Remo Kyburz: [00:00:33] Hi, everyone. I'm happy to bring you a new episode today of the leap takers podcast, where I'm interviewing up and coming European entrepreneurs, investors, and shapers from various fields to retrace the journey of how to start their own company and discover the insights, tips, tricks, and advice they gathered so that you too can take the leap. 
My guest today is Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She is the founder of Ness labs and award winning venture studio, building products that focus on mindful productivity, wellness, creativity, and culture. Her newsletter features practical content at the intersection of neuroscience and entrepreneurship and isread every week by thousands. 
She's an ex Googler MSC if applied neuroscience candidate atKing's college and her work has been featured in Wired Forbes, financial times, rolling stone and more. She's a super nice person and her life sounds absolutely fascinating. You will hear the origin story of Nesslabs. We will discuss timing anxiety, and you hear Anne-Laure's advice for anyone that wants to start a content community. 
 I found this episode. Incredibly, interesting, and Ihope you enjoy it as well.  
hello, Anne-Laure, welcome to the leap takers podcast. And thank you so much for joining me today. 
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:01:40] so much for having me. 
Remo Kyburz: [00:01:42] Yeah, very happy you could join. And as always with my guests, I first would be really curious to just get a personal intro from you. how would you introduce yourself to someone you just met maybe at a cocktail party? 
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:01:54] That's nice. I would probably avoid talking about work at a cocktail party, but I was that kind of professional party. I would mention that I am the founder of Ness labs, which is a platform where I help knowledge workers make the most of their minds,  by using. Content that is based on neuroscience and, everything at Ness labs I build and write based on what I'm studying at university, where I'm a part time students studying neuroscience at King's college in London, and in the past life, I used to work at Google  on the digital health team.
 Remo Kyburz: [00:02:29] I also read on your side that you have a very interesting personal background as well, and  grew up in a lot of different places. could you walk us through how you got, where you are right now in London?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:02:42] Yeah, I, I have traveled quite. A lot. I think in my life, I've never really been like what they call a nomad. But yeah, I, I worked and lived obviously in France. That's where I'm from. I'm currently based in London before that I worked in New York where I was selling. French wine, which was not particularly good to new Yorkers.
I, I also studied in Tokyo, Japan, and I, I lived in San Francisco, as I mentioned earlier when I was working at Google there. So I have traveled quite a bit. And, yeah, I, landed in London because I think I really enjoy how multicultural the city is, how entrepreneurial it is as well. Very easy here to start a company where I'm from back in France, it would take months just to do the paperwork. Whereas in London, you can just fill a form and then three hours, you have your limited company. That is what just starts. And I really love how practical they are here when it comes to everything that comes to business. so this is how. I kind of like moved around and landed in London in terms of exploring the world and finding a place to stay for now, at least.
And in terms of interests and what I'm currently working on. It also, hasn't really been a straight line type of journey. I started with studying marketing, and this is what I worked on at Google first on B2B marketing then on the digital health team. And, and I went back to university in 2018 to study for my masters in neuroscience.
So that's been a little bit of a 360 kind of change, in my work. And, yeah, we can talk a little bit more about it later if you want to. But, I I've always been interested in how the mind works, but I only started a couple of years ago studying it formally.
Remo Kyburz: [00:04:35] Yeah. I was really curious to learn more about how you got interested in The human mind and then technology as a whole. was there any, you know, experience or books or something that woke your interest in the topic?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:04:49] Yeah, absolutely. I think the very first time I was confronted to the. Power of the brain and the mind in general, which can be quite destructive is that I had several people in my family who were suffering from various addictions, and depression and other mental health problems. So from a pretty young age, I was confronted with this reality and then, at work when I was at Google. And, and then when, You know, I worked on my own projects. I went through burnouts myself a couple of times, and this is something that before experience myself, I thought would only happen to other people.
I thought it was a productivity management problem, purely something that  if you're able to manage your workload properly, that would not happen. But actually there are lots of mental health roots to burnouts that are not only about how to manage your calendar, et cetera. That was another time where I was, was confronted to the power of the mind.
