Hello, everyone and welcome to the show. This is Women in Sustainable Business, as well as Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast. We're doing a double show in this episode. So thank you so much for joining us live on the show tonight. We have with us Michelle Miller, who is a brand strategist on the West Coast of the US. Michelle, why don't you say hello to everyone. Hi, everyone.
Michelle Miller 0:51
It's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me, Katherine. My name is Michelle Miller, and I own Minty Made, which is a sustainable branding and web design studio.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:01
Yeah, it's really wonderful to have you. And Michelle has been in the Women in Sustainable Business community for about six, seven months now. And she's been with us in the membership as well for just about the same time. And she's an incredible stylist and designer and all of these things. And she's now running a full-service studio and Minty Made. So I'm really excited to talk to her a bit about her journey to building this business and where it all came from and where she is now.
Michelle Miller 1:29
I'll start off with just a bit of my background. I have been in corporate and small business marketing for the past 10 years. And I most recently worked for a nonprofit that was based around getting women into construction careers. And I really did enjoy that job. What I found throughout most of my corporate career is just noticing more frequently the amount of waste, the amount of energy that's consumed by all these major corporations. And I actually sat on a couple of different small focus groups within those organisations to talk more about sustainability within the office space within the trade show industry which I was in for a very long time as well. And during COVID and the pandemic, I was able to take on more projects that were based around wellness and sustainable businesses. And that allowed me to go full time with Minty Made as of January of this year. So it's been an exciting year, businesses stayed steady. And even though more people are out and about travelling now, there's still a large push for getting content out in the world, making sure that you're differentiated amongst your competitors, and really showing the impact that each small business large business everyone has, as we're really in this all together for minting our global missions.
Katherine Ann Byam 2:55
Exactly. Thank you so much for sharing that. And that's I think that's really important. There are a number of sustainable brands out there now that are willing to make a change. So people who are prepared to not just say they want to change but to make change happen. And I really applaud it. It's something that's, that's so encouraging as we around. But we also struggle with scaling these businesses and making them leverage the impact that they really want to leverage. And I think branding has an important role to play in that I wanted to ask you, what are you? What are your reflections on the things people get wrong when they try to brand themselves?
Michelle Miller 3:30
Sure, I really talk about sustainable brain most of the time. And that's kind of has a double meaning in itself where people tend to just do a quick fix on their branding. They'll pick a colour that they like, they'll pick a font that they like, throw something up there, make a logo quickly. And they don't really design with their target audience in mind, they design with what they like what they think looks good. And that's not always what's best for your brand and messaging. So that's the number one, I would say common mistake that I see people making as they're starting out on their businesses. I also see people jumping on a lot of these trend trains. And for us in the eco-community, we're familiar with fast fashion versus slow fashion. And it really is the same when it comes to branding. There's a lot of trendy script fonts out there. There's a lot of trendy flashy websites that we see when we're scrolling through Facebook or Instagram. And I really tell people not to fall for jumping on that bandwagon and really sticking to what the roots are of your brand. All of my brand work is deeply rooted in strategy which is so important, especially for a business just starting out because it's an investment not only if you're DIY your own brands, that's a lot of your time that you could be building your business elsewhere, but also if you invest in a brand and or web designer, that's a large investment too because there's a lot of work that goes into that to make sure that your messaging is clear, and that you're reaching the customers or the clients that you're trying to serve. I would say one other mistake that I see is people creating a logo or a brand around one product or one service in particular. And because our businesses, all of us in this club are set up to scale, you don't want to box yourself into a logo that just has a photo of, let's see compostable utensils or something like that. Because if you offer more products down the road, then all of your brandings have to change. And you have to go back and revisit that.
Katherine Ann Byam 5:48
That's really, really good advice, actually. And pivoting a bit to what are the sort of key things that we need to think about in succeeding so just right now. At the moment, we're running a Copy Bootcamp in the club, but it's interesting to see how many people are making discoveries about their ideal client as they go through this journey of copywriting. What are the key things to make sure match up when you're coming to a brand strategist? And you want to go through what you want? What sort of things should you prepare? What is important to that process?
Michelle Miller 6:23
Definitely. Through my own strategy, when I work with clients, it's a couple of core pieces here, there's getting clear on your values. And what I learned through a course that I took called the Ego Citizen Course a couple of months ago, is trying to separate your own personal values from the values of your business because there are two different value bases there. And though you are the face of your business, like in my case, I am, with many small business owners, there's only the solopreneur in the mix, really hone in on what your brand voices as well. So values, brand voice... If your brand were a person, I always ask people to describe what their brand looks like, what their brand smells like, what their brand tastes like. And it really evokes all the senses around what your brand is aiming to accomplish and what your business goals are. Speaking of business goals, that's another question that I asked before I even work with any business owners is what are you trying to achieve? I really steer people away from "all I want more followers" or "Oh, I want more people to join my lives." It's all about reaching that end customer converting them into a buyer or a subscriber. And really having clear business goals, I think is the number one thing I'd say to have. Prepared when you talk to a brand strategist, a copywriter, a photographer, any service provider in general.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:57
Absolutely. These are important ingredients. And I was also trying to explain yesterday, the difference between an ideal client and a client. And I think it's really important for all of us to understand that having an ideal client does is not an exclusive thing. It's not like you don't serve everyone but it is about that brand focus, right?
Michelle Miller 8:17
Sure. One of the exercises I have my clients do is telling me about an ideal client. And then I actually create an ideal client profile for them where I write a little story about, let's say, Maria. Maria goes shopping at the farmers market every day with her reusable bags, she stumbles upon a bulletin board at the end of the farmers market sees a business card that that is intriguing and well designed. And that's how that purchase path works toward your business. And that's really helpful for people because they can start to see, "Oh, my, this ideal client avatar, even though they're not real or fictitious, is a person" that they can see that whole streamline of them finding out about their business and moving into inquiring. So I love going through that exercise with people, they really appreciate that when I asked at the end of our projects, what was your favourite part? They always say the fact that we were able to work together and come up with two to three of my ideal clients, and they really start to see how that can come to life.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:29
Yeah, wonderful. So I want to pivot again about full-service studios. So I know that this is something that has been sort of trending of late. So people start off maybe with branding only, but then they start bringing in other services as they know you've done as well this year. And why is it important to bring those things together in terms of impact for your customer?
Michelle Miller 9:53
Earlier this year, I made a decision. When I speak to clients and they're interested in moving, I actually package copywriting, my web design, branding and photography all together because it allows me to coordinate and collaborate with both the copywriter and the photographer, both on a visual and a verbal and for copywritten standpoint. It really helps us all go in the same direction at once with what the brand voice is saying, what the messaging should be, how the brand should portray itself with imagery and such. And it's very hard to work disjointedly with either copy coming either from the client themselves or another copywriter, and kind of fitting that square peg in the round hole. When you're trying to fit it all together. It's really a team effort. And I'm of the belief that it should be approached that way. And it's made a huge difference in just conversion rates that I've seen for people's websites, people signing on or buying products or services. And I will never go back to the way it was before. And I think a lot of others are moving in this direction for the same reasons. It's these business groups like this that you started, Katherine are an incredible help to fostering that collaboration with others.
Katherine Ann Byam 11:20
Absolutely. So I think I think these are all wonderful tips. I want to now pivot to something that's more even more important for all of us as we're all based online pretty much every day. And this is about the sustainability of your website itself. And we like to do pretty branding shoots and have heavy images that look beautiful, but we know that this isn't good, either for the environment. So I wanted to talk a little bit about how to make your websites more eco friendly, or tips in that direction.
Michelle Miller 11:54
I would love to, in fact, I just read another book. I have it right here. It's called belief. I believe he's based in the UK, his name is Tom Greenwood. For anyone interested in this book. It's called Sustainable Web Design. It's a short read. But it has a lot of great tips and findings that I've added to my knowledge base. When you look at a website, as you just mentioned, again, back to the trendy things that are going on in the web design world, we see a lot of flashy graphics, a lot of animation, a lot of things that move and these are all large contributors to page weight. Page weight is a complicated formula to try and figure out what the energy or how much energy is being emitted from your website but it's a good baseline. You can measure that in data. There's a couple of other tools that I'll share in the group actually after we get finished up here that show how much or how green really enjoyed plugging my own website into there and seeing where it ranked. Some other ways to limit your energy consumption on your website is to opt-in or purchase your domain hosting from a green host. And there's a list of them. If you just type in green web hosting online, they'll come up. A lot of these hosting companies are committed to hosting their platforms, fueled by 100% renewable energy. And it's great that that's becoming more popular as I've seen over the years. I just switched mine over from GoDaddy which is a large hosting company here to Green Web Platform hosting. And a lot of people worry, "Oh, well their networks go down or is it as reliable and it is. It doesn't make a difference. A lot of the large platform hosting companies have downtime too. And I just sleep better at night knowing that I'm investing my money in a company that's committed to sustainability. Also, being mindful of the colours that you choose. This was a really interesting find that I had a couple of months ago. White space, you would think that on a website more white space is better because it's keeping things simplified, but it's actually the opposite dark colours use a lot less energy on your screen than white, light blues, bright colours. So that was very interesting for me to find out. Be mindful of your movement. So a lot of JavaScript code. I won't go to I won't go into too much of a nerd mode on the development side. But a lot of code that's on the website is unused. So think of it as you would garbage in the trash can. It's not there to be used anymore. There's no purpose to it. And so that's if you're working with a developer asking those questions about what's needed. You can accomplish a lot with compressed images with some streamlined code and really still deliver a valuable and memorable customer experience without having all of these different elements that don't really add to the experience at all. And then hiring a sustainable web designer that has these practices in mind that we'll walk through not only what materials you're going to print your marketing materials on, recycled paper, seed, paper, all of that. But someone that really knows the ins and outs of what it is to create a sustainable website. One more thing to add is the whole accessibility piece. It's very valuable if you can create a website that can load quickly and actually be accessed offline. As we're moving into more advertising into countries that don't have as fast internet speeds as maybe we do, it's very important for these websites to be accessible by those who have limited bandwidth.
Katherine Ann Byam 15:58
Really great tips. Thank you so much for sharing so much with the group and community. What's the direction of your business for the next few years? Where do you see it going?
Michelle Miller 16:09
Sure, I actually plan to host some workshops myself on sustainable web design so that either there can be tips helpful for people that are DIY in their own website, and maybe don't have the time or money to invest in a full rebrand or website design right now. And I would also be going to be focusing on creating specific web pages or landing pages for eco businesses to show what their impact actually is. Those would be more interactive, but not in a way that would create a lot of excess energy like I just talked about but really showing what difference that company or that small business is making. Because we see a lot of sustainability pages out there. It just has a short paragraph on why they're committed to sustainability. But Patagonia - that's one of the companies I admire greatly. They have a very detailed page about each of their business practices, how it contributes or limits global warming. And I want more businesses to have the opportunity to show that and really put numbers down to show their commitment and not just write about it in a sentence and hope that's enough.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:27
All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Michelle. This is really insightful, and we'd love to have you back sometime in the future when you have new news to share about where you've gotten to with a sustainable web design. Thanks so much for coming to the show.
045 Sustainable Success and Style
About this Episode
I'm joined today by Yvonne Phillip, a.k.a. Yves. She's a brand strategist, stylist and self-care advocate. She believes that you have to stand out to fit in. And not only do you have to stand out to fit in; if women sustain themselves, they can sustain the world. She helps service-based professionals who feel that they are not being noticed or seen as the expert, not creating a connection with their ideal clients to get clarity, confidence and credibility with their personal and business brands through coaching courses and one-to-one services and events. She takes entrepreneurs and executives on a transformational journey that include their strategy, their style, and their self-care. The result is that they step up, show up, stand out and attract their dream clients with ease, authenticity, and without apology or overwhelm.
Thank you, Katherine, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to join and be speaking with you and your audience today.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:26
Wonderful to have you. Many people say that you need to start with branding when you're building a business. Is this true or false and why or why not?
Yvonne Phillip 1:35
I believe that it is false. Despite working in the personal branding space, I think people need to understand who they are, and who their business is serving before they start developing a brand. So you can build a website, you can go on Fiverr and get a logo. But that's not the brand, your brand comes from a deep part within. So at the start of your business, you should be thinking about the development of your product or service and making sure that's high quality. You should be thinking about who your target audience is that's going to buy this product and service, and doing that form of research. And as you're doing that form of research, you will collate those ideas of the way to communicate with your audience because that is your branding. Branding is a communication or communication tool, whether it be in writing verbally, the visual images, and representations such as the fonts, colours, logos, etc. But if you start with your brand and your branding, you might be building a brand that isn't conducive to you, or that your audience is going to be attracted to and repel, what could be ideal clients rather than bring them into your world and build that connection with them for them to want to buy your product or service.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:00
Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think this leads me nicely into the next one, which is as entrepreneurs, especially product-based ones we tend to hide behind our product, we tend to shy away from personal visibility, especially when we're micro businesses. And I want to ask you if this is a recommended approach because I think a lot of people think about their branding in terms of the product and not in terms of themselves.
Yvonne Phillip 3:25
Absolutely, they totally do. And a lot of product-based businesses do hide behind their brand. I know in my intro, it says that I support service-based businesses but I do also say support product-based businesses. If you're a large organisation, a large business you have lots of money to throw at advertising and promotions, in-store promotions, etc. When you're fully-fledged, now open for business, but as a solo entrepreneur, as someone where you are your product or your brand you have to step up and show up because people buy from people. People don't buy just a bottle of perfume or just a Gizi wizard, whatever it was. They buy because they like the person in the advert. They like the way that the advert actually embraces a family if you think about John Lewis or Sainsbury's, etc. So if you have a product, you need to show up in photography, in videos with your products, you can't just put products out there, because people don't know anything about it. They have no emotional connection to a box or a bottle. So if you're showing up, people then decide, "Yes, I want to invest my hard-earned money and purchase that product from that person."
Katherine Ann Byam 4:51
Absolutely. I guess a lot of fashion is linked to body image and confidence as well. And I think this fits nicely into why some of us hide behind our brands. How can someone use style to raise their self-perception?
Yvonne Phillip 5:05
So style is a tricky one, because a lot of people that don't have body confidence, wear lots of big, baggy clothes because. They're trying to hide. And I think that the first thing that you need to start doing is with your body image is stopped following and looking at everybody else. Take them for inspiration. But your goal should never be to emulate that person because no two people are the same, not even identical twins are the same. There are differences between them. So with your body confidence, as long as you're healthy, need to start loving yourself. There are always going to be parts of your body that you don't like. I don't like my skinny arms, Katherine, I'm sure there are parts of your body that you don't like. But unless we're going to do something about it, we need to learn to start living with that. So when your star comes into it, it is about first of all identifying your body shape, and what clothes suit your body shape the best. Because I have a very slender body shape and am very flat-chested. So there are certain types of garments that I can't wear, but it's going to make me look even more flat-chested. For ladies that may be a little bit full around the middle, they need to wear clothes that bring you to know their waist underneath their bust. So there are ways that when you wear clothes that suit your body shape, you automatically feel a lot more confident. In addition to that, it's about wearing the colours that suit you. Because you can look in a shop in our high street brand and you can see something online that you really, really like. And then when you get home, I'm sure it's happened to you, it's happened to me a million times, you look at yourself in the mirror, and you think, "oh my days, what happens, it didn't quite look like that on the model." And that's because you don't have the same body shape as that model. So what you need to think about to improve your body image is to be comfortable with who you are, find the parts of your body that do like and show them off. Find out the colours that suit you and your body shapes. You can start wearing clothes that suit you. And it's a hell of a lot easier to shop and do that as well.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:29
I absolutely agree. I'm moving into the sustainability space. And I know this is one of the pillars of your brand. The fashion industry is increasingly under criticism from poor employment and contractual practices from environmental harm caused by the production of the clothing and the waste that's generated to landfills, either through the sort of true fashion or even just bolts and bolts of cloth that are never used. So what are your reflections on where the industry needs to go?
Yvonne Phillip 7:59
Now, I think that obviously, COVID has hit the fashion industry extremely hard. And I do have some empathy for employees that have been affected by the pandemic. But what I think that the large brands need to start doing is be more transparent about the way that these clothes are made and stop making so many clothes. We always have more than enough or more surplus clothing, which goes into landfills which are damaging to the environment or ends up hot on sale. First of all, they need to be transparent about the way that these clothes are being made because a lot of the fast fashion brands are making clothes in countries where they're not actually paying the worth of the time and effort that it takes to make those clothes. They've been made in poor quality factories. Some of them have had major disasters. And then they're transporting those garments across the world which is having the carbon footprint of that transportation is huge. The fashion industry is the second most polluting in the world. So we need to start thinking about how can we make clothes that are sustaining only people so that they're being paid right but also the world that we live in - in this beautiful world. In addition to that, too many clothes are being made, and they're not being purchased. So yes, they may end up on the sales rack, but then if they don't end up on sales, they end up in landfills. So the fashion industry, if that's the case, give those clothes to charity. What we can do as individuals is not be such fast fashion consumers, because a T-shirt cannot be made for five pounds? So we're seeing that as a bargain. But really, is it a bargain because somebody had to pick that cotton, it's had to be processed, it then had to be made cuts, sewn into that T-shirt and then shipped to the UK. It can't that can't happen for five pounds. Corners are being cut somewhere. And I think that we as consumers needs to reflect on that. And really think about, are we making informed choices about the way we are buying fast fashion, throwing it away, and then buying more fast fashion because nobody's benefiting from this, apart from the owners of these companies?
