you and what you do feel seen, where they can learn something about themselves and experience something about themselves that they never have until that moment, and where they feel as though they're contributing to progress for the greater good.
Those are the questions that I ask because your brand now has become KPIs for whether or not your work is doing what it's supposed to do. So after every podcast interview, you must ask yourself or your people, did you feel seen today? Is there anything you learned about yourself today that you didn't know before? What I call this exercise is a beautiful legacy. That's the last part of discovery. I walk them through this conversation, and the things people say, I'll typically say after, are you doing those things now? And sometimes people say, "Yes, we're doing all those things." Sometimes, people say, "No, we're not doing them enough." And sometimes people say it's a mix.
But we've had a lot of tears at that moment, probably because I took them through eight hours of interrogation, and they're just really tired, but really, at the end of the day, they're like, Wow, this is the work I'm doing today. I thought I walked in, thinking I was just a glass repairman. Now, I understand I'm helping people feel safe in their homes. It's like mind-blowing to them.
That's an example of some of the questions we ask people. We build brands around those types of answers. Your podcast is about people feeling seen and learning something they never knew about themselves. And for the listeners, it's the same thing. They'll see themselves in the stories and the conversations we're having on air, and then they'll also learn something about themselves that they never may have thought about before. How dope. Isn't that cool?
Naomi Haile: That's what we're here for. Something in me has called me to learn more about acting, and I shared this with you before we started recording. I was walking in Harlem and bumped into Aaron, an artist and a former educator, and he told me about an acting class that he was doing. They're learning about Meisner's technique. I went to the open house (for the acting studio) and was welcomed and greeted by many very present people who seemed very in tune with themselves. They did an acting demonstration for us, and afterward, we did it.
The founder asked people to raise their hands and share what they experienced. This was not, on its face, an intimate process, but I got very emotional watching two people connect and do this repetition exercise. I don't know, there's something in me that got very emotional watching this. It's very intimate. It feels like you're seeing somebody through these exercises.
And [the founder] said that there's something in you that desires authenticity and connection. Something about accepting yourself helps you connect with people in a real way. And I'm wondering for you, Thomas, I know that investing in people and investing in your team is essential for you, and in this new stage that you're in of thinking about what's next and how you need to show up for your business to get to that next level – investing in people is going to become even more critical, as part of the things that you think about.
So, when you bring people on and think about retention and growth of your team, what do you think about as a leader?
Thomas Cumberbatch: We have this saying that the work is queen. The work is queen, which means the things we produce for our clients sit here. As a leader who's trying to grow, I personally know that the business and our team currently need to model all the things that we say. And we need to continue creating work that attracts people who want to leave a legacy.
“I don't look for people who study business and brands. I look for people who are wildly curious, who love fearlessly, who want to create something that is relevant forever, and who can communicate meaning to someone else.”
I often say we're like a team of misfits because even though I did the work I did as a child, I could never tell you I would do this.
As a university student, I could never have told you that I was going to do this. It isn't academia or training that got me here. It was more so my calling, purpose, and passion for understanding the world and then communicating that understanding with and on behalf of others that got us here.
I tell people all the day, all the time, that no one in any of my surroundings could have taught me exactly how to be a brand strategist. I didn't hang out with anyone who did what I do, but ultimately, I always tell people we're an archetype.
And when people say, Who do you work with? We don't work with industries. We work with archetypes, a type of person. So we're going to grow by continuously meeting amazing people who have the skills necessary and the desire to find something special in someone else and catalyze that for their benefit.
That's really what I'm looking for. Whether you are a designer, writer, or animator, you're that first. I don't give a dang how good of a designer you are if you do not have the ability, the desire, the heart, and the personality to understand a thing with such empathy that you can then create something for someone and say, "This is you, right?" And they say, "Yes". And you say, "Perfect". That's what I'm here for.
Then you're useless in our ecosystem. I know it sounds terrible, but it's the truth. You're useless in our ecosystem if you can't do that. That's what we do and what I'm looking for. So we will have to model that. To bring those people in, we have to be that. And I think that's why we've grown so slowly: over the years, you don't find these people everywhere.
My team is incredible, so incredible that they've gone through beautiful highs and very difficult lows, and they just traveled and traversed with Godzspeed, with me, through all of that. And it's because of who they are. It's not what they can do sometimes, I wonder, like in the tough times, "Why do you stay?"
They believe in the sustainability of our purpose. And they understand that one day, one day, we will become the model of how a business and how an individual should discover themselves and show up in the world. And I know that that's happening every day at Godzspeed. And in order to find those people, we need to continue to be those people.
Naomi Haile: Yeah, and it's a choice every day.
Thomas Cumberbatch: Every single day. The only way that works is through something I call real AI.
“The real AI is all about alignment and ideas. It's not about technology. The real AI is about alignment and then these amazing ideas. When you have that alignment and those ideas, you can work on making all that real.”
That's what I'm looking for, and that's what we need to do to bring on those very special people and find ways to align with like-minded people with whom we can create.