And then in terms of, of books, I wrote a book in 2018, which has been really influential, which is called how to change your mind by Michael Pollan. And which is all about the chemistry of the brain and psychedelics and lots of interesting research from the seventies to today. And it made me realize how little we know about how the brain works, how the mind works and how we're always talking about exploring space or exploring the infinity small.  And we don't talk as much about exploring the brain, but the brain really is also one of the next frontiers. So. All of this combined and all of my observations about life and behavior around me and my own personal experiences made me decide to take the leap and decide to study this a bit more formally.
Remo Kyburz: [00:06:40] Yeah that really makes sense. I think. Given your experience and, it's funny that you mentioned the book with Michael Pollan. It was just last week. And I was talking with your friend about it. I haven't read it yet, but.  It was recommended to me by a group of people. So I'm really interested to read that as well once.
  so what you said so far, , it really highlights well, your interest in the human mind and. this leads me then also to, your main project now, which is ness labs. Could you tell the audience  Ness labs is and, who it is for?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:07:12] Yeah. So Ness labs is really built around the concept of mindful productivity. There are lots of productivity gurus out there. What I called productivity porn. Basically, people selling you the idea that you can do more by working more, and that if you don't wake up at 5:00 AM every morning, and you have meditated and went for a run and had just like smoothie that you made yourself by 6:00 AM and also went to the gym, sorted out your calendar and not able to work until 10:00 PM and still feel fresh the morning after starting this whole cycle again, something is broken. in your productivity routine, and you're not doing it well. And obviously then they have solutions to sell you in the form of very expensive courses. Most of the time. 
And, this, you know, all of this goes completely against how. Everything that comes from science and research. And that shows that we are not machines. In fact, there's actually research showing that the number of the ideal. Number of hours that you should work. They actual creative stuff that where you need to be really focused and feeling creative is probably around four hours a day.
and so mindful productivity is really about maximizing that and figuring out how to work and how to live and how to find that balance. So you can really make the most of your mind and you can do your best work without sacrificing your mental health. And in order to help people achieve this, I publish articles every week that are based on stuff that I studied at university. 
They're all based on neuroscience, but they're also very practical. So I try to avoid complicated jargon and I really try to make it as actionable and easy to understand as possible. So people can take all of this information and apply it in their daily life and work.
 Remo Kyburz: [00:09:07] So to summarize, I would say  , it's a source for people to really, Increase  their productivity in this four hour window that you mentioned, is that true?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:09:17] it's about maximizing how much you can do in those four hours. But I also write a lot about what happens outside of those four hours and that this is also something that I have found myself missing and other resources that I looked at when I went through burnout. And when I was struggling with my own productivity, that a lot of them focus a hundred percent on the work part where really it's not how the mind works.
We call them just. Work and turn it on and turn it off and running computer basically. So a lot of the stuff that you do outside of your work hours has a massive impact on your productivity, your creativity, and your mental wellness. So I also write about stuff like journaling and self-reflection and sleep and all of those important tools that you can use to make sure that you're your most productive and creative self.
Remo Kyburz: [00:10:09] And who would you say are your readers or like what type of people are entrepreneurs? Are they, you know, coders or what are the type of people you think that are mainly your readership?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:10:20] Yeah, my, my readership is made of. People whose brain is their main tool for work crazy piece. So it's very important for them to make the most of their mind. So that's why I mentioned knowledge workers, which is a big kind of Ember that term. But I do have entrepreneurs, developers, designers. Writers, all sorts of creatives, but these people, everyone who's reading Ness slabs and is part of the community are people who value the, you know, their creative output a lot.  And are looking for ways to optimize it.
Remo Kyburz: [00:10:57] I'm always very curious and it's podcasts who find out about the origin story of the projects of the people on the podcast. So I will be very interested to learn how you really got started with Ness labs. Was this something you started on the side while you were still working at Google or did you. just start full time on this ?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:11:18] yeah. So actually Ness Labs was not my first project after I left Google. I initially left Google to work on a startup in the, also in the wellness space, but that was focused on nutrition. And, I did that for a year and a half and we broke up with my co founder and I went through a very difficult period where I really didn't know what to do.
I had. Identified so much with this startup that I felt lost. When, you know, you will hear some founders who had a failed startup say that it kind of feels like losing your baby, basically, because this is what it is. You put so much time and energy in this project and you really believe in it. And when it fails, which is the case for lots of startups, it's very hard to figure out what you want to do next. 