Katherine Ann Byam 10:50
Well said. What recommendations can you make to those who want to redesign their wardrobe for sustainability? So for example, I have been guilty of my own share of purchasing things, purchasing too many things, purchasing fast things. I used to travel to Miami a lot and pick up things out of outlet malls. Many of these things I still have, I refuse to let go of them. But I want to do something with my wardrobe, I want to be more minimalistic. I want to also adapt my clothing to suit my new body, my new body size, etc. What can I do?
Yvonne Phillip 11:31
So I think that you're doing the right thing by not throwing away your outlet clothes. I love an outlet. If I'm going to buy something new, I will go to an outlet store or I will buy second-hand, or I will buy it sustainably from a sustainable or ethical producer or designer. I think that's what you could do. When I was first starting on this sustainable style journey, there was so much information out there that also contradicted each other because if you want to wear vegetarian on non-animal products, that affects the industry in one way. Then if you want to wear fair trade that affects something another way down the line. So first of all, you need to think about what is the cause that you want to stand for through your stuff. So for example, mine is ethical practices, fair trade and reducing waste. So let's go back to our previous question what I said about finding out your body shape, what colour suit you once you know that you can give your wardrobe in audit, and really think about what are the clothes that suit me now, and are they the colours that are going to show me off in the right light. Clothes that are no longer working for you, you can give away to charity, you may want to keep them, and then you can start building a wardrobe that reflects you. I would advise you to build a capsule wardrobe, which is a group of like 30 to 50 pieces, which you can interchange and intermingle with the rest of your wardrobe. And if you choose a couple of colours that you really like the colours that when people see you, they're like, "Oh my gosh, you look fabulous in that." Yeah, those colours. You can build a wardrobe that reflects you. And this is really great, especially if you're a business owner because you can also link it to your brand colours. Because with your personal brand, you need to be showing up consistently all the time, consistency is key. So if you're showing up in your brand colours or your brand pattern, or in a way that suits your brand and your style all the time, that's also going to build recognition in your brand. But the first thing you need to start doing is often know your colours and your body shape. Go through your wardrobe and see what is still working for you. Yeah, do not throw those clothes away. Give them to charity. Somebody else could benefit from them. Then think about a capsule wardrobe.
Katherine Ann Byam 14:13
Brilliant, great advice. So I know that your work has been on billboards lately. Why don't you tell us about that?
Yvonne Phillip 14:20
Oh, I'm so excited about that. Yes. I'm all about authenticity, I'm all about integrity, I'm all about sustainability. Now those that may have seen a picture of me you'll see me with my big Afro and I embrace my natural hair and in as a woman of colour or a black woman. And I work with a campaign called Project Embrace which is all about black women embracing their natural hair in the workplace because I don't know how you know whether you've been through this as well, Katherine. I spent years relaxing my hair because I was trying to fit in with meet your norms of what is acceptable with western society norms of what was acceptable, but I was damaging my self-esteem and not really showing up as who I am. So this campaign is all about shining a light on how beautiful how versatile and how professional afro hair is and can be. So I'm really, really honoured and pleased to be the stylist on that campaign, which is on a billboard near you. We're gonna be able to meet you soon. But I'm also going to be all over my social media.
Katherine Ann Byam 15:38
it sounds awesome. It sounds wonderful. And I definitely a share that journey that you've had. Even today, I live in Southampton, and I can't find a black hairdresser. I remember once going to a hairdressing salon that was predominantly white and asking if anyone could do my hair, and they told me that only the owner can, and I would have to pay double the price. This is the kind of thing that really makes you do your own hair!
Yvonne Phillip 16:09
I live in London and I do have afro hair salons around. I choose to do my own hair. I do need to go and have a little bit of trim soon. But you know, that's the problem. You know, if you don't live in a conurbation, where there are large amounts of no black people in the community. It's either very, very expensive, or you get people doing a hair that doesn't we don't really, really understand it. And that's a shame, we shouldn't have to have to go through that. So hopefully this campaign will allow black women to embrace their own hair more, but also European hair salons to get a better understanding of our hair, and how to cope with that.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:53
Absolutely. So where can everyone find you? This has been such a lovely session, I wouldn't want them to miss out on your goodies.
Yvonne Phillip 17:00
Oh, yes. So you can find me on my website, www.yvonnephillip.com. There's a little quiz there that will help you to find your brand personalities and personality season. If you're interested in exploring your personal brand a little bit more, but some others quizzes are going to be launching soon as well. I'm on social media, Instagram and Facebook @yvonnephillipthesuccessstylist
and on LinkedIn and Clubhouse just Yvonne Phillip. So come and find me and say hi. Let me know that you found me through Katherine.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:38
Wonderful. Thanks so much for joining me today Yvonne.
Yvonne Phillip 17:42
Thank you so much for having me, Katherine.
042 Digital Footprints
About this Episode
Polly Buckland sat on the client-side in a marketing manager role at BMW UK Ltd before founding what is now The Typeface Group (TFG) in 2010. She's an ideas person blending creativity and commercial awareness to ensure the delivery team at TFG do just that. The Typeface Group is on a mission to give ambitious businesses robust websites that not only help achieve growth but are carbon considerate.
What inspired you to make your marketing firm eco-friendly?
Polly Buckland 0:59
In 2019-2020, we were working with a couple of businesses that were really heavily focused on zero carbon targets, primarily with regards to UK housing stock and smart homes. We were already working in that space. And then we met with Nancy Hyne from True Horizon and did our first environmental assessment for our own business. At that time, we were looking very internally at what we could do and our own responsibility as a business. At that point, we weren't really looking at what we could then offer to our customers. In early 2021, we did our B Corp assessment.
And alongside that, I was doing some research and stumbled across an article from Wholegrain Digital on digital carbon footprint; and subsequently bought the book by their founder, Tom Greenwood on Sustainable Web Design. And I think our eureka moment was as I was reading it. And I said to my co-founder, Natalie, we already do 90% of this. We're already there. Because we're following best practices for web builds, we optimise our websites from the ground up. And that is largely what best practice is for sustainable web design. So we committed this year to give all web builds that we produce for our customers a carbon calculation for their homepage, and actually an accessibility score. And what that does is it keeps us accountable. And it raises awareness with clients that might not necessarily have asked for that, they might not have even really computed that. But they were going to have a digital footprint anyway. So that's how this all began.
Katherine Ann Byam 2:34
What elements of the whole design of eco-friendly service businesses are important for other service businesses to understand? I mean what things did you take into consideration from your B Corp to web design to make your business more eco-friendly?
Polly Buckland 2:50
So I guess the one that ties both together is choosing suppliers that carefully fit within the B Corp assessment. There are quite a few questions that are tied to the suppliers that we use. And certainly from a website owner perspective - Who's going to host your website? Do their data centres run on renewable energy? It's a very, very quick and easy decision to make actually but it can have quite an impact. So look at your suppliers and look at your content. I think certainly with digital communications, previously sort of more was best for SEO, as well just get the traffic in by producing more and more and more content.
And I think that needs to be more considered. Now there needs to be more of an essentialist approach. So if you've still got blogs on your website announcing your Christmas party from three years ago, if someone stumbles on that there is going to be a carbon output and why it's not relevant. So I think having a clear down in your business of your blog post or your junk folder in your email or your Sent Items. Sort of clear everything down because if it's being stored is having an impact.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:59
Yeah, that's so important. And I think a lot of people underestimate the actual size of this; and especially in this uber digital age that we're in right now. I mean, I have some email accounts that are overwhelmed with emails from marketers, etc. How can we better control it?
Polly Buckland 4:17
You just need to schedule some time. I think you need to delegate within your businesses. So everyone needs to be personally responsible for their own inbox. There are also some nice little extensions, there's an extension on Google where if you're going to send an email that's less than three or four words, there'll be a pop-up and it'll go, “Do you really need to send that?” And I think making it part of your daily routine is quite important. I mean, there's no two ways about it. People need to shift how they're working. I spoke to a client recently who's producing content for their website. And she said, “I was thinking about four blogs a month.” And I said, “Well, why?” Like why you need to kind of push back and start questioning.
Well, if you've got only four things to say, it would be better to write one rich piece of content that 's gonna answer the questions of the people that landed on your site. And it's going to be more sort of searchable, more discoverable, because it's rich, rich content in line with Google's principle. It's going to be relevant to people that land on it. So it will be worth the output that it has. And it will make the business seem more authoritative as well. So it's like a more considered approach and a more essentialist approach to producing content, I guess.
Katherine Ann Byam 5:36
How do we measure and track or footprint data? Are there really good websites, processes that we can use? Tell us about that journey?
Polly Buckland 5:45
The answer is, it's really difficult. And again, all rates for me at the moment in terms of research that I'm doing and the authority within the industry lead back to Whole Grain Digital. They have produced a website carbon calculator, and what it does is it measures data transfer, energy intensity, the energy source, how the data centres are powered, the carbon intensity of the electricity, and the website traffic. And it's this engine where you put your URL into it, and it will come out with basically a performance percentage of your website and the carbon output. Then it will give you which is really nice, based on 10,000 visits a year, this is the equivalent of carbon that you're producing. So it makes it relatable.
Yeah, that's a single web page, there is nothing that I found that would give you a whole website carbon calculation, which is something that I'm in the early stages of trying to work on. But what people can do is read up on what the best practice is and employ it. I mean, I've always had a thing against stock imagery, I just think it doesn't really say much about the personality of your business if you're using stock imagery, but more so that image will have like images really, really slow down your page loading time, which in line with Google's core vital updates this year, is a key consideration that page load and content delivery. But it also is often the thing that has the most negative impact on the carbon output of that page. So even if you don't have a whole website, carbon calculation, you can absolutely be removing images that actually don't have much purpose on your website. It will make a difference. It's tricky to find the measure right now. But it will make a difference.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:36
Yeah, that's really interesting. I think it's a lot of things that we think about, but we don't actively think about the impact we're having by being slow to react. And that's what's key. So from a B Corp perspective, what else do we need to be messaging, for example, on our website.
Polly Buckland 7:53
I do think more and more people are looking for Corporate Social Responsibility statements. I do think that that is a consideration in both B2B and B2C buying. Now, I think I read a stat like 70-80% of people are now considering the values of a business before they purchase from them. I think it's important to also recognise that B Corp isn't just about the environment. It is about governance, your workers, community, and the environment and customers. So I think it is a more holistic measure of a business. So I would really recommend anyone pick up their phone, get on their laptop, go to the B Corp assessment and do it. It's no obligation, it's free to do and just see where you're coming out. The reason we went for B Corp (we've already spoken to Nancy about it) I sat on the sofa on a Friday night with a glass of wine and I did the B Corp assessment on my phone, and that was the beginning. Unless you start measuring, you can't improve. And I think that's a really important message. If you want to be more environmentally considerate, you need to find your baseline.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:11
Tell me a little bit and I want to dig into something potentially controversial here. So just recently, we witnessed what's happened at BrewDog in terms of their treatment of employees or employees who are pushing back against some of the culture of the company about sort of manipulation, etc, that's been going on, or that the alleged has been going on, I should say. And there's been a question coming up around what B Corp's role is in ensuring that companies stick to what they've pledged in their assessments, etc. What are your thoughts on this and whether or not B Corps should respond?
Polly Buckland 9:49
It's really tricky, isn't it? So when you're doing a B Corp assessment, you need 81 points to become accredited, which means you don't have to be perfect and you don't have to even answer every question. We've submitted our assessment at this point. So we haven't been assessed. So I can't speak in kind of firsthand experience as to what the assessment looks like and how deep they delve into your evidence and how you've answered the questions. I'm not sure it's for B Corp to respond. I don't think the fact that BrewDog is accredited yet not perfect reflects badly on B Corp. I think the message is very much working towards being better for your people, the environment and communities. It's definitely for BrewDog to address the assessment.
Certainly, the interrogation of the assessment and the production of evidence by the companies that have submitted could be more thorough, maybe. Then I would imagine the price of being B Corp-accredited will rise because they've got to put the people behind it to do the additional check. Part of me thinks if a business is going to go through the time, energy and investment of becoming B Corp, they're going to go into that with kind of open hearts and full integrity. This could just be a case of the leadership team at BrewDog genuinely not knowing; and therein lies a wider problem for them. It's about making sure that you've got a constant flow of communication even if you're growing and ambitious and taking over your sector, you can't forget the small stuff. And we've been using a tool called OfficeVibe which is great because what it does is sends a pulse of random questions out to our team every two weeks. So even if we're busy, we're still getting that constant feedback. And then it will really flag if there's an issue. And of course, you need your employees to be really, really open and honest. Yeah, to get the best out of it.
Katherine Ann Byam 12:07
It's an interesting discussion because... I don't know if you've seen "Seaspiracy," and some of these programs on Netflix where they really get into the accreditation bodies for their - let's call it "limited due diligence" around this stuff. And I think it's becoming quite a problem. Because even you know that there are a number of instances where accreditation bodies have failed to do that check. And I recognise your argument around the cost, right? Because yes, it becomes more expensive to accredit if you do have to do the work. But we people also need some kind of guarantee that this thing is reliable. Otherwise, why do it? And so I think this is going to be an interesting and continuing debate as we go forward.
Polly Buckland 12:56
And I too just wonder if it's almost like the pulse that they need to be requesting of anyone that's assessed to do it quarterly - submit these three bits of evidence, and we'll do it at random. And if you don't submit it, then we suspend your accreditation because that can be automated to a degree. If B Corp chose to respond to it because I think it's the first big question mark, and I'm not sure it's a case of I'm not sure the answer is to just make this massive example of bloop for BrewDog, who is doing good as well. And I sort of skim-read the response that they seem to be taking responsibility.
Katherine Ann Byam 13:37
It'll be interesting to see how it all evolves. I think this part of the sustainability stories, often overlooked. So we often talk about climates and the environment but we don't talk about decent work.
Polly Buckland 13:49
100%. And I think there's that degree of greenwashing. Right. I was on a call recently and someone who is part of a wider group basically said, "Well, you can call it what you want but people really only care about the bottom line." And I thought, "Well, actually they don't. I've met a lot of people that really, really don't and they do take this holistic view of their business and their impact and doing good for the community. I think it would be really sad to just credit all the good work and positive energy that businesses put into their B Corp journey to at least write about cancelled culture. I don't I don't think we discredit all the good because it may be one question mark.
Katherine Ann Byam 14:35
So I absolutely agree with you. What are you currently working on? That's going to probably change the game again for your business and for this whole idea of carbon neutrality.
Polly Buckland 14:47
At the moment, I am in conversation with our web host who's an independent UK business. They've already got a pretty strong Corporate Social Responsibility policy themselves which is why we chose him as a supplier. They run their data centres on 100% renewable energy. But the reality is they don't have a measure at the moment for site-on-site energy usage. And I would really like to be achieving the fast carbon measure on the dashboard, on the back end of a website. I think that needs to be the norm.
From what I've seen, it doesn't exist at the moment that locally to us within three enterprises, I believe there's like an Environmental Innovation Fund. So I believe that there's potentially some funding there. I feel like I understand what the customers want and need and can help in communicating that and I'm trying to marry that up with the technical team at the web host. Hopefully, we can all come together and produce something that could be rolled out eventually to anyone with a website. I think people need to understand that their websites have a carbon output first, see that measure, and see how they can improve it. So that's what's in store for us as well as working with a number of clients on web builds.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:04
How can people keep in touch with you or get involved with the work at The Typeface Group?
Polly Buckland 16:09
So we're at the typeface group.co.uk. And I am pretty active on Twitter at my username is @typeface. See, all our contact details are on the website. We're always interested in being part of the conversation. Wonderful.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:25
Thank you so much, Polly, for joining us today. I think this was a really enlightening session. And I do hope my listeners get something and take something away from this session or even get in touch with you. Thank you so much.
Polly Buckland 16:36
Thank you very much.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:40
This episode was brought to you today by the Eco Business Group Club by Katherine Ann Byam and by the space where ideas long the Eco Business Growth club supports positive impact SMEs with coaching new health, and community support toward achieving the impact and reach they set out to meet. You can find out more by connecting with where ideas launch on Instagram or following the hashtag where it is launched across all of your social media.
030 Future Talent
About this Episode
In this episode, we are going to be discussing future falent with an old friend of mine, Harry. It was such a pleasure to reconnect!
Harry Vargas is a dynamic HR leader and change agent.
He’s passionate about driving transformation for capacity building and growth, through commercially relevant and pragmatic organizational and talent strategies.
He has 20 Years of multi-market & cultural experience, successfully leading and developing diverse teams at local, regional and global levels.
Harry joined Microsoft in 2020, to lead HR and the culture & people transformational agenda, for the growing regional hub based in Costa Rica, serving LATAM and the US.
Hi, Katherine. I am so happy to see you after a few years now. Thank you for having me.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:18
It is really wonderful to have you on the show. Let me set the scene a bit. We have had about five years of digital transformation happen in one incredible year that has been 2020. And looking at the world stock markets, technology firms have significantly benefited from this upheaval whereas, traditional industries have suffered from the decline in overall spending and the closure of retail. The impact on jobs has been significant but buffered by state assistance in many places. And many more people are now in what we could describe as the hustle economy. My first question for you is how did these changes affect traditional organisations from your background; and how do you think they can effectively respond?
