On 17 October 2026, I stepped onto the stage at TEDx Trenčín in Slovakia to give a new talk: You Can Have It Both Ways.
The event’s theme was Curiosity, and my talk explored a question that has increasingly fascinated me:
How can we use curiosity to design—or redesign—a life that works for us?
This TEDx talk marked an important development in my work as an international speaker. Much of my career has focused on helping creative entrepreneurs combine creativity with smart business thinking. I am now extending that philosophy into a broader field: lifestyle design.
From OR to AND
My talk began with an apparent contradiction:
When people ask whether I’m a businessman or a poet, my answer is: yes.
We are often told to choose between different versions of ourselves:
I have become curious about that little word in the middle: OR.
Sometimes the choices presented to us are genuine. We all face practical constraints, competing responsibilities and difficult trade-offs. But some either/or choices are assumptions we have inherited and never stopped to question.
If we become curious about OR, another possibility appears:
AND.
Connecting different worlds
My own career has never followed a conventional route.
After deciding not to attend university at 18, I experienced several chaotic years in which my friends seemed to be progressing towards respectable professions while I was driving forklift trucks and wondering where on earth my life was heading.
Later, I helped establish a workers’ co-operative community bookshop. I became managing director of a company marketing books for small poetry publishers. At 35, I went to university for the first time to study for an MBA.
Among senior corporate executives in business-school lectures, I sometimes felt like a spy from the creative sector. At the same time, I worried that colleagues in poetry publishing might think I was abandoning our cultural mission in pursuit of profit.
Eventually, I realised that I was not an impostor in either world.
My ability to connect the two worlds was precisely my value.
That idea became central to my book T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity. The title deliberately says “and,” not “or.”
Creative people do not have to choose between remaining creatively pure but commercially poor—or sacrificing their principles to become financially successful. Creative talent and smart business thinking can strengthen one another.
Having it both ways does not mean settling for half of each.
Designing a life that fits
Only later did I recognise that I had been applying this same principle to my lifestyle.
Before one professional engagement in Colombia, I spent three weeks backpacking around Central America. The backpacker and the international businessman were already two parts of my life. My experiment was to discover how closely I could bring them together.
Instead of asking:
Should I travel for business or for adventure?
I began asking:
How could I design a life that combines both?
For me, the answer has involved integrating professional work, international travel, independence and adventure. But that is my combination—not a formula for everybody else.
Someone else’s preferred combination might involve family, faith, education, artistic work, sport or service to a community. Some people want integration; others need a clear boundary between their professional and personal lives.
There is no universal design for a successful life.
Having what matters—not having everything
Of course, many people do not feel that they have too few possibilities. Their problem is already too much AND.
They may be professionals and parents, partners and caregivers, supporting other people while trying not to lose themselves. The last thing they need is another responsibility or aspiration to add to the list.
Lifestyle design is not about continually adding more.
Having it both ways does not mean having everything.
It means choosing the combinations that matter most—and work best for us at a particular stage of life.
At one stage, we might ask:
Who do I want to become?
Later, the question may be:
How do I honour my responsibilities while remaining true to myself?
Both are questions of lifestyle design.
A life is not designed once and then fixed forever. It can be redesigned—sometimes several times—as we learn, our circumstances change and different things become important.
It is never too late to redesign the next part of your life.
Notice. Question. Experiment.
In Trenčín, I suggested three practical actions for beginning this process.
Notice
What have you been told you must choose between?
Question
Who says those two things cannot go together? Is the choice genuinely necessary—or simply an inherited assumption?
Experiment
What small experiment could test a different combination?
An experiment does not need to mean quitting your job, moving to another country or transforming your life overnight. It might begin with a small project, an enquiry, a conversation or some protected time for a neglected part of yourself.
We do not need a perfect plan for our lives. Nor should we simply drift and hope for the best.
Once again, we can combine two apparent opposites:
Planning and serendipity.
We can choose a direction while remaining open to discovery. Then curiosity can help us find the next step—and the next.
A new keynote speaking theme
Lifestyle design is now one of the subjects I am developing for future keynote speeches and other events.
It grows naturally from ideas that have shaped my work for many years: defining success on your own terms, challenging conventional assumptions and designing businesses—and lives—that reflect your ambitions, values, circumstances and priorities.
The official video of You Can Have It Both Ways will be published by TEDx on YouTube. I will add it here as soon as it becomes available.
In the meantime, perhaps begin with three questions:
Because yes—you can have it both ways.