So. That's what happened to me in 2018, where this startup failed and I didn't know what to do next. And I decided to go back to the drawing board and figure out what is something that I've always been interested in that I always come back to whether in work or whether in my personal time, when I want to learn about stuff.
What is the thing that I'm so curious about that I could work on for a few years and know that it could keep me excited and that was, how the mind and the brain works. So I decided to go back to university. And, I'm a huge believer in something called the generation effect. If you want to learn something, you need to create your own version of it. You can't just read it or copy and paste your notes. It's really important to reformulate things in your own way. This is also why, if you're learning, trying to learn how to code, it's very important to build your own project rather than. Just following tutorials mindlessly, without trying to do your own thing.
So based on the importance of the generation effects, I decided to launch a blog last summer. So that was summer of 2019. So it was a year ago actually next week is going to be exactly one year that I launched the Ness labs, blog and newsletter. And every week I would write.
A few articles based on everything I learned, it was an amazing way for me to figure out if I had really understood the material or not, and it was also very fun to try and figure out what are some real life applications of the research that I was reading. Is there a way that it could be helpful to people like myself, to entrepreneurs and knowledge workers?
So Ness labs really started as. A blog and newsletter for a students as for myself to reinforce what I was studying. And I was, you know, to my surprise, lots of people got interested very quickly. I got my first few thousand subscribers in the span of a couple of months. And, this is where I was like, okay, there's something here, apparently.
I'm not the only one asking myself these questions and this could be helpful to a lot more people. So I decided to focus on less labs as a full time business on the side of my study. So right now I'm splitting my time between less labs and between doing my studies.
Remo Kyburz: [00:14:18] Yeah, there's a lot of questions I would be really interested to go deeper into. Maybe before we go there, I would like to take one step back. And if you don't mind talk about your first startup experience after Google and why it didn't work out with your co founder. 
I also saw, that you were at, entrepreneur first.  Could you tell us  if there was something that you would say that I would have done that different, that it works out better with your cofounder or how you can minimize the risks that it doesn't work out with your co-founder in the beginning?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:14:48] Absolutely. I think the biggest mistake I've made with my first startup was to try and do everything by the book. I was a bit younger. And. I probably had read too many articles on brunch, too many entrepreneurship porn, the same as basically people telling you that there's a recipe that you can use and apply, and then it will work.
And so I had read everywhere. You need a co founder. lots of investors saying, if you don't have a co founder, I'm not going to invest. And lots of people saying it's absolutely essential, you can be even sure that your idea is good and that you're going towards something called product market fit. If you'd go to have a co founder.
So I was like, okay, and you get co founder. And I co founded my first startup with someone that I really didn't know that well, and I'm on paper. You know, just to tell you like how, like, to me it does feel ridiculous, but at the time I really thought that was the way to go about it. We even did a questionnaire to see how compatible we were.
And we did all of the meetings and we went through all of the questions, like the founder's dating questions that you're supposed to go through. And at the end we're like, okay, seems like we're pretty compatible. And we have the right skillsets , you know, I'm completing you and you're completing me in terms of skillset. This is perfect. 
And obviously it was not this, you need much more than that, much more than paper compatibility to work with someone and something as hard as a startup. So the things I learned that I would. Recommend to people who want to do your startup is:
First. Don't think that there's a magic formula that you can apply. And don't think that because an entrepreneur writes online about what worked for them, you can just take that and apply it to your own situation. 
Second, believe your intuition. Even if everybody, one is telling you that you need a cofounder or everyone is telling you that this is the formula,  that you should follow.
If you feel like that wrong, and that's not the right thing for your own business, then. Listen to yourself because very, you know, more about your business than all of these other people. So it's very important.
 And the third one would be, if you start feeling like something is wrong, don't wait for too long. Don't bury your head  in the sand. 
in my case, I. Felt like it was not working probably pretty early in the journey, but I thought that, you know, I'm someone who likes fixing stuff and making it work and that if I worked hard enough, it would work out. So that's something that I think I could have wasted way the last time, if I had just listened to myself from the beginning and realized that that was not working.