Harry Vargas 2:01
Sure, I think this is one of those things that when you get a real challenge, it brings an opportunity. And I think that is what has happened in this new environment. If you talk about digital transformation - I think in most companies, we have been talking about this for at least 10 years - every time it gets to the point where you have to prioritise the investments and put some money behind it, it doesn't get prioritised because there are other things before doing this. So in this new context that we live in, I think companies simply did not have an option to wait any longer. And started to rethink how to work around this.
That was for me, an opportunity, but at the same time, a huge challenge. So as you have seen, some companies have been able to move faster than others. But everyone is trying to do something about it. The other thing that I noticed is that at least over the last year, consumers adapted way faster to the digital environment than companies did because we didn't pretty much have a choice. And we have to adapt the way we do things in many aspects of life. So again, it was one more challenge and burning platform for companies to really do something about this and do it quickly.
Obviously, it had an impact on cultures and especially for more traditional organisations. We stop and rethink the way we do business, the way we engage with consumers and our employees inside the organisation so we can be faster and more agile. Agility is one of those terms that also we have been using for quite a while. But now, it is a must. You really have to be agile to adapt to everything we need to do differently. So the traditional ways of making decisions in companies were pretty much centralised or maybe too slow. That being said, they may even need to have specific space for innovation. We simply have to stop and do something different, and it impacts the culture. So I think that's the first thing I noticed.
Then, there was an impact also on rethinking what are the skills that we need, what sort of profiles we will need to bring into the organisation so that we have a more diverse way of looking at the opportunities in the market and understanding consumers. And again, diversity and inclusion and all of those things are not new. They have been around for years. But finally, we get organisations to see the imminent value of this and any matter of life or death. Sorry for being dramatic but now we are facing it.
So I think it is very challenging. It puts every company in a situation where they have to simply change the way they are doing things and come up with a new picture of success, and different ways of doing business. Even for HR, I spend most of my time working on HR strategies and programs. And there were very similar conversations that we have had over the years in terms of having a more flexible working environment that is (maybe) more agile and may have an opportunity to integrate different technologies and be simply closer to people, acknowledging that we are not just working with machines.
And those were very complex conversations for things that today are so obvious, like remote working and those kinds of things. Again, many companies were discussing that for years and did not make any decisions around it. But simply, they did not have any choice any longer. I think, overall, we have faced a cultural shift in finally putting the consumer at the core and bringing this flexibility into the organisations to do whatever it takes to rethink and survive.
Katherine Ann Byam 6:26
As you touched on it. I wanted to get into your thoughts on the implications of skills for organisations. So I know that you're sitting now from the perspective of Microsoft. And I am going to come to that for sure. But what are the implications on individual skill sets given that we have had so much transformation happening so quickly?
Harry Vargas 6:47
I was reading a paper from the World Economic Forum on the future of jobs. If you put it simply quite cold, it is a world that has been split into these: essential workers, remote workers, and then the ones that have been, unfortunately, displaced. And if you look at the situation, what we have is a workplace that requires a good combination of some of the classic skills like leadership and good management - "the good old things," but now bringing in more agility and some more specific skills like data science, understanding of artificial intelligence, innovation, adaptability, remote leadership, managing hybrid teams, being more resilient, a full understanding of how teams need to be self-directed in this remote world, and the capacity to help your teams to connect virtually while still maintaining the cultural feeling even if we're not together physically.
So it's a good combination of some of the skills that we used to work around for the last few years but maybe with a lens that is more agile, modern, and integrating technologies, and those sorts of things. If you look at the kind of jobs that will be more required in the future, all of them have to do with the facilitators of digital transformations, to begin with. People will have a lot to do with data analytics, data science, machine learning, learning expert specialists since all of that is changing. They are engineers, software developers, and information security. We have had many threats over the last few years.
You are seeing now what is happening. So those specific modern skills are the things that we are seeing. It obviously does not mean that now everyone has to know and be an expert around those things. At least, we need to be very aware of how to live in an environment that requires those skills, learn some of those skills and adapt to the new ways of working.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:22
Yeah. I know that this one is gonna be an interesting question, I think, for my listeners. So we know that as we get older, the ability to learn new things and assimilate rapidly with ease sort of diminishes. That we can always be lifelong learners is obviously something that we can maintain throughout our lives. However, we know that we get slower. And as we get slower, things are accelerating. Right? The rate of change of technologies is way faster than anything we have ever known. What would you recommend for people in their mid-career stages, in managerial type roles who may be in their 40s or 50s who are either out of work or looking for new jobs? What would you recommend that they do? And how do they overcome the natural bias we might have to adult learners?
Harry Vargas 10:10
Yes. That is an interesting question, a challenging and a very common one - I guess - in this particular time, with many of us trying to adapt and look for new things. I would say, maybe it sounds very simple. But I would start by looking around and assessing who my competition is in terms of talent. Because when you get to a point in which you are already a manager, middle manager, or have relevant experience, it’s good that you feel confident. But look around and see who your competitors are? What sort of skills do the other people have that you will be competing against to get those nice jobs? What do they have? What have they learned more recently - which of those skills that
I mentioned that they recently possessed that you still don't have because you can bring all of that experience which is great. And there must be a good balance in organisations with new talent. At once, that helps us navigate through changes with more experiences but we need to be realistic. We will be competing with those that have more naturally learned than our abilities. So once we assess who we are competing against, then we can prioritise where we need to go on and learn? And yes, maybe we will take some more time to learn a few things. But you really need to be very conscious and intentional about the two or three things that you need to acquire in the next 12 months. Then go and get them and reskill yourself quickly. I think this is the one thing that I would prioritise.
The other one is the world of having good connections and good networking. Again, that is nothing new but what is new is that it is completely remote. Now, again, it's completely virtual. How do you keep a network that is serving you and that you can learn a lot from it? You can also get access to the opportunities that are around more than 70% of jobs that are open especially at the managerial level.
That the first time they open, they will do it just internally. And only when they have decided that they don't have an internal talent or they don't know someone from outside, they would open it as a vacancy, let's say. So the more connections you have, the higher the chances that you will at least have visibility of one of those opportunities. So connections more than ever, and being creative about getting those connections. Being active is the second point. And then the third, I would say be flexible. Many people have, and especially around the middle management of today, have probably built careers more traditionally. And it is simply different today. We don't even talk about careers per se anymore.
We talk about skills and we talk about experiences. And we talk about, you know, the type of very specific needs that our company has. And then what is the profile that we will bring but we don't bring any more traditional careers, let's say for the new jobs. So you have to be flexible and then assess again - what are the skills that I have? And where do I fit in the new opportunities that might be around? And that flexibility will help in bringing more opportunities in opening up conversations and being flexible about everything. So I think this is one of those concrete things that you could do.
Katherine Ann Byam 14:05
I had an interesting conversation on this podcast as well with someone who's looking into learning futures. And one of the things that he said was that purpose is sort of akin to attention and where the purpose is, attention goes. And I reflected on this in terms of as organisations start to introduce things like ESG and get more alignment to bigger goals that are not just about stakeholder wealth and the impact this could have on people's ability to learn and assimilate faster. I don't know if you have any reflections on that. I thought it was an interesting way to put it.
Harry Vargas 14:40
Yes. I think learning faster, as you said, is one of those things that are a must today. And it starts with being humble. If I've learned one thing over the last couple of years it is how can I be more humble in terms of asking “how much I have to learn?” And then that opens up great opportunities for you to, first of all, feel better because you no longer feel like you know everything because you've been around for 20 years or whatever. And it even brings self-motivation. I mean there's a lot I can do differently and of course, that I can learn. Again, it goes back to these abilities that you need today. Because even if you go and learn one of the most in-fashion skills of today, maybe in 18 months, there will be something else for sure that you will have to learn. So it just has to be continuous. We got to get good at it.
Katherine Ann Byam 15:45
Yeah. I heard another quote that said, “Typically in the past, we have been able to maintain competitive advantage within eight years or so. But now that competitive advantage has shrunk to one year” which is why the acceleration of learning puts a lot of implications on the workforce. So I want to move to potentially the last question. When we look at the future workplace in three to five years, I potentially see a blended workplace - machines and people. What are your thoughts on managing in such an environment? And what does it actually mean?
Harry Vargas 16:26
Yes. Hybrid work - that is one of those challenges that companies are discussing every day that passes. We see it closer. Last year, there were lots of conversations that the world is turning hybrid in terms of working. We are there almost depending on the region you live in. But it is a challenge. I think, first of all, it does not mean that machines will take over human value. Right? Because that is one of the big fears around is that machines and artificial intelligence, and all that it will eliminate all the jobs, that there will be replacements.
There will be some evolution on that side; but the value of human knowledge and agility to learn and make things better, etc. will always remain. So I think, a good manager would make the best use of the skills that he or she has to add value to the processes that they are dealing with and to make it challenging for people at the same time; so that they understand that they need to keep on learning, rescaling and acquiring these new abilities. That is one thing. The other thing that I think is even bigger than that is that it's a challenge for companies and obviously for managers. You talk about purpose earlier. No matter what sort of jobs they end up in, having a purpose, more than ever, is one of those things that people are seeing or valuing as the thing that will move, engage, or keep them.
So companies are very clear in articulating what their legacy is and what their purpose is. But as an individual, when you come in, what you will be able to do with that is an advantage that we have been talking about - the quality of life and fulfilment of the work you do for years, and these sorts of things. But now again, it is more important than ever because people are prioritising differently what they value and what they want to dedicate their energy and time to. So in this future workplace, hybrid or not. people will ask -
“Where can I get the best experience?"
"Where can I balance my life in a better way?"
"Where can I learn more?"
"Where can I have the flexibility to do different activities and jobs and not have to wait five-eight years to do something different?"
And then organisations are rethinking:
“How to do this?"
"How do we manage careers differently?
"How do we plan for talent management differently?"
And everyone is learning at the same time - companies and people. So I think it is a challenging environment. It has already started. The companies that are more likely to succeed are those that are listening actively to understand. “Okay, what are the new things that people value and therefore we need to adapt?” Inside the company, you cannot force people any longer just to wait and see what the company will do now. They will have many options somewhere else, and you have to be prepared for that.
Katherine Ann Byam 20:02
This one has to do with probably the health and well-being aspect because we kind of touched on it last year. I think that we are in a situation where all of these accelerations, as well as the general wear and tear of the pandemic, create a lot of mental health and anxiety issues that are increasing as we go. How are organisations responding to that?
Harry Vargas 20:27
Yes, that is one of the priorities. At the moment, it has been a year, at least, for most people in this situation. In the beginning, it was more around basic things like learning to work remotely or virtually like learning to manage your time and tasks and all of that. But after a long period of time, people got burned out.
Then, we are also lacking in social contact not only with families and loved ones; but also with the things that we used to (maybe) take for granted when we were in the office like interactions, collaboration, faster decision-making, less complexity when dealing with issues that would involve people from various areas and those sorts of things; or simply having a conversation in the water cooler with someone, just talking about something else that is not about work. So people need that, and organisations have been focusing more on the good ones like - Let us first learn what people need at the moment but let us also respect their space.
In an ideal world, a great company would come up with a menu of things it can offer - wellness activities, meditation, physical exercise options, or simply additional days off to disconnect and recharge, or get in and learn something new. There are a number of things that have to do with mental health, physical health, learning different things, and simply getting out of the current environment. But there is also the option for you to choose whatever you want whenever you feel the need. So the combination of having various options and also letting people deal with it in their private space whilst having the support of the company. Behind this, I think, is a good balance because at the beginning it was very much programmed. "So now, everybody is gonna come on Fridays for yoga." Those things were nice at the beginning but now people are just tired of it.
“So just give me my space. Give me the options and I will do whatever whenever I need it.” So that is something we are learning from the technologies. It is supporting a lot of those things. Thank God! We can still have that yoga meditation or cooking lessons or whatever it is you like. Virtually, it has not been a restriction of a year in that sense, but the variety of it and how you keep it creative is one of the challenges we are facing.
Katherine Ann Byam 23:28
For sure. Harry, thank you so much for your time. This has been a wonderful session.
021 Mental Health & Substance Abuse
About this Episode
We know it, but sometimes it's hard for us to take action behind supporting appropriate selfcare. I’ve been guilty of abusing legal substances in my life. From alcohol, tobacco, sugar, I’ve allowed these substances to regulate my mood, my energy levels and short-term feelings of happiness.
On where ideas Launch we’ll be talking to Charlotte Hopkins, who has dedicated two decades of her career to helping provide the right support to people experiencing addiction. Charlotte works in the private sector and has unique insight on how prevalent these issues are even amongst professionals who do not typically seek public support for their struggles.
Wonderful to have you. So Charlotte, I wanted to have you on the show because even I have been going through my own traumas in dealing with the stress of being on lockdown for the third time in the UK. And also in terms of getting myself motivated to do what I need to do for my business as an entrepreneur. And I look around me and I see a mix of experiences with this whole lockdown.
So there are people who have sort of stable jobs who are able to possibly get into different things like maybe painting or different types of activities that they can use to sort of deal with the passage of time. But there are others who are facing a lot of different realities. For example, the nurses who are possibly on the brink. And as well as entrepreneurs, who may not be able to generate as much cash for their business, and things like that. So I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about how people are dealing with their well-being during this lockdown and your thoughts on it?
Charlotte Hopkins 1:16
Yeah. I think it's a really, really interesting topic. And for me, in the UK, we band around this one in four people have mental health quite often. And I vehemently disagree for me, it's four in four of us. So every single one of us at some point will experience some levels of mental ill health. So yes, there's one in four of us that may have a diagnosis or meaning medication. Right on the other side of the spectrum, there's that one in four of us who will never need any extra support. We will just deal with it ourselves and kind of crack on with life. And then there's this 50% of us that at some point may need extra support.
And that's not to say we need extra specialist support from a mental health service, for example. But what it means is that we need to find some level of self care. We might need to just wallow and watch ridiculous amounts of Netflix for the day. And we might find other coping mechanisms that are some healthy, some not-so-healthy. But actually the reality is that at some point in our lives, every single one of us will experience some levels of mental ill health. And I think what COVID has done is just exacerbated that. I think what's really interesting for me is I've worked over 20 years within the substance misuse sector.
So I worked with a lot of people with quite complex co-occurring health and wellbeing needs anything from offending behaviour to homelessness to substance misuse to mental health. And actually what we're seeing is, for a lot of people, they're really resilient. It's the people who are used to the routine and the structure of their day. They're often the people that are really struggling.
And then if you look at kind of professionals and entrepreneurs and those people who are used to kind of go into the office and a nine to five, dropping their kids off at school, picking them upcoming home, making tea, watching Netflix, go into bed doing it all again, that structure has been completely stripped out. So it's no wonder we're all feeling slightly stressed, anxious, and I call it really touchy. I have my touchy moments where I'm like, "Oh, just leave me alone." But that's because I think most of us like that structure, which we've been completely thrown out of.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:38
Yeah, absolutely. And we need to dig in a little bit to this piece about how people are dealing with what they're going through. And just just another little anecdote. So I live in a building of flats. And one of those flats, there are, I guess, it's a couple who smoke weed all day long. And it's a problem because it comes through the doors and the doors aren't perfectly sealed. So we have filled in our car doors like this, the smell of weed like all day long. And I think to myself, how are we coping? How are they doing this? But what I realised is that there are a lot of people finding sort of substance mechanisms to help them cope. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about that and your work in that space as well to understand why this is happening and what we could do.
Charlotte Hopkins 4:33
Yeah, I guess just to start with, the majority of people will use any kind of drugs whether that's cannabis, alcohol, heroin, even cocaine. It doesn't really matter what the substance is and the majority will use it for fun and enjoyment. And so your neighbours are probably just having a really really nice time. They're probably fairly relaxed and enjoying stuff. And, but actually we see it quite commonly across high-performing professionals in particular. So there's lots of people who I've worked alongside who are really professional in what they do.
They are nurses, doctors, managers, HR leads, they are consultants, police officers, all kinds of "professional people," and they will often self medicate with more often than not alcohol because it's legal, and with other substances as well. And there's multiple reasons why they'll use that one really quickly. So, you know, for many people, if they're stressed, or they're anxious or overwhelmed, they've had a really busy, crazy week at work, or the kids are performing at home, and they just need to unwind really quickly. And for lots of people that answer is found in a glass of wine. And for 90% of the people that use alcohol, they'll never have any issues with it. They'll be able to stop when they're ready. But there's always that small percentage that will build this tolerance to their substance and find themselves kind of caught a cropper.
And I always say that nobody sets out and has a glass of wine or a line of cocaine or even a spliff, nobody sets out and says, "all right, in three years time, I'm gonna be completely addicted, and I'm going to need some extra support." So it kind of creeps upon us. We don't always expect it. Nobody intentionally sets out to need specialist support to support them with their drug or alcohol use. So the substance itself will often help that person, I guess, self medicate is one word, but just it gives them something that means it tips the balance towards why they use it.
And we do see it more frequently within high professionals. It's just that, you know, people who've got disposable income will often go and see private practice, so they won't turn up in any of the statistics, because that's not where the statistics come from. They come from crime and the crime stats, and they come from EGP. And they come from health professionals, and most professionals who've got some kind of substance use or substance misuse are unlikely to walk into traditional services because they don't want to be found out.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:29
When did they know they needed help?