Naomi Haile: It seems like your desire to be on teams that are working towards something bigger and creating something bigger than just the individual people in a team or in a company has always been a very important part of what you look for and desire to be a part of. Is that true?
Thomas Cumberbatch: Oh, 100% I've always been a team person, you know? I've never really competed in individual sports. I can't see myself being that guy alone on a plane, traveling the world, being some lone consultant. It's not who I am. I'm committed to sharing all of the things that I experience with the people that I love to work with. You know? So we're only growing every day. We're adding people to our team.
The vision is really beginning to mature, and I'm seeing less and less of myself. You know, you can't do this work with a big ego.
I can tell you that right now, Godzspeed is not about me. It's about the team, the vision, and the journey. Godzspeed and Thomas used to be synonymous. In my mind, they're completely separate. I see myself in Godzspeed, but I am not Godzspeed, and I do not evaluate my importance or my success through the lens of how Godzspeed is doing.
Naomi Haile: This is very powerful. In this next iteration – this next phase- delineation will help you make the decisions you need for the company to be what it needs to be.
Thomas Cumberbatch: Preach. Wow. Preach. That's it. And every entrepreneur, for those who are listening, if you have just started a business, or you're new in business or young in business, understands something.
It may start with just you, but it isn't about you. And if it is about you, you won't be in business very long. It is really about all of them. And what's beautiful about that is that when you write about them, you can say it's about us because you have to join someone else. It's about purpose, P U R P U S. That's what it's about. And for us, at Godzspeed, growth is not about Thomas. I play one role.
We're not even allowed to use the word "boss."
I'm no one's boss.
If someone says, "He's my boss," my response is, "No, I'm not." I can't be the boss of another grown man. What are you talking about?
I can be responsible for leading this company's vision and ensuring that it achieves its goals. That's my role.
We all have a role, and that's really what's important in our ecosystem. Don't mistake my confidence for ego. It's not it.
Naomi Haile: Before we wrap up, you had me thinking before we started this interview about how living in a culture that's so focused on the individual can be such a destructive force in creativity and in bringing something to life. Do you think that threatens someone's ability to get to the soul?
Thomas Cumberbatch: You mean having an individualistic mindset? 100%. You need to consider yourself, who you are, and what you need. You definitely need to think that way.
But it can't be the all-encompassing perspective that leads your work, your thoughts, and your curiosity.
You must always say, "Okay, let's look at life or business as an ecosystem. Where am I?"
Think about the Sims, "Where am I? Where's my little guy? Okay? And then you ask, who else is around this guy? Oh, there's this lady here, there's this little boy, there's this little girl, there's this old lady", and then you say, "Okay, well, what is my role?"
One of my favorite conversations about archetypes is about understanding my role here. Am I the hero? Am I the explorer? Am I the lover? Am I the rebel? Am I the outlaw? Am I the creator? Which am I, and why am I that one?
Let’s say I'm the creator. Why am I the creator? I'm the creator because this person is the explorer, and they need a creator to make the things they need to explore.
Okay, now I've contextualized myself in a broader conversation of we or us. There's nothing wrong with thinking about me, but I'll tell you, it's such a small part of the conversation. It's such a small part of the story, and when we as a culture can learn to contextualize who we are inside of the needs, hopes, and desires of others, then we'll all find our purpose because it doesn't live inside of us alone. It lives inside of us, and that's how it works, not inside us, inside of us, inside of me. I have a part of my purpose, but it's like a puzzle.
How can my purpose activate and bloom fully, without it connecting to someone else's need or someone else's opportunity, or someone else's desire? It's impossible. It's not possible. I'll put my neck out on that one.
It is not possible. It's impossible.
And that's what life is about. For me, life is about more than just business. How does who I am connected with who you are?
I'm always asking that question, and if the answer is "It doesn't [connect]," I don't have time for situations that will not bear fruits for you or me.
I said to you the other day or earlier, "If I'm here doing this with you, then I'm away from my incredible and beautiful wife. I'm away from my four boys." So this better be important. There better be a purpose inside of me and a purpose inside of you. Or why am I here, right? I'm not there. I'm long gone.
That's what I'm learning today and what the rest of my life is. It's honoring and revering the time I spend on this earth and making sure that I'm always what I call living on purpose.
Naomi Haile: Thank you. We started with possibility and thought about going back to the parents we have and the people who brought us into this world. And for those listening, I hope you can see the possibilities out there [for you] when you think about your purpose as how you connect and service others.
Thomas Cumberbatch: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And thank you for coming to Studio 20/20.
Naomi Haile: We're here. We're in the playground. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to listen to this episode of The Power of Why podcast.
We will catch you in the next episode.
Listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTube
Connect with Thomas
LinkedIn: Thomas Cumberbatch
Godzspeed Communications Website: godzspeed.com/
Instagram: @godzspeedcommunications
Studio 20/20 Website: Studio 20/20
Instagram: @stu.dio2020
Connect with Naomi
Website: naomihaile.com
LinkedIn: Naomi Haile
Instagram: @naomiahaile
Twitter: @naomiathaile