Remo Kyburz: [00:17:29] Yeah, that makes sense. I fully agree with you.   I also had one, startup that I started like two and a half years ago  and they also, India and I started by myself because. I also follow that maybe I need a cofounder but in the end I was like, I,  think I, I can just do it by myself. And, so yeah, I agree with you. Maybe you're just literally listen to yourself and also what your gut tells you.
   to come back to Ness labs. you mentioned that you pretty quickly got to, , a few thousand subscribers and, I also find it quite remarkable that, you know, you did it for yourself. to reinforce the learnings that you got from your studies. And that's also what I kind of hear out of some other podcasts and, Guests that they often start something because it fixes one of their own issues or problems or something that they want to, you know, improve or learn.
 , I was really wondering how did you, grow the business or the writing to thousands of people. because it's also something that I'm very curious about. How can you scale up from, let's say your first hundred or so listeners, which may be out of your friends, et cetera, to a wider audience.
Did you follow any tactics or, did you use any special tools to do that? Or how do you think that happened?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:18:41] I think one of , the main strategies that I've applied, I've been really helpful for me in terms of growing my audience beyond those first few friends is to work in Public. I'm very. Public and open and the way I work, you know, the expression working with the garage door open., I definitely do this for everything.
I share my process. I share my progress. I ask questions and I think, it's a bit like. Me and my workshop, trying to figure out how to build this thing and breaking stuff sometimes, and then try again and learning from it and sharing all of this. I think because of this, I've had quite a few people who became really engaged and interested in my journey and invested in this journey. And so they've been amazing ambassadors sharing my content with other people in their circles. And I think once you start getting at that stage where people, you initially didn't know, start sharing your content, without you asking them to do it, you get this virtuous cycle where this just growth happening without you having to push it too hard before you get to that kind of like velocity level, where you don't need to manually share stuff all the time.
There's a few. Places where you can. Like, what I did is that I shared, every single article that I wrote on different channels, where I knew my audience was hanging out. So at the very beginning I was always sharing my articles on Hackernews, on indie hackers, on Twitter, in some Slack channels for entrepreneurs, et cetera.
And I got lots of my initial growth from there. And nowadays I don't really do it as much because. I don't really need to, and I get a healthy growth just from the existing audience that is sharing it with other people.
 Remo Kyburz: [00:20:30] And when you say, , working with the garage door, open talking very. Openly about it. Are there any, you know, specific examples that come to mind, maybe, some groups or something that you attended or what was it in your case?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:20:43] so yeah, I, for example, , I was very new to newsletters and how they work, what are the best practice, et cetera. So I just created a telegram group for myself to have a community of people I can talk with and ask questions to. And now there are more than 300 people in there, so I can ask questions and we're all building our newsletters together.
And I tend to do that a lot when I  become curious about a topic. I just create a small Telegram group. Some of them are still very small. Some of them have become bigger, but  I think it's, it's really nice to create a small community around your interests. So you can ask questions to like minded people and everyone is at a different stage in their journey.
So I love that I can help someone in the group. Who maybe only has 500 subscribers or a thousand subscribers. And I can get help from someone who has 25,000 subscribers who's in the group, and this is this nice kind of paying it forward dynamic in these groups. So that's one example of how working with the garage door open.
Remo Kyburz: [00:21:44] And when you think back now, since you launched Ness labs, almost a year ago,  are there any. Very memorable moments that come to mind like that you fought. Okay.  that's really cool. Like maybe someone that gave you great feedback about your writing or something that was very helpful to you, or a very good learning moment?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:22:03] yeah, one of my highlights is one when, , we had Varshad, who was an intern at Ness labs and, so she's based in India and, she needed work experience to be able to come to. The UK or at least apply to universities in the UK to study neuroscience. So, and she was really struggling to find remote work being based in, India.
So, we hired her as an intern and she did an amazing job. She worked on a very long research-based report on cognitive biases and entrepreneurship, and she was such a joy to work with and when I got her email. Couple of months ago saying that she got accepted in three top universities in the UK, that now she only needed to make her choice.
And that working at Ness labs was part of the reason why probably her application was so strong. That made me so happy because I really felt like that was having a massive impact on someone's life. So that's probably my best memory.