Charlotte Hopkins 7:32
Oh that's the big question. And I often think that those around them know that they need help before they do. I think if we were to apply logic, there's probably this gut feeling when somebody starts to hide they use when they're hiding it from loved ones, when they realise that they've overspent on a budget that they may have had, when they look in the recycle bins and realise that there's an extra ten, fifteen, five, two bottles in the recycle bin that they weren't expecting, when they use on a day that they weren't planning to when it goes from a Friday to Saturday to either Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
So there's all kinds of situations and occurrences that we would look at with somebody to discuss whether it's a problem for them. Part of the challenge, I think, is that often family friends, colleagues and neighbours will see that there's a bit of a concern more than the user themselves. Because there's an outsider looking in. It's so much easier for us to see the harm or the damage or the risks that it's having or the impact it's having on someone's life. When we're in it, often we're still experiencing the phone or the enjoyment or the pleasure, it's still giving us some kind of reward.
So it's very challenging to identify, and I'm sure you know, I definitely like to overindulge in chocolate cake and crisps and I could eat a bag, a big bag of crisps not a problem at all. I know that I shouldn't eat a big bag of crisps. I know I shouldn't eat a full chocolate cake. But there are times where we do that. So often we know the implications yet we can still tip that balance because the pleasure and the reward is so much greater. So it is definitely a big open answer question that is very individual to that person and their family.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:32
Yeah. And what are the sort of ways that people can start to, let's say, cope or or remediate this?
Charlotte Hopkins 9:43
For me, it's self care. I've extremely experienced burnout twice and I experienced it in two very different ways. So the first time I experienced burnout, I was like a little Duracell Bunny and, you know, people who know me know that I'm constantly got multiple projects on the go. I've got two kids, two children, I've got a husband that my life is quite busy. And the first time I experienced burnout, I just was going, going, going, going going, and I just fell off the end of the cliff, I knew that I hadn't been looking after myself. I kind of lost a lot of weight. I wasn't eating properly. There was no kind of self care routine at all.
And I swore I would never do it again. 10 years later, I experienced burnout in a very different way. So from that perspective, I found myself in a burnout position, but this time more of it manifested in a way that I was becoming somebody I wasn't. I was doing work that I didn't feel sat with my values. I was missing family occasions. I missed my son's very first parents evening. And I think any parents listening will know that that's a big No, no. And so there were just little things that I realised that whilst I didn't acknowledge that I was in burnout, I was absolutely in burnout. So for me, it's becoming really conscious of what you need to take that selfcare.
What I find with a lot of the people I've worked with where substances are involved is that it takes a while for people to realise that that's not necessarily the most healthy way for them to destress, unwind, and deal with overwhelm. And now part of what the work we do is look at how you can put mechanisms in place that aren't based around chemicals, essentially, whether that's food or whether that's wine, or whether that's cocaine. It doesn't really matter what it is. It's about finding that balance of activities that will help provide that selfcare. And that can range from anything from meditation, from walking, getting in nature, it could be colouring, and watching Netflix.
It's a whole different range of things that people need to try so that they can experience what works so that when the crisis actually occurs when they find themselves at that breaking point, they've got these kinds of trigger points that will identify when it's tipping into crisis, or when it's manageable. Yeah, and of course, COVID has taken away some of that. So where people would previously be able to go to the gym, for example, COVID completely removed that. And so there are definitely additional challenges right now.
Katherine Ann Byam 12:46
How can me as a family member, or you know, anyone, as a family member support their partners or loved ones? When do they recognise this as happening? How can I help? Like, is it okay for us to try to create, like a pattern interrupt? Like, what do you recommend? How do we go about this? I think it's really hard as a family member because we often see that destruction, or that kind of ripple and impact on our loved ones far before they do. So the biggest advice is to stay patient, which can be really, really hard.
And people often I've spoken to family members who've often said to me, I feel really guilty, but I don't want to stay with them anymore. And I think I'm a huge advocate for self-care first, regardless of what your loved ones are going through. And if as a loved one, you're feeling that you're doing as much as you can, there may come a point where you have to step back. For those people who are actually living and breathing it, then you actually have to make sure you've got self-care mechanisms in place first.
And my best advice is to speak to family support, and there are so many amazing family support services out there that will be able to give more specific advice on what you can do. But I think it's about knowing limitations is a really fine line between kind of colluding and unintentionally supporting somebody's use of substances and being able to provide them with needed support as well.
Katherine Ann Byam 14:38
So what about if the person seems to be in a depressive state? So what's the recommendation for people who are seeping into depression? I've read recently that statistics around suicides were starting to climb during this pandemic as well. What can we do for people who are going through that sort of thing?
Charlotte Hopkins 15:04
Yeah, I'm a huge advocate for just asking for support. And I think you're absolutely right. The levels of suicide are rising as are the levels of abuse in our house are rising, as our alcohol levels are rising, as our just general, mental health issues are rising. All of these things are exasperated during this situation. So the best advice for me is to seek that advice. Now that advice doesn't have to necessarily come from a specialist service. And I think always seeing your GP is a really great starting point because they're in a position to then really understand the nuances of whether there's any family history of mental health, or whether this is situational.
And my biggest advice - if you do see a professional of any kind is to write down everything that's going on for you before you go. Because when we go in, if you're anything like me, you walk into that GP and all of a sudden, you feel absolutely fine. There's nothing going on, I don't really know why I'm here. So lots of people kind of forget what's been going on for them. And so writing down the kind of symptoms that you're experiencing is really important. I think having a really hard look, I'm a huge advocate of creating a diary.
So for example, when people come and work with us from a substance use perspective, what we'll often do is ask them to record when and why and what they're drinking or using, but also look at that mood, and what kind of was around that. Were they feeling low or depressed? Or were they actually feeling really excited, and you know, wanted to just have some excitement in their life. And what that allows somebody to do is really look at those patterns, and then take action. And when you're in kind of a depression or you've got some anxiety or whatever those feelings are that you're really struggling with, it's very hard to pull yourself out of that.
So having somebody who can almost be like an accountability buddy just to kind of give you a nudge to say, "actually, are you okay today?" or "do you need some space?" or "do you need to talk?" or "do you just need a hug?" So there's this spectrum of “I’m kind of feeling low in mood and I just need a little support," and then right on the other end, then there's this diagnosis of depression, which may or may not require some more medical intervention.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:40
Perfect, Charlotte. Can you tell our listeners how they would be able to find out about your services? You know, this is obviously a choice that people make probably as a family, or maybe a very individual one. But how can they reach out if they want to get more advice or guidance from you?
Charlotte Hopkins 17:56
Yeah, we can be contactable via our website, which is www.kinbee.co.uk. And we specialise in providing support, education, and awareness around anything to do with complex co-occurring needs. So what I would say is we have a really great network of professionals that can be referred to or we can refer. I wouldn't say refer on your behalf, but we can advise to get in contact with and then on social media, anybody can just search for Charlotte Hopkins and anything around the happy pursuit of excellence and I should pop up.
Katherine Ann Byam 18:34
Perfect. Thanks so much for joining us and for your guidance today, Charlotte.
Charlotte Hopkins 18:38
Thanks for having me.
013 Idea to CEO
About this Episode
In this episode, Idea to CEO, we take you on a journey through 4 key elements to building your business, going through the Idea, Development, Commercialisation and Growth.
Neema Amin (MBA) – Escape Strategist, is a business coach supporting freelancers, consultants and micro businesses to obtain financial freedom and create a life and business they love. She has built several 6 figure businesses over more than a decade of Entrepreneurship.
Katherine Ann Byam (MBA, FCCA) is a sustainability business strategist, consultant and career coach. She is the founder of Dieple, Digitally Enabling People, A digital transformation consultancy firm based in the UK helping start-ups to scale up, and coaching executive business leaders.
Together we run a group and a purpose-driven movement called collectively driven, a community for women to grow sustainable businesses and incomes for their families. We formed this collective as we wanted to make an impact using collaboration as our model. We believe in a system that serves everyone and not just a few. We believe in levelling up incomes so that we all can live an outstanding life.
Today, our guest is Neema Amin. Neema serves as a coach, advisor, and sounding board to founders and entrepreneurs, helping them to reach their vision by defining the fine details, and merging this with the clarity and core values to achieve their vision of success.
By the age of five, Neema lived in three different countries, spoke three languages fluently, and was a regular guest accompanying her dad to work. She knows what it takes to build something from the ground up. Welcome to the show, Neema.
Neema Amin
Thank you so much for having me, Katherine. It's wonderful to share another forum with you.
Katherine Ann Byam
Neema and I are business partners at Collectively Driven. And this is a group designed for people who are underrepresented and who want to grow businesses that they love, and purpose-driven businesses. And one of the things that we go through in this group is that journey of going from idea to CEO. And this is what we're going to be talking to you about today. So this session is going to be a little bit more fluid and a little bit more mixed between Neema and myself. Typically, we like to start with “mission.” And I wanted to know from your perspective, how important is the mission in getting your idea to grow?
Neema Amin 1:18
It's incredibly important because if you don't know why you want to start something and what you are aiming to grow, then you have no foundation essentially. Your business and your idea is a combination of your values and your desires. It's mixing the financial alongside the responsibility. So your mission essentially compresses all of those things.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:49
I totally agree. I like to call it a question. So it's really about the question, the problem that you want to solve in the world is formed by a question, which you then need to tailor somehow. And this is when we get into the jobs to be done or the problems to be solved for your customers. So I like to poke on this a bit. Because often we want to solve a problem that we have imagined exists. But maybe that's not the only way to do it.
Neema Amin 2:20
Exactly. And I think when we start out as entrepreneurs, we have a desire to execute on a product or a service because we are really excited about it. It's something that we want to do. And starting out, most entrepreneurs, myself included, actually going out there and talking to people about it is really scary. Because what if somebody tells you it's rubbish or people aren't interested. You're not also ready to hear, "that's a terrible idea. I don't think you should go forward with it." But it saves you so much time by actually going and asking those really tough questions at the beginning as opposed to getting much further down the line, getting absorbed by your idea and finding that it doesn't solve a problem or it's not an idea that your audience is ready for right now. They need something before that idea to get them to your actual idea. So you've got to think about it from lots of different perspectives.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:26
Absolutely. I agree. And I think one of the one of the safest ways to approach this is kind of looking at the job that your customer is trying to get done within the context of the idea that you have, what problems are they facing with that job. And the way to go about this is to get into market research. And I think a lot of people are daunted by market research, and I think it's where most entrepreneurs fail. I don't know what your thoughts are.
Neema Amin 3:51
Absolutely 100%. I am yet to work with a client that hasn't done the market research and is excited about the market research. I guess I'm a little bit of a freak who could stay in the research and analysis rabbit because that's my background. That's how I started my work. But most people are so excited to move on and actually bring their idea that product to life that they feel that they themselves are the research that they know that this is what the market wants. And unfortunately you have to ask the market.
And as an entrepreneur, you've got to be pretty thick skinned to hear, "You're not good at this or I guess you're not good at this. Your service or your product is not good for me." But I guess people don't quite phrase it that way. You know market research is tough because it's a process and most people don't like to follow a process. As an entrepreneur you think you just go and do things. You don't. There's a strategy behind it. It's a structured approach. You can start small by not going out and talking to people. You can do the book work around it. But at some stage, you've got to go and talk to your potential customers to find, do I actually solve a problem? Or am I the problem? And I need to find a different idea to solve a different problem?
Katherine Ann Byam 5:19
Absolutely. And I think that there are ways that these daunts you as well. Because if you don't find the right client to speak to about the idea, you can get misinformation, right? So you can get either false endorsement or false discouragement. So this is why when we get deeper into this whole concept and in the development of your idea, you really need to start thinking about a niche, an ideal client, and about finding the places where your niches are where your ideal clients hang out.
Neema Amin 5:57
Absolutely. So when you are doing your research, I generally recommend that you keep all your questions really open ended. People like talking. There's nothing that people like doing better than talking about themselves and about the issues that they're trying to solve. So don't box them in by asking, "Do you want this? Or do you want that." No tick boxes, keep it open ended.
The idea behind niching is that you can't solve a problem really really well if you are trying to solve it for ten different clients that will have ten slightly different issues. The idea of niching is really getting into that crux of who is that client that has these characteristics that has these issues that I can really focus on and create a product or service that is perfect that they will sing and dance about buying from me. That is niching and finding your perfect client.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:03
Absolutely. And I also think that with the open ended, you could still get things wrong, because when people phrase things in a certain way, there's an interpretation issue. So I like the idea of having a prototype - minimum viable product. And people look at me like, "I'm not building a product...” sometimes “so why do I need to do this?" What's this MVP about? But I think it's also relevant to service-based industries and companies, and ideas of coming up with a beta - a small version that you can test and really get the true feedback.
Neema Amin 7:40
Yeah, I guess it's just working in an agile way. If you're a solo business or a partnership, you can react to the feedback that you get from your clients even in the beta version like "I didn't like this, but I think I'd like more of that." So you can adapt very quickly. And that's quite difficult for a lot of corporations to do in the traditional sort of waterfall methodology that's used, which is why they're also moving to agile.
So the idea behind the MVP, I think even we've done this in our business where we went in with an idea of these are the kinds of clients we want to serve. And once we started taking action and talking to people, we started moulding it a little bit more around those ideal clients. So until you take some action and build out the building blocks of that MVP, it's difficult to move on without spending a lot of time or money on building something that might not be needed.
Katherine Ann Byam 8:45
And I think that the testing and the feedback is also important in terms of capturing the quality of it, capturing the white space of it. Right. So I think a lot of people we look at what's there without looking at what's not there and asking the right question about what's not there as well. So I think this is also quite an important step in the journey.
Neema Amin 9:09
I think with most product services, you are always looking to continuously improve on it, because you never sit on your product or your service. You always want to make it better. So the question that you can ask is what could we have done better? What did you feel that it was missing something? What would you like to see more of in the next product? You can be that honest with your customers. Because if you can't ask straightforward questions, you're not going to get those answers. They can't read your mind and you clearly cannot reverse.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:52
So true. Words have never been said. So the next bit, I think that when we're moving through this is you're getting ready to commercialise this thing, so you're really getting ready to, I would say your first tier of scaling, it's not the mass scaling yet, but you're starting to scale the idea into something that's a viable legitimate item or product - whatever it is. So you kind of need a strategy for that. And I want to tease out a little bit about going to market strategy from your perspective.
Neema Amin 10:28
I normally recommend having a soft launch because when you go all out with that big old launch, I think it puts a lot of pressure on you, it puts a lot of pressure on your product or your service as well, too. I guess I think of it in the big corporate launches, if you've got all of this going on. Even the corporate world is learning that a soft launch is not the end of the world. So you can soft launch with your MVP. And that's the way of teasing out what some of your clients find useful in that product. Getting those testimonials at that point as well.
If something failed in that product, whether it was your tech or part of the service wasn't great, you can improve that and put it into your bigger launch. And you've also got to work backwards from that launch date. So part of your strategy is looking at how big your product or your service is. And you can do this in terms of the overall price that you're charging for it, the size of the audience that you're looking at, and work backwards. So I normally recommend anything from two and a half months to sort of start putting information out there, what are you starting to do? What is this product or service about? Start warming up any partners that you're working with?
So I did this a lot with partnership-based businesses where you would have your partners going out to their partners to sort of tell them a little bit. And this is when we could do things face-to-face over lunch and over coffees like, "Hey, this client is bringing out this new product and it does X,Y Zed. Do you think you know you might be interested in it?" So getting all the arms of your business to start working for you. So you're not doing everything all the time?
Katherine Ann Byam 12:24
Absolutely. I love that you mentioned “launching” because launching is a big deal. I don't mean to scare you but launching is really consolidating your effort into one space, one channel, and I don't mean one channel in terms of one media channel, but it is about the effort that you're putting in toward one thing.
And especially if you want to be honest, it works for products as well as service-based businesses how you do at the launch phase. If you're a product base, you want to make sure that your stock is available in multiple places and multiple points so that once you bring that social media, or you leverage whatever media you're using to do your launch, it's all in place for you. So there's a lot of pre-work leading up to launch. And you really want to make sure that when you're doing your big splash launch, that you have synchronised every possible step of the way.
Neema Amin 13:21
Absolutely. And also, if your launch isn't going well, and that can happen, you can start looking at what are the points that are not going well? Start identifying what's not working, where are those issues? What can we do to turn this around? If you're not getting interest, where are the sticking points? Is it something to do in your process? Or are your customers not being reached? What is that? So that's the other reason for having that launch period over a longer period of time. So you can actually address those issues as you go along.
Katherine Ann Byam 13:55
Absolutely. And it speaks to your point about being agile as well and almost doing a pre-mortem as you say, working with what could possibly go wrong. What are the things that technically happen to other people and doing that pre-mortem helps to save you some time in the process as well. I think a lot of people when they get to this point, "Well, I'm just gonna fly. I'm just gonna get in my wings and I'm gonna fly," which is great because you're going to need that optimism.
You're definitely going to need the optimism to carry you through the points when it gets messy. But don't underestimate the importance of one, having a team to support that (which has probably a different way of thinking) but also in getting the steps in place so that you can anticipate and really see early on when the warning signs come. And I think a big part of this is metrics, right?
Neema Amin 14:55
Exactly. To be honest with you, I think you're taking “big corporation” thinking and putting it into your small, tiny business. The difference is you are small so you can be agile and move incredibly fast. You are the decision maker so you're not putting it in front of a different board and going through ten different meetings. You can move that quickly. As to the metrics, you've got to be looking across your channels - “Where are we doing well? Where are we not doing well and need further reach?” This couldn't be organic growth that you're looking at, reaching out through collaboration, through partnerships, and obviously, there is the paid route as well depending on which channel you're using.
Katherine Ann Byam 15:47
Yeah. Also, we couldn't underestimate the importance of tech. I mean, regardless of the type of business you run, we all need digital messaging. And part of that is the tech that you set up to support your launch. And the tech ranges. You can do chatbots, email marketing, social media, or guerrilla marketing. There's so many approaches that you could take great, but you need to have the tech to leverage this and to scale this especially when you have a small team of people working on this. Any tech tech tips that you've had on your journey, Neema?
Neema Amin 16:34
I would say keep it simple. Keep it inexpensive to start with. Because if you're not bringing anything in, you don't want to be spending thousands of thousands. On the tech. Once you've started doing your analysis and you've launched, you'll start understanding what kind of tech you actually need to build up this business because what you thought you might need might not be the ideal platform for you.
And remember, just as it is in a logical prep, once you're on a platform, and you've grown, it is incredibly expensive and complex to move to another platform. So be absolutely sure that what you're buying is actually what you need. But my advice is keep it simple to start with. You don't have to be perfect going out to market. You're nimble. You're small. It's okay to be imperfect. Perfection is overrated. I think I can't remember who said it. But there is an entrepreneur that said, "If you look at your first MVP and not be embarrassed, then you should be embarrassed that you're not embarrassed, it should be that ugly." And I know some of the things that you and I have done, I look at them and I think, "Oh my God, really we put this out there?" But we learned from it. And that's what it is, it's putting yourself out there and learning about it.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:59
Absolutely. Then we get to that point that we've done our first commercialisation, and we need to start thinking about scaling and growth in a really big way (and the way that you do that for service and product-based businesses could be slightly different.) For product-based businesses, especially if you're a sustainable supplier, you really need to think about a lot more things.
You need to think about the ethics involved, you need to think about ethical sourcing and do all of that research. If you want to have a third-party contract manufacturer for your product, etc. You need to think about who you're working with wherever they are in the world, and what are the standards, modern slavery, and all of these things. So there's a lot of complexity involved in a product-based business when you're looking to start scaling up. And for service businesses, it's about outreach, and connecting with more people.
Neema Amin 18:58
Yeah, absolutely. You should still be doing organic growth.
You should still be creating those relationships. But as you're growing and expanding, your time is going to become limited so you need to look at other ways of growing. So this can be through expanding your product range. This can be through (I think you're going to touch on this) partnerships, collaborations, and I think you touched on a really interesting point about the sort of people that you want to do business with.
And even in service-based businesses, there was a client who entered into a partnership with a partner that had questionable ethics and this is where it gets really tough. Do you want to expand fast and reach that goal? Or do you hold on to your ethics? And that's, I think, a really personal question for every entrepreneur to answer. My answer won't be the same as everybody else's. But there will be tough spots, because your desire to grow is going to play with your, with your ethics and your values.
Katherine Ann Byam 20:11
And I think this almost takes us back to the beginning because it is kind of above that mission that you start with, who do you want to be as a business owner that will help you through these extremely difficult moments?
Neema Amin 20:25
That's a really good point, I think. So, you know, obviously in big offices you have the mission statement, or you used to have it open at reception. Clearly, we can't do that in our home offices. But I think we need to find ways to remind ourselves of what those core values are. Of course, you know the right thing to do but sometimes you need a little nudge.
Katherine Ann Byam 20:46
Absolutely. And the last point (and by far, not the least) is about the whole business development and sales piece. And you know, when I talk to solopreneurs and stuff, I think this is easily the biggest challenge anyone faces - how to reach more clients, how to convert clients, how to take those leads into funds.
Neema Amin 21:11
It is the toughest part because nobody, or let's say very few people like doing sales. No one likes being sold to. And I think that's part of the problem. You know, when you're having a conversation with somebody, as soon as they dip into that conversation, “So I have this great product..” and you think, "Ah, you're gonna to sell to me," and unfortunately that is part of it. But this is all part of your building a relationship. You know, you don't go into a conversation saying, “so I'm gonna sell this to you.” You warm up your audience.
You warm up those relationships about what you're about, where you have some energy. And as you're expanding, you've got to find other ways of selling other channels. You can't rely on that one-to-one that one-to-few, you've got to be doing that one-to-many. So it's a lot about putting yourself out there. So getting rid of those working on those sort of mind blocks that you have around selling. It's almost as if you've got to play a different part. You've got to pretend you're somebody else, not actually somebody else but get in that mode of, "Okay, I'm the super saleswoman, and I'm gonna knock this out."
Because when you just go in as Neema is trying to sell. it's like Neema is hiding under a table, hiding behind our hands, and telling you that, "it's an okay service, if you really want to give me some money for it." But Neema the super saleswoman is not going to do that. She's going to tell you that, "hey, this is a great product, you should be so lucky to be buying this from me. And if you don't buy it, you're missing out." It's about putting yourself out there.
Katherine Ann Byam 22:56
Absolutely. And I think I think it's a challenge for a lot of people, but it's really about as you say being authentic in what you're selling, and in the value that you bring. And it's important to step into that and really think about your product as you enjoying it. So when you even come up with whatever messaging you want to message around your product or your service, it's really about stepping into, "how would I feel? What difference would it make to me if it were me consuming it?"
And this is your litmus test before you even go before someone? How would I feel about paying this much or working in this way or getting this additional bonus, or getting this feature that you want to add to your product. You really need to step into “how would I feel” in addition to all the research that you've done. So this helps you to become the persona as you talked about.
Neema Amin 23:55
Exactly. If you don't love your product, how can you sell it?
Katherine Ann Byam 24:01
So this was a really wonderful session. Thank you so much for joining us and for having this open conversation. I think it's great that we can share these tips with a lot of people. If you want to find out more about what we do, you can search for us I have a “Women In Sustainable Business” group on Facebook that you can also search for, and you can get into these communities and learn about what we're doing and how we're helping businesses to grow in these interesting times.
Neema Amin 24:35
Absolutely perfect. Come join us. All right, thanks very much for joining the show.
010 Leverage Your Strengths for Social Good
About this Episode
I met Anna during a women tech workshop back in June, and since then we’ve become friends and allies in a journey toward sustainable change.
During our interview we discussed
Her motivation to become an ally for social equality
The key focus areas for sustainable development
Lessons learned in creating partnerships between NGOs and the For Profit Sectors
Anna Derinova-Hartmann is a passionate social impact and international development activist. She combines extensive experience in Program Management, Community Engagement, Corporate Social Responsibly and People Management.
Her purpose is to challenge social inequality and institutional barriers by empowering vulnerable social groups and communities through innovation and meaningful connections.
Anna, as she states herself, is incredibly lucky to have been exposed to various working environments and experiences: NGO sector, global corporations, social impact and tech start-ups. Thanks to this versatile experience she learnt a lot about the power of communities, social connections, mutual responsibility and open communication. While contributing to building and scaling numerous start-ups, optimizing and developing business divisions and corporations, Anna witnessed the ultimate value of cross-functional cooperation and human relations.
Anna is very passionate about supporting social impact start-ups and initiatives across the world, coaching and mentoring founders and women in Tech. She is consistently helping to leverage innovation in humanitarian assistance and international development spheres, as well as bridging an “artificial gap” (her words J) between corporate and social impact non-profits.
Anna loves her cats, her husband, reading, networking, engaging in challenging discussions with her Moving Worlds co-fellows from all over the world. She is very open to being approached on LinkedIn with any requests, suggestions, initiatives or just topics to chat about.
Welcome to our episode. Welcome to the show, Anna.
Anna Derinova-Hartmann 1:32
Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. Honored since I'm a big fan of your podcast. And I'm incredibly happy to be here and be one of them.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:40
Thank you so much for saying that. I think the podcast has been a surprise for me as well, over the time that I've had it.
Anna Derinova-Hartmann 1:47
That's usually the best way you know. Once you plan, it all goes just boring, according to the plan. But the surprise usually comes the best.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:56
Absolutely. Absolutely. So I wanted to talk to you a bit first about your inspiration to do social impact work. I mean, when did you first think about becoming a leader in this space, and tell us about your journey to becoming an ally for social inequality.
Anna Derinova-Hartmann 2:13
Definitely. I actually consider my life so far on my professional experience a little bit of a computer game. When you go from one level to the other, collect achievements, and then unlock some next level, and you get to fight the boss demons. So that's exactly what my journey has been so far. I graduated with my third Master's from Central European University in Budapest and Hungary, which has always been the symbol of democratic values and freedom in Eastern Europe. And that already gave me a little bit of a feeling that okay, this is the field where I want to stay. But I will need very special tools and weapons and experience and knowledge to fight that battle.
To add to that, also my experience, studying at Northwestern, which has always been quite traditionally back in the US one of the democratic universities as well. So I found myself in Hungary when I finished with my education on the mastery level, at least. And that was exactly the time when the city was flooded with the refugee crisis when we had refugees stuck in a train station, not being able to go, not able to actually leave the place without proper food, without proper resources, not even proper hygiene and basic sanitary opportunities.
And then I just went there together remember back days with open society foundation volunteers, we just started sharing food, just talking to people trying to help them. And that was the first time when I realised that there is something the way the system is designed is not entirely okay. And I'm not a big fan of this phrase that the system is broken, I don't think it's broken. I just think that it's designed in a certain way that we might want to redesign. And then I got to work in order to design something right, you need the right tools.
So I started working with NGOs, especially in the field of partnership and cooperation with other stakeholders across and this is the first time when I saw how powerful the cooperation between corporates and the nonprofit sector can be. They just don't know it yet. And once I worked with NGOs for a while, of course, I got that first fever of “God we constantly chase the money.” And it's so hard to actually get enough funds to do all the good.
And I became curious. I'm always curious, I became curious to see how does the process run where the money lies, which is corporate. And, this is where I went next. I worked in a corporate for quite a while. I learned a lot about people and property management experience. And I acquired a lot of tools and knowledge there. Many people will say it's a heart-wrenching experience. The corporate kills your soul. No, actually it doesn't. It just depends. If you do have a purpose, and it's strong enough, it actually won't, it will enrich you because you get the right tools. And after the corporate, I moved over to working actually with startups.
And this is when I realised that one of my passions is working with social impact and social impact startups. And this is where I brought combined my people and business management experience, pro bono consulting, and support. This is where I learned how important it is to be empowering and supporting women, especially in tech. And this is also where I found an opportunity to channel how to, for instance, support refugees arriving in Germany, especially women, to find their niche and to also find an opportunity to work in Tech.
So that, you know, this what I meant by metaphor of a computer game. I feel that throughout my whole journey, which I'm sure hopefully only has begun, I've been collecting all those hidden coins, like Mario and I'm sure there are many more coins lie out there. But what I really learned is that, you know, the job experience might seem a little bit sporadic when you try lots of different fields, and then you feel, “Oh, but that doesn't mean I'm not consistent enough.” No, it doesn't mean that it just means that you try a lot.
You realise what you want, what you don't want, but every time you learn a lot, you get more and more tools into your bag. And then you carry that bag with you and you just become stronger in what you do. And your next journey. And next adventure.
Katherine Ann Byam 6:40
I love everything you said, I don't know which one to pick up first. But I'm gonna start with one. So you mentioned about systems being either broken or designed poorly. I love that. So what’s really coming out here is that we have systems that are designed for a certain outcome. And that's, that's a fact. That's what's happening in the world right now. And that outcome is not something that we realise that we want. So so it really takes a lot of reengineering, but it's a reengineering of our psyche. It's a reengineering of our way of thinking, our approach to the planet, even when we think about things like circular instead of linear. So what has been your experience in sort of pivoting that mindset in the places that you work?
Anna Derinova-Hartmann 7:28
And I would say that it's incredible and great that you mentioned mindset. And this is, I think, a very important starting point. This is what I learned. When Currently, I'm combining working in with corporate right now working in a startup, which is trying to turn into a corporate while working with social impact startups, refugee communities, working with the World Food Programme - that kind of startups as well. And what I see that all unites them is that exact mindset. But the mindset, which is very, very open towards changes towards improvement, you know, the worst that can happen if you want to.
If you want to change the world around you, you don't have to be here. You don't have to wear a cape, you don't have to have a Harvard Law degree. Go there and change the world. I mean unless you're Ruth Ginsburg. I mean she's one of the most badass women I've ever heard about. But what is really important here is your mindset and readiness to break the silos. The most dangerous part that I've seen, is when the silos are being created when one group, for instance, humanitarian people who work in the humanitarian field or in a startup field stop feeling exquisite, stop feeling special, and they just keep doing things because they have been done like that for the last 50 years.
Once that happens, you pretty much the social impact of such mindset is that maybe not dud at least, but definitely hibernating. So that's why I feel that there is such enormous potential and strength in this partnership between different bills. big corporate together with UN institutions, together with startups together with leaders, consultants. And it doesn't matter which one belongs to as long as there is this one strong purpose and the mindset that unites you. If you focus on that, there is so much you can learn from each other. There is no right or wrong definition of impact, right. It's just either there is one other is none. And at this point, I think as long as we remember that we can still hop on this train to you know, to turn a little bit of an imminent disaster that is coming - to turn it around.
Katherine Ann Byam 10:01
Absolutely. Again, more juice for the discussion. One of the other things that you just said as well, is about really bringing that mindset together in the social impact startups. And I found in my own work, and especially now that I've become an entrepreneur, become a startup myself, that actually, the easiest place to move is in the startup community. So even in my consulting work, I can influence more in terms of mindset, with companies that are just starting out to design, right, first time, I guess, as opposed to existing, well-established companies and even existing well-established NGOs. Because they all have a similar dated mindset, in some ways. So working with startups is so refreshing because they're open, just like you see. So it's so exciting to be a part of that movement.
Anna Derinova-Hartmann 10:58
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. But you know, funnily enough, what I also realised is that, if there is a way there is a possibility to bring this fresh, fresh air into a really existing and kind of established organisations, it is much harder but it is possible. And that's why for instance, I believe it is quite a tough battle too. For instance, by jumping on the ship of corporate social responsibility or community engagement in a big corporation, because right away, you need to try to understand what's the real motivation there? Is it marketing?
Or is it really something that the company wants to change? And but trust me, in my experience, even if it is marketing, I still strongly believe that there is a way to turn it around. Because in the end, you take these crazy resources that this organisation has and you start the conversation by conversations, step by step it will take forever, or for sure, but conversation by conversation, tiny step by tiny step by asking the right questions. And I'm a huge fan of asking questions. Well, exactly asking fantastic questions, by asking these questions, you will start very slowly, like waterworks with the stone, you'll start turning it around. But of course, that requires lots of hard work, perseverance, stopping this, if you will. But then the impact is enormous. Really?
Katherine Ann Byam 12:36
Yeah. No, massive, massive appreciation for what you've said, because I understand exactly the journey and I know what it feels like, as well as I feel the excitement of things changing, even if it's slow. Absolutely. So I wanted to ask one more question about these Sustainable Development Goals. So a lot of companies that are posting, their commitment to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, even countries and you know, the UK has this rewiring project, bridge, etc. Where they focus on six of these goals. Which one of these do you think is most important to move first? And why?
Anna Derinova-Hartmann 13:18
Tough question. Oh, my God. I mean, it's like in a candy store. Which one do I pick? Right? Well, I'm a big fan. Incredibly passionate, I would say I have my top three. My top one is definitely battling zero hunger. Is that something that I mean, that's the basics, that something without I mean, let's put it that way. I cannot expect a person or a human being to be fighting for democracy and rights if he or she has nothing to eat or cannot feed his or her kids. And it's just how it works.
And this way, I'm an absolute fan. And I'm in love with the workflow programs and everything they do and how they combine innovation, partnership management actually and humanitarian action. And my top two is responsible consumption because this is something that we can actually directly fix. Honestly, if we want to. I mean, if you, for instance, compare it to water or environmental, I think we're so far already by screwing the environment around us that it's very hard to turn it around. It's still possible, but it's incredibly hard with responsible consumption is something that we are directly responsible and accountable for.
And it's just if we don't want to change it, well, that's not so I think there's something we can do. And the top three for me is the third one is a partnership because I strongly believe that the partnership is the way to go forward. The partnership is actually the only way that the only way to do to achieve success is the quarter success and my purpose. Personal purpose has always been breaking those silos, as I mentioned, not creating them. I think the only way to get better at this is to establish a partnership.
And I would imagine exactly in this particular order - battle hunger, while we look actually how we consume to make sure that we're, for instance, reducing the waste, the food waste, and we see how we can partner with each other because we won't be able to win this battle alone.
Katherine Ann Byam 15:18
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. Finally, in closing, if you have any tips for social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to make a difference who are building eco-friendly businesses, do you have any tips for them on how to grow their businesses, how to have the right conversations, and how to generate interest?