Remo Kyburz: [00:23:03] Yeah, that's amazing. That's very cool. And, you mentioned also, you know, remote working before that. So, I read that Ness labs, you work fully distributed. was this part of your plan from the beginning? And I know you're studying also on the side, so I assume your most time in London, but still, how do you feel about remote work and was this part of the plan to  build up this as a remote company?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:23:28] . I didn't even think about building it . As a company in the very beginning, but yes, as soon as I realized that I actually needed to work with other people for some of the projects that I'm working on. I decided to make it fully remote and distributed. I think that, to me, it's, it's one of the biggest forms of freedom to be able to go wherever I want to, whenever I want to, if I want to go and visit my family, obviously lately, it's been a bit complicated, but in general, if I want to go and visit my family, I can do that whenever I want to.
I can work from different countries. I can, , go and see friends. I. Can go on the holidays. Like, you know, I love that. No last year, I went on holidays in Costa Rica and I used to had meetings there that I really needed to have, and that was completely fine. And that was not a blocker to be able to go with my friend on this road trip.
So , for me, it's really it's freedom. And I also think that working with other people this way just makes it much more calm, and nice to work with because you're never expecting people to reply to you straight away. It's completely. Asynchronous, which is amazing. It's not stressful.  you know, we never used the live chat or anything like this.
It's always about sending information and receiving an answer whenever the person is ready, which I think is much more fitting for the kind of company that I'm building, where I think it's very important work that we're doing, but we're not surgeons. There's no one on the operating table that's going to die right now. If you don't get an answer right at the minute. So. I think it's more fitting to have this calm, asynchronous, slow type of communication and that you can do from anywhere and where he doesn't read it. Are you located in the same city. You could be in Costa Rica wherever you want to be right now, as long as you're enjoying your job, I'm sure it's going to be fine.
Remo Kyburz: [00:25:25] Yeah, I fully agree with you there. And I think the future is going to be independent of the whole Covid situation that I think more companies and more people, especially maybe in our generation they're really. Favorite remote working to just the standard office type of job when you have to go into the office every day and they embrace more flexibility and freedom to work from anywhere.
so I really like that. You're doing that. That's very cool. 
so I thought that could be a good point too. Go  into some of your writing that you did Ness labs. So, I read a couple of your articles, but I think one that I really yeah. Liked was called "time anxiety. Is it too late?"
 could you explain to the audience, you know, what time anxiety is and your message of this article?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:26:13] Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. You're mentioning this one because it's actually one of my most popular ones. Like literally top two or top three. Article and I wrote, we're done 200 articles. So I find it very interesting that that's the one that resonated most with you. And I think it is because it's actually quite common, but very few people had a word to put on it.
And that was the same for me. This one, right. I read, I started reading about time anxiety. Yeah. Yeah. I had this realization. That was exactly what I was suffering from. And I said, how come I've never heard about this before? So basically time. Anxiety is this kind of like feeling that never really leaves you that's it's too late.
That does not enough time. It's too late to learn a new language. It's too late to learn a new instrument. It's too late to start the company. It's too late to write a book it's too late to start a meaningful project in your life. and I think. A lot of the reasons why people nowadays are suffering more from this than we used to is because through the internet, we are exposed to all of these very young, successful entrepreneurs.
And we feel like, Oh, well, if I didn't start this and in my 20s it's, Too late basically. And, the reality is that it's never really too late. you know, you could take a project off the ground very quickly, or it could take you a long time and that's completely okay. There's some very amazing writers and authors that took 20 years to write a book and who published it in their seventies.
also, you know, entrepreneurs yeah. Started much later who were successful and in any case, Life is really about experiencing stuff that makes you feel good and curious, and that makes it meaningful. And it doesn't necessarily matter how successful you're going to be if you're enjoying the journey. So this is really what time anxiety is about and how you probably want to try and shift your way of looking at time and what spending your time meaningfully means for you.
Remo Kyburz: [00:28:17] And are there some strategies that you would link that you can cope better with time, anxiety or stuff people can do to counteract.  You mentioned. Yeah, it's not too late, but , or any practical tips of how to handle this?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:28:31] Yes. so it's, about really shifting your mindset. So you realize that it's not necessarily, you know, I know it sounds like a cliche thing to say, but at its core, it's really about thinking about how it's not about the goal it's about the journey basically. And so there are a few practical ways you can go about helping you shift this mindset.