Anna Derinova-Hartmann 15:38
Oh, absolutely. It's always easier to give a tip rather than to do it myself. I'm joking. Honestly, I would say, first of all, identify your purpose. Be very clear about your “why.” I've seen so many startups that were jumping into solutions because it's fancy to build a tech app. And they did not actually start with understanding the reality and ecosystem around them. Do not jump to solutions. And because a technical app is not actually the answer in the end, but most of the time, it actually isn't. Be curious.
I think every entrepreneur should be willing to understand how everything works around them and why it works this way. Very often, when you ask the questions when you are naturally curious, you'll get people around you. And you understand the reason why the system works much faster that way. And I would also recommend developing your product, whatever that product is in small iterations, and keep building on those. Because this way, you're more flexible, you can move 180 degrees, if that's needed.
And honestly, what COVID-19 taught us is that it's very hard to plan ahead about a week even. Do network and be brave, no one will do better marketing for you than you do. So just open up their talk, be it digitally or physically present. Hopefully, their physical presence will return again very soon. But be brave and network with people. And yeah, be open to partnerships and collaboration, because you're not alone. Fortunately, you know, COVID brought up actually so many social entrepreneurs and impact leaders and sustainable businesses that I think we're actually having much more hidden than we thought is there. And as I mentioned before, through this partnership, and collaboration, I think we can fix much more than we even dare to think.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:35
Wonderful. Anna, it's been a pleasure to host you on the show. I've loved this session. I think I'm going to be playing this back a few times. Thank you so much for your consideration. Thanks for listening.
007 & 008 Overcoming Adversity
About this Episode
Dani Wallace Is a Public Speaking Coach, Incredible Singer, absolute survivor and a guest on my show.
We talk about her journey to overcome adversity and build a successful business and life for herself and her children. I chose this topic, because many people need hope right now, and Dani delivers this in abundance.
About Dani Wallace As a former serial self-saboteur, having grown up on the council estates of Preston, Dani has survived the adversity of domestic violence, homelessness and single parenthood to become a leading voice in empowerment around the UK.
Dani uses her knowledge of both traditional employment in the corporate sector and self-employment in the entertainment industry to deliver memorable, inspirational and thought-provoking talks. Through her world class courses, masterminds and VIP experiences Dani helps people all over the world create incredible talks that help them stand powerfully on stage, reaching more of their ideal audiences.
Fearless leader of the I Am The Queen Bee Movement and creator of the Fly Anyway Foundation, Dani helps people the world over Show Up Wise Up and Rise and is a reminder to anyone who enters her orbit that they too, regardless of their journey can #FLYANYWAY!
Hello, everyone, good night and welcome to the fourth edition of transcending work, harnessing the courage to lead. It is such a pleasure to have you all this week and a pleasure to host my guest today. So my guest is a person who I met just around April, May June area this year. She is an incredible public speaker, former singer, a former corporate employee, former many other things and she has made her way through life in the most amazing and incredible way that you can imagine. So without any hesitation, I introduce to you, Miss Dani Wallace.
Unknown Speaker 0:55
Hello, Katherine. Hello, my darling.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:01
Hello, Danny, and welcome to the show. How are you doing?
Dani Wallace 1:06
So good. I am so thrilled to be here.
Katherine Ann Byam 1:09
So I see your backdrop is your morning show. To tell us about this morning show.
Dani Wallace 1:19
So at the start of COVID, there was a very real possibility that because I'm a singer and a public speaking coach, and I'm really very lucky that I've got like an online business, but I had a whole entertainments business offline, I would go out and do gigs on down the country. And when lockdown in the UK was announced, there was a very real possibility that I was going to end up extending and extending my lane. And it was gonna get late to relate to that was going to have a real effect on my productivity. So what I decided to do was to go live every morning, Monday to Friday, and get ready for work. So I'd get up at 8 am. And go live and do what I'd done. for pretty much the last seven or eight years, I've been going live on Facebook for the last seven or eight years.
And what I would do is, as a singer, you often play dressing room roulette, in that when you turn up to a venue, you never know where you're going to get put in order to get ready, nice decided to stop playing dressing room roulette. And instead what I would do is I would put my makeup on in the car, and to keep myself safe, I would put my phone up on the dashboard and talk to Facebook while doing my makeup. I thought well, why not kind of go back to my roots a little bit and I just got to put my makeup on for work in the morning.
And then realised two weeks ago that was gonna get really boring. And so I started to invite my friends on I started to invite the entrepreneurs in my space, inspirational people, motivational people in my space to come and get ready with me in the mornings come and get ready for the workday together. And as well in an answer to that, you know, putting on the news in the morning, which especially during that time was it was horrible. Yeah, it was hard to go in and to be motivated people and inspiring people are getting excited about stuff instead of allowing ourselves to be really weighed down. So then I carried on and then another week went by and another week went by and then all of a sudden I've been doing it for the past eight months.
Katherine Ann Byam 3:29
It's incredible. Every morning at 8 pm I get a notification that Dani Wallace is Live. It's incredible. Dani, you said you said seven, eight years you've been doing these lives on Facebook, etc. Tell us about 10 years ago, tell us about your journey, your transition to becoming the absolute superstar that you are.
Podcast Part 1 starts here
Dani Wallace 3:48
Thank you. It hasn't always been. So where I am now is I'm in a very, very, very different place to where I was say 10 years ago. And the way it was 10 years ago is a direct result of how I grew up. So I grew up on the council state of Preston. We were very very much on the breadline. And it's funny I talk about this now. In the media and on radio shows and in magazines And things and my mom always gets upset the first time I talked about this. She was like, “Daniela, were we poor” because she was just going through it. She was making ends meet. She didn't say that that's what it was. And I was like mom Yeah, we lost our house. We were having a tough time.
My dad was an alcoholic and domestic abuse was actually inherent sort of through generationally in our family. And as a child, we absorbed that. We watched what was going on and it formed a lot of my choices when I got older. So when I was 16, I essentially ran away with the circus. So I started to sing, and I fibbed about my age and I got on a plane and I ended up singing all over the world in different places. And really what I was doing is I was escaping where I was. And then, I was all over the world. It was fabulous. But people like me, people like us from here don't go on to be entertainers or singers or entrepreneurs or online whatever's.
So there was always, "come back, get a proper job." So I came back to the UK. And I was in a relationship and really what I wanted to create as a stability, and this what I didn't have - this not chaos of my younger years, and it didn't really matter. And who was there to fill this husband-shaped hole and I just filled it with this guy. Bless him. A completely railroaded him into you know, buying a house and you know, getting married and having a baby and he just kind of went along with it until one morning and a couple of weeks after we'd sent out the invites to our wedding.
He just woke up and he went, “Dani I don't want any of this,” and he left. So I was sort of left on my own single parent two weeks after we sent the invites out to the wedding to cancel the wedding. It was too close to the wedding to get anything back. So you can imagine I was feeling, (I'm allowed to swear I'm not gonna swear?) Tonight, and I'm gonna be very guilty. Now I'm gonna keep a lid on my swear words. I just get excited that's all. And but I was feeling rubbish. I was feeling pretty poor. It weren't right Good.
So what I am going very quickly because I was in that vulnerable place. And I got into another relationship very quickly and that relationship turned sour. I experienced an abusive relationship during that time and how to get out of it. And when I got out of that abusive relationship, I was then a single mom of two children under three. And then we couldn't afford to keep the house I couldn't say this kind of corporate job going along the top here. And then underneath my life was in tatters. It was all I could do to hold on to this flipping job like this.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:07
Yeah, yeah.
Dani Wallace 7:08
And we ended up homeless. So we ended up I ended up having to lose the house. And, and we were sofa surfing, me and the two girls, Poppy and Daisy, my big flowers. And I've had it since she's like some foliage to finish my bouquet off. And we will sell photography. We will sleep in it pair in my parents’ house or sister's house friend's houses that were to and from London, at the time with my dog. So one night, and I was talking my kids into bed and I can't say that I wanted to die. But I didn't know how to live. I didn't.
I was like I'm not a benefit to anybody. I'm not helping anybody. Not even my kids like I'm doing the best that I can be the best that I can doesn't seem to be good enough. How have I ended up homeless with these two beautiful children? How they ended up on my backside like this. I can't seem to make a good decision or hold a good relationship down. What's wrong with me. And I had a real like, sort of breakdown moment and I had to decide at that moment. It was either gonna happen to life or life was gonna continue happening to me. I don't think that was going to end very well. Yeah.
So I started in that at that moment, I guess a night in the car and it's raining out. So it's very dramatic. I'm sure it is like when they make a film about my life. When somebody did beautiful or famous plays me, there'll be a scene where she's in the car and it's raining outside and she's crying in the car. And there was that real light that proper moment. And it was from there. I kind of got out of the car and sat down and spoke to my mom. And I was like mom, I can't go on like this. I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know how to ask for help. You know, people at work didn't know what was going on behind the scenes people at work.
So that things went right. But I was trying to kind of put on this veneer that everything was okay and was just in transition. But I was on my knees. Yeah. So I started a journey as everybody does, whether this pivotal point to the film of my life. And when I started to do a lot of work on myself. Okay, so what did taking responsibility look like? How did I choose better for myself? How did I choose better for my kids? What could I do? How do I ask for help? And I started off on that journey. So after that, not so long after that, we found somewhere to live. We were very lucky. And we're where I'm living now.
So where I am right now is in my bedroom, in the middle still in the middle of the Council of states of Preston because that was where I had to move to. Yeah, so where I'm about to move to is like, I can't even believe that this is happening. But I've we've just said we've just bought a house we haven't we're just buying a house we're in that horrible bit in the middle where all the mortgage has been sorted in your old in on feeler. But yet we're just about to buy and move into what is the house of our dreams? So things have moved on a lot since then. Yeah, but then there was a real moment when I realised that you know, you get to choose and it's really a quote from The Bee Movie that goes, aerodynamically a bee should not be able to fly its little wings shouldn't get its fat little body off the ground. And the bee, however, doesn't care what humans think. Is it possible to fly anyway? And that was it for me. I was like, that's how you choose.
The bee don't get the memo that it can't fly. You just got to do it. Well, I'm gonna send the memo back that people like us are successful. This lingo, which is exactly what we went on to do. And it's been just a roller coaster ever since.
Katherine Ann Byam 10:52
So when exactly did you become the queen bee? Was it directly after you watch this movie? How did this materialise into The Queen Bee?
Dani Wallace 11:01
I would like to say that I watched that film and then directly the day after created a public speaking business that then went on to turn over six figures. But that's not what happened. But it sowed the seed? Yeah. And it got me to thinking so remember, I was telling you about going live in the car? Yeah. So during this time, I had lost my job in corporate. And I think it was one of those situations, whether you are sort of down with universal energy or not. I am not in too much of a woo-woo way, but I definitely am.
I definitely believe in the person and all of that sort of stuff. Yes. And I believe that sometimes when you're too afraid to jump, you shall be pushed. And that's what happens. So I came out of corporate work and started to sing full time. And then my diary filled up very quickly and was very blessed in that I'm good at what I do. So I was able to fill my diary up, and we were safe and I'd be happy going live in the car like this and talking to people about my personal development journey. And I would talk about forgiveness.
I will talk about feminism. I will talk about how to be strong as a woman, how to speak how to do all of these sorts of things, and news and stuff. Some of it would be really funny, and some of it will be serious. Sometimes I would cry and then put my makeup on again. And yeah, it was so during that time, I was really thinking okay, so actually, there were people that were tuning in. And there were people who were watching regularly they would miss me when I wasn’t there, right and there's something really compelling I don't know what it is about somebody putting their makeup on it so the people start to watch and then when they watch and they listen at the same time they started to really start to get the benefit. Yeah, so how can I create something here.
And I really loved the concept of being the queen bee of making a statement, “I am The Queen Bee.” It's a very bold statement. Like I walk into places going, “I am the queen bee” and people have to get everything she has. It's not about that. It's a reclamation. When I'm saying I'm The Queen Bee. I'm not just saying - I am The Queen Bee. I'm reclaiming my birthright to success to a boom race to happiness friendships as we have.
All of this I'm reclaiming that because I was really annoyed Katherine that the Queen was born the queen and I was born on the council estate. so I'm like why neither of us got a say on this. Somebody landed easier than me and I was like why so I thought well in this reclamation in this statement and the bees do the most incredible things that I could do a whole conversation about bees and how amazing analogies for business in life we could use. But I'm the queen bee really spoke to this, standing up and this choosing to fly anyway.
I love the concept of grabbing hold of your own crown and bobbing that on and then you know what seeing your friends and if their crowns a bit wobbly straightening up their crown and sending them on the way as well and that is really how the concept started is. The more I spoke to people the more I realised that we are yes we all get to choose but you know you can say I am the queen. Absolutely as our you as our again anybody watching whether you're male, female gender, binary, you know, whatever it is king bee, queen bee, royal be whatever it is.
And Claudia MacFarlane is asking, Oh, hi, Claudia. In your journey to self-development, what were your biggest challenge and the habits you needed to break? And the biggest one for me, Claudio was the acceptance of myself. So what I always sought was external validation. And what you find is that people often let you down. And I'm not saying that people like, like your friends or your family but when you are seeking external validation when you're seeking peace and happiness, and wealth because wealth isn't just the money in your bank account when you're seeking those things from outside of yourself, then it is very difficult to obtain and keep hold of it.
So what I had to learn was how to love and accept myself in my entirety with my flaws and my perfections like I’m perfectly imperfect. And that didn't come till much later when I started to see where I am now and practice gratitude. So I needed to break being a victim. I needed to stop thinking life was happening to me and realise everything was happening for me. I just got to choose the outcome and my reactions dictating my outcome. But there was this really funny moment that I had.
And I was sad even I was feeling grateful for everything that was going on. And I’m surrounded by brilliant people. And, and when I look back, and I've done a lot of work on looking back on past Dani, that girl sat in the car who just hated itself. She didn't know how to live with herself anymore. And I look back on her and I go, God, I love you. I want to start to cry, like, Oh, I love her so much. She fought really, really hard. And then what she did, is then fought really, really hard to get to where I am now. And then I can now envisage future Dani, because I know that now. Dani loves the past Dani. That future Danny loves this Dani vehemently.
She's like cheering around saying Yes, come on, we've got the good stuff over here. You can do it. I love you. But it's me saying that to me. It's not anybody else saying that to me. It's me giving myself that validation is that understanding that it's got to come from you. In order for it to for you to be able to obtain and maintain that development. you've got to understand and love and acknowledge yourself.
Katherine Ann Byam 16:57
Absolutely. Now, absolutely. It's incredible your journey. And I wouldn't pivot a little bit to the point in time when we met. We met before as and we were in a group together. But we actually interacted because of Black Lives Matter. And I don't know if you exactly if you must’ve remembered this. So I decided to wire you up that week. And yeah, and it was about a programme you were running. It was a charity programme. Yeah. And Claudia saying that she loves your NGO. Just put that on screen.
Show notes (Part 2)
Katherine Ann Byam
So you were running, you were running a charity event.
Dani Wallace 17:39
Yeah, the Big Festoon.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:40
And someone decided to flag you for not being inclusive, or she felt that you weren't being inclusive enough. And that week, as I will just tell a little bit my story in that week. I mean, all sorts of things were happening in that week that I wasn't ready to deal with, right? So all of a sudden, it's like people have been, you know, impacted by racism all of my life. But that week, something happened. It was there was a shift, there was a movement that, that just broke things and in a good way.
But what I saw and what I experienced that week at least online was a lot of women like me coming out and speaking their truth. And I'm not used to hearing that or speaking it you know, and I felt so uncomfortable that week. I remember thinking like I can't handle this. Every story that I read or I heard I wanted to cry like it was it was just such a powerful week in terms of getting connected with things that you've been suppressing for so long. So I empathise with that lady who got in your case, and you will get to tell the story. But I empathise with her because I recognise that even I didn't know the best way to deal with feeling oppressed. So if you can speak about that,
Dani Wallace 19:02
I absolutely can. And it's really not my place to kind of fill up and get emotional for you and with your base because you're my friend and I love you. And so that week, I put on a charity event now wide. I'm a survivor of domestic abuse and often watch the media with regards to what's been commented about it because I am an ally and a spokesperson when it comes to things that happen in the news. So for example, I will speak on Channel five about it when you know there are no refuge spaces and what have you. So I've noticed in the news that there was an increase of 700%.
We were seven weeks into lockdown and the increase was 700% in terms of domestic abuse, and I was like and wall sat here in the ivory tower thinking I can do something here um, but we live every day anyway, so I'm going to make this happen. So what I did is from my bedroom, I created a charity event to raise money for domestic violence charities women's aid. I was interviewing 24 people ended up being 25 people plus 25 sponsors. So I was like interviewing 50 people over the course of 12 hours to raise money for charities. Now, it is something that I have been making a conscious effort to work on for a couple of years now to make sure that the things that I do are diverse, or we have that in the middle of what we think is our value as absolutely a real core value. So when I was creating the lineup or trying to scramble together in a couple of weeks, this lineup,
I’m thinking so it's really important. This isn't tokenism, I just wanted to make sure we had a diverse spread of people. So I didn't want a full lineup of white people. Because it was wrong. Like it. It wasn't right. So we had members of the black community, we had members of the Asian community, members of the Jewish community, we have disabled people, members of the LGBTQ community. You can imagine that's quite broad. Yes. And booked, I thought I've done okay. And like, I never should just pat myself on the back. Yes. Good job, Daniela. That very week was the week that George Floyd was murdered.
And that week was the week where really, the lid was really lifted off the conversation as he's writing proper, about moving things forward, and how should we move things forward. But when you plaster off something that you are never allowed to expose, there's hurt there, and there's pain there. And you know, you've experienced it yourself. And, you know, being a friend of so many members of the black community are being an ally, and really sit in there and just trying to hold space was all I could do is just hold some space that week. And go and stand side by side with my brothers and sisters and siblings and speak as a white ally.
And do all of those, just try and hold that space. Because it was painful. I'd done this event because I want to pull the event. Is even right that I do it. And I just think, no because there were still lots of other people that need help him right now. And they are also members of the black community that are victims of domestic abuse. So I would be silly if I was going to stop all of this now. So what I did is I made a conscious effort on the day, I was like, made sure that we spoke about this with all of our guests made sure that you know, we were sharing relevant things on the day. And but some somebody really, and it was only really one person, but it was enough that from a real place of her was like “Your lineup is not diverse. In fact, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to create a smear campaign and say that actually.” One of the things that were said is this woman has just raised the Confederate flag.
And I was like, definitely. Because there's a difference between accepting that there's more to be done, and simply being just wrong. Yeah. So again, but as a white person at that time, it's not my place to start going, “Well, actually.” There's so much pain like even is my pain in that is nothing. So all I could do is kind of absorb what this person was saying. And this person was trying to create like me, and just sit there and hold steady and say to my audience, look, yes, there was more than I could have done.
Yeah, there's more. There's more than I could have done. But I don't know what else to do. So what I'm going to do going forward is just keep trying my best. That's all I can do. And I look for ways to move forward together. And you reached out and you were so kind to me that day because I was able to do this and feeling guilty for a bit because so many of my black friends were in pain isn't even the right word. It's generational like rage and hurt.
Katherine Ann Byam 23:59
It is such a complicated emotion. Like, I don't think I felt something like that. I mean, I felt a lot of things in my life. But I think I've not felt the pain of coming out the way I felt it in that week. Right? That it was a release. And I remember taking an action in that week, that was probably overdue for six months, right because of an experience that I'd had. And I took action that week saying I will never work with this person.
I will never do this again. You know, but it takes it took that it took that moment of realising Hey, you know, this is meant to be a balanced playing field for everyone. You have in your mind that that, you know, you don't even realise where you get this belief from. So you have this thing displayed, this track running in your head which isn't allowing you to step into yourself and step into your pride and step into who you are. So so it's been an incredible journey and I love that that's the moment that I connected with you. Because you're such a bundle of light and opening so much space for so many people, and this is why you're on my show. This is why I have introduced you to everybody. So Dani, tell everybody about flying away Fly Anyway.
Dani Wallace 25:30
I think he's, I think when you meet people when I just kind of want to say when you do meet people in those situations when you meet them in love, yes, powerful things happen. And I think that was what I learned at that time. And it was a test for myself,. Could I hold space for anger directed at me that is righteous? It might not belong to me personally. But can I hold space for that person? And the answer was, yes, it was my job. If this all I can do is hold space for that anger, and say, You know what?
Just if I could, if I could be the sounding board for that anger, for now, while you're getting your thoughts in order, then please let me be your friend. And I love you. And I will accept that anger from you. And I think that was really that was what I learned at that moment is how do I do that? And it's painful for everybody. The whole thing is, you know, as people who believe that their allies suddenly realise that that again, that they the curtain is lifted, and they can start to see, actually what they've been privy to all along. Yes. And they didn't realise it.
So on both sides plus has been ripped off and like all of this stuff. So that's really what I learned. And during that time is how do you hold space for somebody who's angry, and anger might not belong to you personally, but it still belongs to you, it's still yours, you still got to absorb some of it and understand how to make things better. So and So yeah, I just kind of wanted to say that. The Fly Anyway foundation is very exciting. It's something that I've been wanting to create for the longest time; where, if somebody like you, for example, somebody really inspirational like you or somebody like me, had been able to look after me and really helped me with my mindset stuff properly, excited to go and read books and audibles and stuff, there is a degree of having to do the work.
But if I'd have had access to business services, or like things like website design, branding, photography, because I'm clever. I'm very intelligent, which in the corporate an incredible job for years and years, and knew how to build a business. But I was so on my knees that there was no way that I could afford to have a website build, there was no way that I could afford it. But I could barely afford to feed myself and my kids. So what I've done is I've created a foundation of social enterprise, where survivors of domestic abuse who are ready are able to come and access funds and support so that they can create the businesses that they really want.
Yeah, so often, when you are a survivor, you will want to create a new identity of yourself, not a different identity. But the new improved and galvanised version of yourself as sometimes that involves like your work, like what work do you want to do, and survivors often serve as well. So you'll often find that survivors are going to be things that coaches or they'll help people.
They might not have access to brand photographers, or business coaching, or mindset coaching. So what we're doing is we are creating (and this is a call to action tonight). We're creating a bank of ambassadors who are willing to either donate or discount their goods and services because it won't be the 1000s and 1000s of 1000s of people. Yes. And then we'll have a pot of money that will fundraise so that say, for example, you're a fledgling company, and you're really incredible at what you do. But you really want to be an ambassador, we will be able to pay you for your goods and services.
You know, we're able to support grassroots because grassroots businesses are so important. Now more so than ever. Yes, all this pot of money that will be available for us to pay for business goods and services for survivors of domestic abuse and domestic violence who are wanting to build businesses. So it's almost like we get to hold hands and lift each level. We just hope. Yeah. So we become a hub of small businesses and medium-sized businesses and micro businesses and big businesses actually reaching out a hand to those people out there who are ready to create and allow them the space to do it and allow them the funds to do it as well.
So the Fly Anyway foundation is on the search for ambassadors and we're going to be having a big sort of zoom meeting about that on the seventh of November. I don't know the eighth of November if I'm live.
Katherine Ann Byam 29:55
Awesome, so people can participate. How can people participate if they wanted to support the idea? So we, we have Charlotte saying, I'd love to be an ambassador, how do we apply it?
Dani Wallace 30:06
So we are just in the process of creating the invitation and space on my website where you can go and register your interest to be an ambassador. So before the end of the weekend, there'll be a space on the name of The Queen Bee website, where you can go on and register your interest. And then we'll send you an invite to the zoom. And it's going to be like a town hall at seven o'clock UK time. On Sunday, the eighth of November, we've chosen the eighth of November, because that was the day I was originally meant to get married. So that was the day that the wedding was cancelled. And also the day that I got homeless.
So I wanted to make that day a day where actually I took real action. So at 7pm on Sunday, the eighth of November's anybody who wants to be an ambassador, can either just make us make themselves known to me. Come into my world, follow me on socials for more information. And then in the next, say, in the next four or five days on my website, we'll be pushing out, how do you sort of sign up to come on to that zoom?
Katherine Ann Byam 31:05
Yeah, fantastic. So I'm absolutely willing to promote that. So when you're ready to send me the links. I will share it with everyone. And the last thing I guess is to tell us about your book. So So a little bit of story before we get to the book, right? So I think it was about a month ago, maybe just under two months ago, Dani just locked off the show and started writing this book. I have never seen someone turn around the book in what, two weeks?
Dani Wallace 31:33
Yeah, it was three and a half if you add for procrastination. Yeah, it was a book in two weeks is what I'd seen. So tell us about your new book.
Dani Wallace 31:46
So what I wanted to do so I wanted to create a book. So I've got a little book, which is like a how-to it's called “Closed Mouths Don't Get Fed.” It's just this tiny little book. So we're a public speaking coach. But because I share my story as a motivational speaker about everyone, really everything that we've spoken about this evening, about my story, where I come from, and how specifically, I overcame the years of generational self-sabotage, to go on to create a six-figure business in the online space, and all of that sort, all of their kind of the entrepreneurial. I've got successful businesses. It's nice. It's good.
And but I really had to do a lot of work on myself in order for me to do that. Because if you remember people Iike us don't go on to make a success of themselves. Right. So what I wanted to do is pull together a mixture of an autobiography that flushed out some of the talks that I gave it give a bit more detail a bit more background on why is that I do what I do. And then so tell the story of the last 12 to 18 months, because then that's when things have gone from that to this. Whereas now you know, you know, I am asked to you know, pass comment in the media on stuff and I am and I do sellout events now. And it is just, it's just phenomenal.
Yeah, so wanted to do not how-to but like a beginner's guide to getting out of your own flipping way. And, and I thought now more than ever, it's important because I think when you're in fear, and a lot of people have been in fear this year, and rightly so. Because if I hear the word unprecedented one time, I'll just I'll get vomit. But if I could give a survival guide to at least introduce how to get out of your own way so that you can create success and you stand up and say, “I am the queen bee too.” And that's what I wanted to do. So that's the premise for the book. It's called I'm the queen bee how. This is how I overcome self-sabotage and how you can, too.
And which released next Thursday you can't buy it yet to buy on Thursday next week because we've got a best seller campaign.
Katherine Ann Byam 33:57
Alright, so I will be tweeting and commenting and posting that everywhere next week.
Katherine Ann Byam
Wonderful. Any closing notes from you Dani on how people can find you, how people can follow you, or even get into your morning show. Tell my audience.
Dani Wallace 34:16
If you would like to come and speak with me and get ready for the day of the show, The Rise Up show applications are open on Friday. So please do give us a follow either you know on Instagram or drop if you're watching on LinkedIn, drop me a message on LinkedIn.
And even though I'm not super active on LinkedIn, I am in my inbox there so you can DM me. You can get in touch with me across the socials at The Queen Bee Dani and all of the kind of kickoff info will be on there so you can apply to be on the show from Friday. If you want to become an ambassador for the Fly Anyway Foundation, we’ll be banging that drum from Monday onwards. And yeah, I think you just come and get in my world. And I'm excited. I'm excited because I'm working with you too.
Katherine Ann Byam 35:02
I’m excited. So don't judge my public speaking performance yet. Okay. But as of last night, I am working with this woman to help me to be the best I could be, which is so exciting. Like, I can't, I can't wait to get roped into this. And the journey has been incredible for me. I mean, I can tell a little bit about that as well. But when I started in my business, I was afraid to be visible.
I was doing everything behind the scenes, right? I didn't want to be out there. And that's slowly changed, right? It's slowly changed from around this time last year, but it really changed from around April after I got over the shock of all my business going away with COVID. I suddenly realised hang on here. No, I need to show up here. I need to do something. I need to be who I am meant to be. I need to take space. And it's taken me a while. It's been a journey over the last six months. But I would have never imagined going live on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever a year ago.
Dani Wallace:
Oh, We’re having a chat on your podcast.
Katherine Ann Byam
Oh having a chat in the podcast - it's crazy. No the latest in the podcast is 17 countries now. So it's nuts and top 10 in eight countries. Like seriously, it's nuts. And I never would have imagined that could possibly happen. And that's been a journey of being prepared to put me out there. And it's like, it's not that I had any training, right? I just went, I just did it and now I'm gonna improve those skills. But yeah, but part of it is to just go. It's about courage and I like to say to people confidence is overrated. It's all about courage, right? It's more about standing proud in your courage and saying, “Hey, I'm out here, and I'm imperfect, but I'm still gonna do it, I'm still gonna push on.” And I think you embody that.
Dani Wallace 36:59
And that's a difference between people who make it in inverted commas. They're the people that are willing to do the thing that everybody else isn't willing to do--- that are willing to record that podcast and put it out there, that are willing to turn up live at eight o'clock every morning, that are willing to write the book, that are willing to spend all the plates of the incredible businesses, that you run, that are willing to put themselves out there invest in themselves. Confidence is a hat that you put on knowing and accepting of yourself. Confidence doesn't arrive one day people wait for confidence to arrive and it's not a step that you take. You take steps towards confidence.
Katherine Ann Byam 37:36
Yes, absolutely. So I hope we have inspired many people tonight. If not tonight I hope they all watch it on the replay. If you do watch it on the replay, hit #replay so that we know that you watched and you know we will post links so that you can follow Dani, etc. So thank you Dani for joining me. This has been an absolute pleasure. I love your energy. You lift my energy. So it's always a pleasure to spend that time with you. And thank you to everyone who's joined and asked questions and interacted with us. So see you next week for another edition of the show. Claudia says thank you very much. Fabulous. See you next week.
006 Creativity on Purpose - Finding Meaning in Work
About this Episode
I discovered Todd Henry during an online summit on Productivity, and I've followed his work ever since.
We had a great chat recording Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast for the Unexpected Innovator, where we talked about the privilege of finding meaning when many are simply are trying to survive.
Efficiency is overrated he said, and effectiveness contributes to real value in an organisation.
Positioning himself as an “arms dealer for the creative revolution”, Todd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is the author of four books (The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Louder Than Words, and Herding Tigers) which have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he speaks and consults across dozens of industries on creativity, leadership, and passion for work.
He's got a new book on the way. The Motivation Code. Tune in to our podcast on your favourite player today.
wonderful to have you. Todd, I invited you to the show first, because I love your work. My personal mission is to inspire one million people to transcend the very notion of work, replacing it with purpose and meaningful activity. I believe your book Die Empty expresses this very well. So I wanted to start with one question. You talk a lot about purpose, and that each of us has our own voice and needs to find it. Yet, as the world becomes more digital and inter-connected, it's difficult to slow the noise and find out white space and even earn a living once you found that white space. How would you go about guiding people who may be struggling right now to approach their search for decent and meaningful work?
Todd Henry 2:04
There is a really great question. I think so many of us right now are just struggling to survive, right? I think even the fact that anybody is able to ask the question, How do I find meaning and my work is an incredible gift. It's a blessing right now, because so many people are just trying to find work or just trying to hold things together. So I want to start with that really strong caveat. That, you know, it is a privileged position that we're even able to ask that question right now. So if you're not in that place, I don't want you to feel anything that I'm saying as a burden or feel as if it's in any way that you're doing something wrong. I mean, we're all trying to get through to the other side of this right now.
That said, I think that there are little clues that are planted in our lives throughout the course of our life that indicate what we're wired for the places where we're wired to add disproportionate value - I call that your sweet spot. And I'm not the only one that calls it that. But that's really what it is, I think it is. The sweet spot on the baseball bat is the area where if you hit it with the same force, you're gonna get more return. The ball is going to travel a far greater distance. And if you hit it marginally off the sweet spot.
And I think we each have a sweet spot. We have an area of maximum effectiveness. But many of us never find it because we don't look for clues. We don't pay attention. Instead, we morph and mould into whatever others expect of us, which I think in the long term creates a situation where we live our lives bounded by the expectations of other people. And I want to be really clear, I'm not talking about the advice of other people we trust. We should listen to the advice of other people, we need other people in order to understand who we are. But at the same time, we can't live our lives bounded by the expectations of other people who don't really understand how we're wired, don't understand who we are, what it is we're trying to do in the world.
I am of the very strong opinion that very few people in the world are being called to change the world, right. But I do believe everybody is called to change the world around them. So I believe that the way that we discover what we're wired to do in the world is by trying a lot of things, by seeking to be resourceful and add value to any place that we are. So whatever you're doing whatever's in front of you wherever you happen to be working or living or existing or relating to others.
Just try to add as much value any place you can wherever you are and just see what clicks. See what the patterns reveal about yourself. I navigated my way into doing what I'm doing now. But I didn't set out to be an author. I didn't set out to teach. I didn't set out to you know podcast into creating content and work with clients and advise leaders. I didn't set out to do any of those things.
They kind of evolved over time as I discovered the places where I was contributing the most value and I was using my gifts to serve others. So if you take that mindset of I'm going to bring as much value as I can, wherever I am, and add value and be resourceful, and then pay attention to the patterns, then you're going to navigate to where you need to be.
Katherine Ann Byam 5:08
That's really interesting and loved it especially the part about saying that it's a privilege to be able to look for meaningful work. And, and probably I want to take a little bit of a detour on that point. And ask about, you know, how can we, as businesses even create that meaningful work for our people?
Todd Henry 5:28
Yeah, I think it just even having the conversation is a pretty rare thing. You know most organisations aren't willing to have that conversation. They're not willing to ask people, whether they feel engaged, whether they feel motivated. Most research would indicate that full three-quarters, two-thirds to three-quarters of people are actively disengaged at work each day.
And a big chunk of that is because managers aren't seeing engagement as an objective necessity, or they see it as an objective, but they don't know what to do about it. So I believe that the first thing that we have to do is we have to have meaningful conversations with our people about moments when they feel engaged, moments when they feel disengaged, how are you feeling about the work right now?
Are you feeling like your core motivations are being activated in your work? Do you feel like the work that you're doing is challenging to you, but not too challenging? Do you clearly understand expectations? If not, how can I clarify expectations? Those kinds of conversations- we just let things go and we don't have we're not intentional about those conversations. But we have to be intentional if we want to engage the people in our organisation. And so I think that that's the first step is just having a conversation about how people are feeling and living and being inside of our organisations.