The very first thing that is important to do, I think is to define what time well-spent means to you. And, It's a it's again, we tend to always think about the goals. So you'll have people training to run a marathon or studying to get a certificate defined time. Well spent is about taking a step back and asking yourself what is stuff that I actually enjoy spending time on, regardless of the outcome. So in the case of the marathon, it's asking yourself, do I actually enjoy running or is it just because I wanted to tell people that I think the marathon.
 In terms of coding, for example, do I actually enjoy coding? Is it something that I can just sit down and do and whatever the outcome yeah, it feels enjoyable. 
If I want to publish a book, do I actually enjoy the act of writing? So. That's some, you know, self-reflection work that you can do, that would be the very first step, and that will help you. Do you find what time well spent means once you have defined what time well spent mean that you have identified what are the things that you enjoy doing regardless of the outcome, it's about making space for these moments. And what's interesting is that we tend to block time for stuff that you want to do. And I'm a massive fan of time blocking. I use it all the time, but here it's pretty about making space. So it's not only about blocking the time for it.
It's really about. Making the mental space for you to do this and being relaxed and being here and present. So you can enjoy this moment. 
And, last thing is that is, I think very good inducing is the time we waste. On social media where we're next calling on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, and lots of people report feeling extremely anxious and feeling more time anxiety when they just wasted two hours on tick tock or , doing something like that.
So I'm not saying that you should not spend time on social media because social media can be very helpful when it's used mindfully, but. Cutting out those time consuming distractions and the time spent mindlessly scrolling on social media can definitely help with time anxiety.
Remo Kyburz: [00:31:05] thank you very much for sharing this. And, I think there will be a lot of people, who get some value out of that. And if people,  want to read more about these types of articles, are there any that, you know, would recommend that are a good starting points to. Get started. If they want to read more from your writing on Ness labs?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:31:22] Yeah. so another one that's one of the top ones. And I can't remember if time anxiety is the first one and this one is the second one, but they're, they're very popular, both of them and kind of related to that topic. So if that's the topic you're interested in, one of my most popular articles is, Jomo - the joy of missing out.
And you can find it at nest labs.com/jomo, J O M O. And so , that's a good entry point. And then I spend a lot of time and put a lot of care in interlinking my articles together. So you can start here and just click on related articles and you'll probably find something else. That's interesting to you.
Remo Kyburz: [00:31:57] Cool. Great. I will also make sure to link this. The articles in the show notes, so people can check it out there and  have a look.  
So,  I was really curious What are your key learnings so far and then a bit of a look in the future. Where do you see Ness labs going? 
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:32:12] Yeah. In terms of key learnings, I would say that the main one is that consistency is key. I've had no idea where. Ness labs will bring me the opportunities that we have and have faster grow. But the fact what I did is that I just kept on showing up and, you know, every Thursday I sent the newsletter every week I wrote the articles and I posted about it on Twitter, et cetera.
So it was. Really consistent work. And there were some weeks where I didn't necessarily have the same open rates for my newsletter or didn't have as many people sharing it and it could have feel a little bit depressing, but what was important is that week after week trends, when the growth was going up.
So I think it's very important.  to be consistent and to not get too into the little details of the everyday fluctuations that you have when building of business, just keep on showing up, keep on doing things that you know are working and yeah, growth can be slow sometimes, but that's completely fine. Don't have to necessarily build a super fast growing startup. You can build a solid, sustainable business. That's just growing slowly and taking it. One week at a time. So that's my biggest learning Consistency. 
And, in terms of looking into the future, it's partly going to be similar to what the first year was like in the sense that I don't know. I have no idea. I really see nest labs as a place where I can experiment, which is why. Yeah. It's called Ness labs. It's kind of a lab for me to try and launch new products and services and to. co-build these with my audience, seeing what works and what doesn't and listening to your feedback and consistently making it better.
So  I will keep on experimenting and we will see where we are. We can catch up in one year and see how this went.
Remo Kyburz: [00:34:08] I'm very curious to see. Everything is going. Briefly chat before recording. And you mentioned you also have  a new project that is part of Ness labs. Could you share something about that as well?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:34:19] Yes. That's the newest baby at Ness labs. It's a private community for readers. We currently have about 400 people in it, and it has a forum. It has virtual meetups on zoom, where we talk about mindful productivity, creativity, and lots of different things, and is full of entrepreneurs and engineers, creatives, et cetera.
Very interesting people. Lots of curious minds who love discussing these topics. So it's a bit of a more intimate experience when it comes to, you know, going through Ness Labs content and having other people to talk about it. So that's been going really well and very excited about it. It's really nice also to go from just me  broadcasting contents to my readers to now having those two way conversations because I'm learning even more from people, which is great. So yeah, that's, that's been really nice launched about three months ago, and this is one of the things I'm most excited about at Ness Labs at the moment.
Remo Kyburz: [00:35:22] Great. good luck. And I hope a lot of people will check this out  
 and,  yeah,  I always like to ask a few rapid fire questions,  so. First question would be, what is , a book that has had a big personal impact on your life that you would recommend people to read?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:35:37] I'm just going to say it again because that's how much I read that book. That how to change your mind by Michael Pollan. Everyone should read it.
Remo Kyburz: [00:35:43] Great,  Next question. what is the best personal investment that you did? It's not necessarily an investment of money. It can also be an investment of time, energy or whatever?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:35:55] I usually don't answer this question using, an investment of money, but in this case I will, because it's been life changing for me, but I invested in a laptop stands and a Bluetooth keyboard. And my back is so much better. I was always telling people that I don't need these because I have such great posture.  It turns out no, my posture was terrible. So I think this is a really good investment. And especially for people who are working remotely and who don't necessarily work physically in an office where. Their company have invested into a good chair or good equipment. I think this is something that is a great investment of money. It's just good for your health in general.
Remo Kyburz: [00:36:36] Do you remember the name of your laptop stands? If he comes to mind?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:36:41] No, it's a random one on Amazon. I really don't think that you need to spend a thousand dollars on this. any laptop, stand will already be a great improvement, to no laptop stand.
Remo Kyburz: [00:36:51] Okay. Yeah. Great. I I'm thinking I could use one of those as well, to be honest. . So if you could go back in time and talk to your younger self, maybe your 20 year old self, what kind of advice would you give your young self?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:37:08] I would tell myself it's not too late. I was already suffering from time anxiety at the time. And I find it absolutely ridiculous. The number of projects I didn't start when I was 20, because he was telling myself, Oh no, this other entrepreneurs started when they were 18. It's too late for me. So I, luckily have made a lot of progress here and now I just get started with anything that I find interesting. So if you're starting your care right now, And you are working in an environment where you have lots of very talented people and you suffer from imposter syndrome because you think that's your are too late to start a project or launch something that is a bit ambitious. Don't listen to that voice.
Listen to the voice of your older self who would tell you it's not too late. You can start anything now there's still plenty of time and you can even, you know, the sooner you start, the more different projects to work on during the course of your life. So just start now, it's not too late.
Remo Kyburz: [00:38:05] Yeah, that's great advice.  So yeah, I usually ask my guests for the last question. something related to the name of the podcast, so what does courage mean to you personally?
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:38:17] Hmm, that's a good one. I think it's about. Having the courage to explore your curiosity and failing like a scientist. It's really about realizing that everything you do in life is an experiment. And if it fails, that's completely fine. It just means that you have more information, more data that you can use for your next part and your next experiments. So it's really about having the courage to explore your curiosity.
Remo Kyburz: [00:38:43] Great. I think these good closing words. So,  if people want to find more about you and Ness labs, maybe you can just briefly tell them again where they can find you online.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:38:55] Just go to nest labs.com that's N E S S L a b s.com. Nesslabs.com. And there are links to my Twitter and all of this there.
Remo Kyburz: [00:39:05] Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate your time and hope you enjoyed it.
Anne-Laure Le Cunff: [00:39:12] Thank you.
Remo Kyburz: [00:39:13] All right, . Thank you so much for listening to this episode, you could do me a really big favor. If you would just tell one of your friends about the Leap Takers podcast and recommend it, or if you want to even more quickly head over to the iTunes or Apple podcast store and give the Leap Takers podcast, a five star rating.
This would really help me to get more visible and that I'll be able to continuously bring on great guests to this show. Thank you so much. Also, if you have any feedback or suggestions for future guests, just shoot me a message. You can find all my contact info on leaptakers.com, or you can also follow me on Twitter or Instagram, where you can find me under remokyburz, or just follow the leaptakers podcasts directly in Instagram as well.
So having said that, thanks again for listening and have a great week. Bye bye.