Katherine Ann Byam 6:54
Yeah. Now, that's really good advice. And I want to pivot a little bit to the sort of creative industry - the traditional creative industries. So the musicians, the artists that theatrical performers, so there is an idea that they might be facing an existential crisis. I mean, some politicians have even made some interesting comments about what these people should be doing right now in terms of looking for jobs and work. But yet, I'm somehow excited about the idea of bringing this type of talent or this type of specialist into a traditional organisation to help spread creativity. So what are your thoughts on how companies can go about increasing this cognitive diversity on their teams? Without, I guess, losing what they're good at in terms of efficiency?
Todd Henry 7:45
Well, I think efficiency is overrated. I believe efficiency is a mark, not a goal. Right? I think, you know, if we can be efficient and effective at the same time, that's great. But I will take effectiveness over efficiency any day of the week because effectiveness equates the value it equates to creating to accomplishing what it is we're trying to accomplish.
And so I think one of the reasons that we typically don't like to have a diversity of thought in our teams is because the way that we measure success as organisations is often how well are we managing our finite resources versus how much value are we turning those finite resources into for the people that we serve? And we have to do both. But I think we err on this side of maximising efficiency when we need to have people with diverse patterns of thought, in our conversations, asking, why are we doing this? And this is the right thing. And what if we tried this? And what if we tried that that's very inefficient at the moment.
But it can be very effective in the long term. We measure in snapshots, not intervals. We should be measuring in intervals of effectiveness, not snapshots of efficiency if we really want to produce the best value we can for the people that were tasked with serving.
Katherine Ann Byam 9:07
Great response. The last question I want to ask today is How can parents raise their children to be more creative at a time when interacting with others is limited and where they have to go through this digital noise? I see a lot of parents struggling with the balance between screen time and sort of playtime. But even these days, when you can't interact, what do we do with our kids?
Todd Henry 9:33
I think a couple of things. First of all, you have to understand what you're trying to do with your kids. Right? So I see our job as parents, my wife and I have three teenagers. And so we have one that'll be 18 here very shortly in less than a month. You're basically an adult right at least in age. You're our job is to create wise kids.
We want to instill wisdom in our kids, meaning we want them to be able to spot patterns and make good decisions based on their experiences. So in order to do that, you have to, first of all, you have to be able to spot those patterns, which means you have to be able to think deeply enough, not be distracted, constantly by whatever comes across your field of view.
So pretty early on in their life, like we did not let them watch TV for the first handful of months of their life. We didn't give them phones and just let them have devices at the table when we went to a restaurant to keep them quiet like we made them be present at the moment, we made them have adult conversations, and we're starting to see the fruit of that. Now listen, I never give parenting advice. Because the moment you give parenting advice, you're guaranteeing that your kids are going to you know, take a left turn and it's gonna turn out poorly. Yeah, because that seems to be the pattern.
But I think, you know, understanding your objective, what are you trying to do? You're trying to create kids who are wise. So we have family dinner every night, and we have conversations about what's going on in the world. We'll talk about politics, we'll talk about what happened that day, we'll talk about things we’re frustrated about, we're talking about things we're excited about, we'll talk about what's really going on with a pandemic. And we expect our kids to have a point of view, we expect them to come to those conversations with some perspective.
And I think again, what we're trying to do is model for them how we think about things and hopefully instill a bit of wisdom in them. Your kids get anxious when you shelter them from harm when you shelter them from bad news when you shelter them from all the effects of the world. Because the reality is, they know what's going on. They suspect what's going on. And when they don't when you're not telling them, it creates anxiety because they fear that things might be actually much worse than you're letting on.
So I feel like having respectful conversations with your kids and expecting them to have a point of view. Even if it's an immature point of view, that's fine, just but have a point of view. And then talking with them in a meaningful way about what's going on, I think creates a tremendous amount of runway for them. And I think it begins to instill a bit of wisdom in them. And I think that's our objective as parents.
Katherine Ann Byam 12:19
That's really fantastic advice. I'm so glad you joined us for this talk. Probably one last question, how can people find out more about you?
Todd Henry 12:29
The best way to find me Is it my website toddhenry.com. Or if you want to learn more about my new book called The motivation Code, you can visit toddhenry.com/themotivationcode/ and that'll take you to the assessment and all the work that we're doing on understanding what truly drives people.
Katherine Ann Byam 12:45
Wonderful. Thanks for joining us, and thanks for listening to where it is lunch. Thanks for listening. This podcast is brought to you today by the depot virtual service hub. The virtual service hub is our digital transformation strategy service that supports startups needing to optimise their processes and their performance to scale up the growth. We also help medium-sized firms and modernising their operations and Our services include sustainable strategy, analytics, and tech enablement. To find out more contact Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn
002 How to build a resilient business
About this Episode
Where Ideas Launch was curious to learn what inspires the world's #4 Management Thinker.
We asked Alex these 3 questions:
What’s your why – what question gets you out of bed every morning with a burning desire to solve it?
We know in our world today we have a burning platform of sustainability. What do you currently see as the role of business in solving these problems?
We know from your work that Innovation is heavily influenced by a company’s culture. What are the top 3 things that companies with a great innovation culture do to sustain that culture and expand their economic lives?
Dr. Alexander (Alex) Osterwalder is one of the world’s most influential innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started.
Ranked No. 4 of the top 50 management thinkers worldwide, Osterwalder is known for simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual models.
He invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and Business Portfolio Map – practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies.
Strategyzer, Osterwalder’s company, provides online courses, applications, and technology-enabled services to help organizations effectively and systematically manage strategy, growth and transformation.
His books include the international bestseller Business Model Generation , Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want, Testing Business Ideas and The Invincible Company published in Spring 2020. To learn more about Alex's work you can subscribe to the Strategyzer news letter by clicking here
Innovation expert, Dr. Alex Osterwalder has created and tested tools for simplifying strategy development processes for businesses and emerging business ventures. He works by turning complex concepts into digestible visual models. Examples include Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas.
He believes that for a company to be truly sustainable, it must be able to solve a problem and create value for society, its stakeholders, and more importantly and ensuring that its employees have an optimal work condition, enjoy their work, and go home happy. There is a need for companies to transform themselves into sustainable models that are crisis-resilient and that is where their work comes in to help companies reinvent themselves through the innovation they incubate and launch at Stragegyzer.
Key points:
Technological Innovation can help businesses to be more sustainable
Business organizations must have a profound “why” that brings value and creates an impact on society
If a company is sustainable and crisis-resilient, it is able to serve its purpose and create value to its most important stakeholder, its employees
Katherine Ann Byam 0:02
Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast for the Unexpected Innovator.
We are all incredibly creative, but maybe we’ve forgotten how. I spent my career working with people from more than 150 countries traveling the world and experiencing cultures, and what have I found? Creativity is everywhere. We've got a gargantuan challenge facing us, as we need to redesign a more sustainable planet. This podcast explores modern-day innovation in the age of sustainability. I interviewed some of the most prolific thinkers, creators, and educators on their journey to create sustainable incomes and businesses. My guest tonight will teach you how to be creative, create business models and explore curiosity with the courage to level up in your career. Join me every Wednesday for a new edition of “Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast.” Welcome to our episode.
Dr. Alexander Osterwalder is one of the world's most influential innovation experts, a leading author, entrepreneur, and in-demand speaker whose work has changed the way established companies do business and how new ventures get started. Alex is known for simplifying the strategy development process and turning complex concepts into digestible visual models. He invented the Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, and The Business Portfolio Map - practical tools that are trusted by millions of business practitioners from leading global companies. Strategyzer, an Osterwalder company provides online courses, applications, and technology-enabled services to help organizations effectively and systematically manage strategy, growth, and transformation. His books include the international bestseller “Business Model Generation,” “Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want,” “Testing Business Ideas,” and “The Invincible Company” that was published in Spring 2020. So I'm excited to welcome Alexander Osterwalder to “Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast.”
So, Alex, you were ranked Joint No.4 thinker in the world. Your books are staples in universities and companies across the planet. And you are creating methods that change the trajectory and outcomes of many businesses. I believe that business leaders, especially the influential ones, have a burning unanswered question that propels them forward. Alex, I'd love to know, what's your “why.” What questions get you out of bed every morning with a burning desire to solve them?
Alexander Osterwalder 2:47
Good question. What gets me out of bed every morning. I just love what I'm doing. You know, making business tools to help people do a better job is something I really enjoy. You know, when we see people and companies who can innovate can't innovate. We ask ourselves. So what's still missing? What's wrong? We don't blame the companies. We don't blame the people. We ask ourselves. And when I say we, it's with my co-author, Yves Pigneur. We ask - what are the tools and processes that are still missing? - or unclear? You know, where could we contribute to help them do a better job, to create change, or to create impact. And then the fun part is once we kind of figure out the challenge, we try to work on it, we play around with different concepts. And then we prototype tools that we test with real business people out there and try to make them better and better. And we're very visual in the work we do. So then we write books around the tools around the topics, and it's just a fun process. And then, of course, it's very gratifying when you see people using the tools, reading the books, and actually making a difference. So that's what gets me up every morning.
Katherine Ann Byam 4:07
That's fantastic, Alex, we know in our world today, we have a burning platform of sustainability. And I don't just mean the climate. There are many levers of sustainable development, which include education, health care, water, and food for all, as well as general well-being the climate crisis. In your work, what do you currently see as the role of business in solving these problems?
Alexander Osterwalder 4:35
Interesting question. How do I currently see the role of business in solving these problems? I really think business can make a difference, you know, great companies, they create value in four ways. So number one, they create value for customers. And we shouldn't underestimate that. You know companies create new products, new services, that create value that advances the world. Then, they create value for their organization, for the owners, for the shareholders, and that is very good as value creation. But of course, that's not enough, right? That keeps companies alive. We also, you know, love companies that create value for employees, a really important stakeholder. And don't underestimate the impact, you know, you can have as a leader, or as an owner or CEO of an organization. When you have 10 people, 100 people, 1000 people, 10,000 or 100,000 people, and you create better working conditions. You create a space where people can enjoy their work every day and do their best work. You'll actually create a better world that will have a big impact. You know, happy employees will go home and be happy, and, you know, citizens in their families and happy in society. So that's very important. But then there's the third, the fourth one. And I think that area is extremely important, which is, you know, making a difference in society, having an impact in society. And you know, take the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, you know, he didn't settle for just building a company, the vision was to really, you know, have an impact on sustainability. So today, the mission of Patagonia is “we're in business to save our home planet.” So there, you know, they definitely, definitely make a difference, or Paul Polman, who was CEO of Unilever, you know, who reoriented the company, to focus not just on profits, but really on sustainability, and not at the expense of profits, but in harmony with profits. So I think that is very important and impressive. And I think you know, more and more, not just a nice to have, it's something that companies need to do, just to retain their employees and to attract new talent. Because today, you know, a lot of young people are, you know, great talents, they want to work for a company that they can stand behind, it's really making a difference. So creating value for society is something that's incredibly important for organizations. So those are four layers where no company can really make a difference.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:28
Alex, it's so exciting to hear senior leaders in strategy, recognizing that a happy employee is a happy business. You know,
Alexander Osterwalder 7:36
We spend a lot of time at work as employees. So those hours there are important in our life. So businesses who create a great work environment will really make a difference. And you know, take founders, like Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce, he wrote a book on, you know, the power of business as the greatest platform for change, he wrote a book called Trailblazer. And he really makes a case for businesses as a change agent. And I really do believe that you know, when, when we work on innovation and help large companies reinvent themselves, we also have to ask ourselves and strategise? Why are we doing that? What's, what's our “why” and the reason is not just to help them make more money or for us to have great assignments that are interesting and pay well, no, it's also and I think that's the main motivation for myself, it's to help more to create more resilient companies that you know, can survive a crisis. And that means, you know, having more stable workplaces, because when a large company has to layoff 10,000 20,000, or 50,000, people, as has been the case, you know, in some companies with COVID-19, that is very, very painful for the employees, and it's very costly for regions and governments. So innovation is something that can really make a difference, not just financially, it's really something that can create enormous value for society. So that's what gets me excited about innovation, you know, creating value for customers, creating value for businesses, and of course, creating value, you know, for employees to create more stable workplaces and ultimately, some of the great innovations they create value for the society for the environment. So if you take Tesla, its the whole idea of not just building it, you know, electric vehicles, but building a company that is transcending industry boundaries, and, you know, focusing on solar energy in general with rooftop tiles with batteries, in order to fuel the electric vehicles. That's a great, great case of an organization that is making a difference. And there are more and more of those. And that's what's really exciting these days is that you have leaders and businesses that really understand that they can make a difference in the world. And they can be agents of positive change. And that's exciting.
Katherine Ann Byam 10:22
Alex, thank you so much for that. You shared with us four great ways of creating and sustaining value in organisations, which is “focus on the customer”, “focus on shareholders”, “focus on employees”, “focus on society”. And this is the ingredient, the key ingredient to having a resilient company. Now, I know from your work that innovation is heavily influenced by a company's culture. I attended your Strategyzer masterclass in May.
What do you think are the top three things that companies with a great innovation culture do to sustain that culture and expand their economic lives? I'm very interested in how you have brought this into your work.
Alexander Osterwalder 11:03
Great question, how about the top three things you do to help companies sustain an innovation culture, we created something that we called the innovation culture scorecard, innovation, readiness. And there, we focus on three areas. And they sound kind of trivial when you mentioned them like that, but I'll give you some examples. So the first area is leadership support, you know, around portfolio allocation, the time that leaders spend on innovation, etc, etc.
Alexander Osterwalder 11:41
That's where leaders can make a difference, they need to invest in a portfolio of innovation initiatives. And not just one because in innovation, you can't pick the winner. Turns out actually that you'd have to invest in 250 projects in order to create one outlier. So when you're an established company, you need to invest in at least 250 projects to create a big success that can go into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, if you're a smaller organisation, that might be three projects to invest in to get one winner. But the ratio is that you can't pick the winner. And in the venture capital world, in the startup world, we know that for ages, because there is no venture capital investor that believes they can pick the winner, they've done this for a long time, and they still can't, so they invest in a portfolio, where one company they invest in, will create the return for the entire portfolio. So we need the same kind of logic in established organisation. So besides the execution business, the execution portfolio, managing the businesses that you have, you need to create a portfolio of innovation projects. So that's, you know, one of the themes in the first area leadership support, and investing in a portfolio and resource allocation. The second area is organisational design. So no company today doesn't have innovation activities. But mostly, it's innovation theatre. That's what Steve Blank, you know, the inventor of the Lean Startup movement, Rita McGrath, from Columbia Business School, myself, we call innovation theatre, it's for the show, there are activities there, but they're not real. So what you really want is to give innovation power, and that's a relatively easy thing to do. You know, so either it's the CEO who spends time on innovation, my favourite example is Bracken Darrell, who spends 40 to 60% of his time on innovation, or you need to have a co-CEO, who fully, you know, focuses on innovation. So a great example there is that Chinese company, ping on in finance and insurance, they transformed themselves to, you know, a company that transcended industry boundaries and became a tech player, when Peter Ma, the founder, said, we're gonna get disrupted, we need to invest in innovation. And he established a co-CEO with Jessica Tan, who focused entirely on innovation. So it wasn't somebody reporting to the CEO, you know, because then you kind of subordinate the innovation activities to the execution activities. No, it was at the same level of power. So it's very, very important that you give innovation power, either by having the CEO focus on innovation that symbolically signals that innovation is important. People will realise that it's not a career suicide to go into innovation, or the alternative is that you install innovation at the same level as the CEO. So both of these options give innovation power and signal to the company that it's very important. And then the third area of innovation culture is actually the easiest one. It's an innovation practice. So you need to establish the right tools and processes in your organisation, but also establish the right skills and experience. Because just like, you know, becoming a world-class manager, that you don't do that overnight. So becoming a world-class innovator, you know, you have to gain experience. I like to compare this to the medical profession, you know, a doctor, let's say, say, a heart surgeon, has to go through medical school, learn, you know, physiology, anatomy, for a very long time, and then become an intern, until you become a heart surgeon takes a lot of time, a lot of practice, the same in business, you have to learn the anatomy and physiology of business, to learn how it works. But you also have to practice because you can't learn business, from reading books, entrepreneurship, from reading books, innovation from reading books, just like you can't become a doctor or surgeon, just by reading books. So there are very strong similarities. So the right talent and experience in innovation is crucial, because it's a completely different profession than management. So those are the three areas you need to invest in leadership support, organisational design and innovation practice. And that's how you will help innovation become sustainable. In your organisation. It's fun, you know, to see with the Strategyzer, how we're getting into companies, and we do these assessments to see how companies are innovating or not, you know, they're performing innovation theatre. And then once you visualise that, the leaders really realise that they need to change, and they need to, you know, perform their innovation activities in a completely different way. So innovation, I think today's growing up is maturing, and companies are really realising that what was good 5-10 years ago is not good enough anymore.
Katherine Ann Byam 17:17
Alex, thank you so much for joining us on Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast. This session was so informative, so indicative of what makes a company strong and resilient. Thank you for all the work that you do. And we look forward to you joining us again in the future. Thank you, Alex, and thank you to our listeners.
Thanks for listening. This podcast is brought to you today by the Dieple Virtual Service Hub. The Dieple Service Hub is a digital transformation strategy service that supports startups needing to optimise their processes and their performance to scale up growth. We also help medium-sized firms and modernising their operations and our services include sustainable strategy, analytics, and tech enablement. To find out more contact Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn
