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About this Episode

Katherine Ann Byam (MBA, FCCA) is the wing-woman to your genius, and a business resilience / organic growth consultant. As a strategic partner to leaders,  she helps businesses design and embed effective strategies for responsible brand stewardship, to deliver outcomes that favour a wider stakeholder view.

In consulting she supports sustainable business development, resilience and business transformation projects. She is also a specialist in using Linkedin to generate organic growth and impact.

As a leadership coach, she works one to one with you as you go through any critical leadership changes; career transitions, starting businesses or scaling.

Her aim is to address solutions that consider society and environmental resiliency at their core so that her clients preserve their longevity and a fair return for innovation and ingenuity.

Her brands include Dieple Virtual Services Hub, Where Ideas Launch, Women in Sustainable Business, The Eco-Business Growth Club,  Diep Linked Agency Services, the Courageous Career Club and the WW Executive business club.

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Episode Transcript

My inner voice to me: Kathy, you're supposed to have hope, be an activist for change, advocate for better ways of living with the flora and fauna and other humans on the planet. You have to believe new futures are possible, instead of being on track to hit 2.7 degrees of warming.

As much as I'm a hopeful optimist, I am nagged by the pessimism of doubt, understandably, because we've known about the coming crisis since the Club of Rome report in the 1970s. That's 50 years we had to start doing something. And now we leave a lot of work to get done in a really short space of time. 

What fills me with hope is that our young people are learning things we didn't learn. Yes, there's a bit of carbon tunnel vision in all that learning, but it still beats denial, which seems to have finally left the building. 

Cop 26 takes place in Scotland over the next few weeks and opinions are mixed on whether or not you will make enough meaningful change. 

There are also many activists doing something from creating business models that combine a positive social impact to volunteering, designing carbon sinks and carbon sequestration projects, and creating non plastic, plastic, renewable energy and circular economy principles. 

There is hope. We're still a long, long way from reforming the economic model. However, the cuckoo in the nest of the last 50 years has been the successful efforts at treating and teaching economics as if it were a scientific discipline. Until we realised we haven't been successful at all. 

Milton Friedman is seen often as the father of shareholder capitalism, and perhaps will have a lot to account for in another life. But it wasn't only him. Many economists and leaders got this wrong. I started listening to Kate Raworth’s TED talk, and then reading her book about the revolutionary Donut Principles of Economics, and it's the first time in my entire life, I heard something from an economist that sounded sensible to me, sorry, economists. 

I'll never forget my first economics class, where the teacher explained what Ceteris Paribus meant, all things being equal. It came after almost every statement in economics and I was like, but all things aren't equal. This doesn't make any sense.

Troublemaker! That was my label. 

In brief Kate's theory is this, there are two bands, a social foundation beneath which no one on our planet should slip, and an outer band or ecological ceiling beyond which we should not exceed. Inside the donut is a safe and just space for humanity, Flora, Fauna, and where we are thought to be happiest. Beyond the donut's outer ring, we are in for a whole heap of sadness. 

The nine things that trigger planetary boundaries on the outer ring of climate change, ozone layer depletion, air pollution, biodiversity loss, land conversion, freshwater withdrawals, nitrogen and phosphorus loading, chemical pollution and ocean acidification. 

The core social foundations we need to have in place for everyone are as follows: water, food, health, education, income and work peace and justice, political voice, social equity, gender equality, housing, networks and energy. So how do we live and act meaningfully within the green band of this donut?

As business leaders adjust, the goal for the foreseeable future is to find ways to bring this green ring to life without tipping off the edges on either side. There are many ways to do this:

With your vote, what groups are supporting the donut as an ideology for the way we think about growth in the future? And how can we make sure that those groups are facilitating our future? 

Your pockets - which organisations are giving back to bolster the communities in which they live and thrive? 

Your advocacy: what groups are you interested in supporting to help raise their status and position? 

Your charity: CSR donations and support? Who are you giving to and how are they helping Your business models? What can you do with your business models to be of more direct service to people who need a helping hand? 

Your inclusion, how can you make it so that more diverse people are included in the work you do and the problems you solve? 

Season Four is all about the before and after a cop 26 Thanks for listening and joining me on this programme. 

Season Four of Where Ideas launch was brought to you today by Katherine Ann Byam business resilience and strategy consulting services. Katherine provides business assessments and strategic support to help guide your business toward a netzero future. 

Get in touch with Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn

About this Episode

Miriam Dorsett is a serial entrepreneur and fulltime artist and community activator. Her passions are the arts, community technology and sustainability. In 2016, She founded the connection company Chibur. In 2018, they launched their first product, and she's working toward launching a few new products as well this year.

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Episode Transcript

Shownotes 

Katherine Ann Byam  0:03  

Miriam, thank you so much for joining me on where ideas launch.

Miriam Dorsett   0:53  

Thank you so much for having me, Katherine. It's an honour. I'm a big fan of your work and being a part of your community. It's great to be here.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:01  

Thanks so much. It's a great compliment. I wanted to talk to you about serial entrepreneurship because you are the absolute definition of a serial entrepreneur. Tell me what inspires your creativity on this side? And what inspires you to create so many movements?

Miriam Dorsett   1:20  

Yeah, I definitely am a member of the do too much club. And that is why I identify as an artist, because I wake up and you know, it's taken me time to get to this place. But I truly when people ask me, like, what do you do? My answer is, I do whatever I want to do, right? So my purpose in my life is very clear. I want to bring more good to our world. And so every day when I wake up, I'm doing the things that I'm called to do around that. So that's where my drive comes from, I guess it's just my purpose.

So right now my main focus is quokka. It's an anonymous messaging exchange designed to increase the mental health of founders. I just completed my first official boot camp, which was at first startups, like it's a business style boot camp. So for an artist going to a traditional programme like that, you have to make compromises with how you see things. It was very good for me. I was able to narrow in my niche market and develop my customer persona and launch this product, which I have been working on since 2018.

As a way to kind of scale synchronicity and challenge the status quo when it comes to how technology is incorporated in our lives. I believe that technology today is not always built to support our humanity and quokka is here to change that and to support founders who are so important to innovation in our communities driving the changes that I believe in, but are extremely under pressure to perform and pack that on top of it being very taboo to talk about your mental health. Um, it's just a problem that I'm really excited to tackle and support my fellow founder community. So that's my main focus at the moment.

I also have bootstrap publications, which has been going on for a while. We publish books for artists that focus on writing as their primary medium. And we also have Zen's in Miami with a talented group of artists and community people here in Miami, Florida. It's an art gallery. It's a place for events, workshops. And we just support

Katherine Ann Byam  3:50  

Miami is in the sort of climate Jeopardy zone. How What are you doing? or How are you supporting the whole sustainability initiative in the area that you live because I know that you're really big on community activation,

Miriam Dorsett   4:05  

Thank you for bringing that up. Miami is ground zero, or the climate crisis and being from California and being someone who was raised very holistically and it's kind of innate for me to do things and appreciate nature. I've realised that a lot of people want to help, they don't want to do things to harm the environment, but they just don't know how to, to help or to stop doing things that are harmful to the earth. So I became a certified climate crisis speaker through the Clio Institute, which allows me to go out there and talk about the climate crisis to educate people.

My specific talk track is for youth. And I use my story of entrepreneurs to empower the future generation to become entrepreneurs and start their own businesses, but do it sustained To play and think about how your work can impact our world. I also have a mentor, she is an amazing woman rella bagay. She was our chief Bay officer here in Miami Dade County, which I'm very proud to have her as my mentor. Because she's doing amazing work to make sure that our waterways stay beautiful.

And I'd like to support the organisations that are existing here, by amplifying their voices and supporting the events that they do spreading the word and the message we have everything from beach cleanups to political organisations to just food swaps and places that you can go like community gardens, my home space, I also structure in a way that's very sustainably minded, we have no plastic policy here in the home. And anyone who comes here, in like an Airbnb, they learn about different small things that they could do to help make a difference.

Katherine Ann Byam  6:11  

That's so great. I think that's such an important and relevant way to talk about how we're travelling and how we're managing ourselves in travel. As an intrapreneur, myself, I know that it's really difficult managing all the additional workload that sustainability brings to your business. And what I mean is that because we're in a stage now, in the world, where Yes, sustainability is getting more popular, and there's definitely more solutions being offered.

 But there's still a lot of decision fatigue around, you know, when you go into the grocery or you shop online, or whatever, you know, you have to make a decision, is this, is this packaging, the right packaging? You know, is this going to make a huge difference to my recycling, you know, you have all these decisions that you need to make, and it wears on you when sustainability is your first priority, but it isn't yet the global norm. So how do you manage that sort of, you know, decision fatigue, alongside all of the community work that you're doing? How do you manage your own mental health?

Miriam Dorsett   7:19  

I mean, I'm not the best, I definitely have had low moments with my mental health journey. But I am lucky to have been taught the tools of gratitude and nature and breathing from a very young age, these things were put in place like I remember when I didn't feel good. My mom would say, Well, do you need to take a mental health day, like I did as a child?'' She acknowledged that there are times in your life where you just can't do it, you're just like, Look, I'm not prepared to function outside of my little bubble today. And that's okay. And so I think people are afraid to talk about it. It's taboo to speak about struggles and vulnerability. And especially in entrepreneurship, we are under pressure to feel like we have it all together at all times.

And we know everything and, and it really prevents us from learning. It prevents us from growing and getting help and allowing others to help us which, as entrepreneurs, we so badly want to help each other. That's why we do what we do problem solvers. We want to fix things, right? So it's this awful cycle. And when we look at female founders and people of colour founders, which I belong to both of those groups, it's even worse because there's this other layer of unfairness in the systems that exist that you're trying to fight through as well.

So that's why Coco's anonymous, if you know, is there to structure and support but for me, mental health is just every day self care type of breathing, stretching, and having a few hours to my day that are just dedicated to me before going out and working with others. I'm not perfect. I get very stressed out. I snap on my team. I have to apologise you know, constantly always trying to improve myself and get better. You know, it's all part of the journey. I know that sounds cliche, but I just tried to get a little bit better

Katherine Ann Byam  9:32  

every day that it makes complete sense. How can people experience qualquer like, tell us a little bit about the app and what it's like to use it?

Miriam Dorsett   9:42  

Yes, thank you. quokka is really easy to use all messaging you don't have to download a thing. We are on a private beta testing of our MVP. Unfortunately, with this test, it's available in the US only. Our test group before that was open to everyone internationally because we were using WhatsApp for that test group. But now we're using a more scalable system that's here in the US. And to join, you go to our, our blog page and our like about landing page and you just sign up as a member $7 A month. course, if you are struggling with depression, or if you're a veteran, we are open, you know, you're eligible for a free membership, then you get to get messages from all of the members at random, and you can send them and they go out at random, you can ask questions to quokka.

Quoka will send you inspirational quotes, the way that it works is members send in messages, they go to coca, coca analyses the message and routes it appropriately to other members of the club. And that's the simplest way that I can explain some of the questions as well, how do you make sure that negative messages don't get through, right? Because sometimes as a founder, you get upset, you're angry, and you maybe want to express that in poker is a safe place for that expression to happen. So I hope people sign up and give me feedback. I'm really looking forward to hearing how people like using it. And so far, the feedback has been really good. Members really like it.

Katherine Ann Byam  11:25  

Thanks so much, Marian, for sharing quokka. with us. I'm looking forward to trying it out myself. And any closing advice that you would like to give to people who are just beginning on their sustainability or entrepreneurship journey? And what kind of things should they kind of look out for Be mindful of?

Miriam Dorsett   11:48  

Yeah, absolutely. I would say first of all, anyone who is going on this journey, listening to this podcast, thank you for choosing to do this hard work. Being a sustainable entrepreneur is not the easiest path. Easy to just set up like an Amazon shop, start making money, things of that nature. But I don't think we'd be properly preparing ourselves for the journey ahead. If we thought that brands who aren't going to change their business models to be more sustainable aren't going to fight us tooth and nail. So I would just ask that you think very strategically, think long term, take a rest, team up with other people, join communities like Katherine's, you know, don't let your passion consume us like passion and anger, it's a very fine line for me. I'm like, I get angry when people don't recycle or sometimes even and it's like, anger is not going to get me to the places that I want to be. So just try to amplify the good stories. Let's drown out the bad things by just shining the light on the good things. Don't get caught up on being perfect. Speak to our youth. They're the real change makers, run for office if you can use your powers, which are your voice, your wallet and your vote. And those are my words of advice. I know that's kind of a lot. But thank you so much.

Katherine Ann Byam  13:20  

This episode was brought to you today by the Eco business group Club by Katherine Ann Byam and by the space where ideas launch, 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.

About this Episode

Mairead Taylor is an active supporter and advocate of businesses, across the Dorset and Solent area, Having been part of NatWest for over 30 years and working with small, medium and large Businesses for the past 20 years Mairead brings experience, knowledge and has built a strong internal and external network that helps deliver a better customer experience.   

She’s an active member of the Bank’s South West Regional Board and Chair of the Regional Sub Board, Sponsor of the SW Gender network,  Governor and Chair of the Audit Committee for Eastleigh College, and invests time in learning and developing herself and others.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:03  

Welcome to Where Ideas Launch 

Mairead Taylor  1:03  

Thank you very much, Katherine, it's very nice to be here.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:06  

Really wonderful to have you. I think I've been in the space of Finance, actually, most of my listeners probably don't know. But I started as an accountant, and I became disillusioned with it and moved out of the field around 2012. But ESG is the first time I've actually gotten excited about the field of finance in general, again, because I think it brings a lot of hope, it presents a new way to look at finance. And I'm really excited to have this conversation because I think green finance is going to be all of the noise very soon, it already is.

Absolutely. 

So we are now on the sort of recovery side of the global pandemic. I say that generously because I know that at the end of this month, things are going to go a little bit crazy again, as we see the furloughs disappear, etc. First off, how his banking then permanently changed by the pandemic,

Mairead Taylor 1:55  

Banking has definitely been permanently changed. And I would say significantly for the better. What it's bought in is an immense amount of confidence in our ability to be agile. And our ability to be flexible, known from the sometimes myth of people not being able to work from home or work from home effectively, were absolutely blown out of the water to our ability to set something up in days that would normally possibly take 18 months to two years. So a new product or solution, but we had to get money out our door to customers as safely and responsibly as we could. But really quickly, it was really important that money gots businesses to help our clients and their families and their staff. So we were able to do that. We did that by taking teams off projects, we took teams that were doing roles in the back, which were absolutely important. But suddenly, we had to divert an awful lot of staff and upskill them, teach them the new systems, new processes, what we did was transformational. 

What was good was we were experiencing that along with all of our clients, because, you know, our clients have very, very similar issues. I mean, yes, we were responsible for providing funding, but you know, our customers were responsible, providing food and you know, all different services. So we were going through it together, we were learning, I think the bank have become much more agile in testing and learning. Things don't have to be perfect 

But we needed to get it out there we needed to be able to support our clients. And then as things evolved as the government schemes evolved, and we fed into that, to try and help more clients, our team's had to learn and keep updated on changes all the time. And we did it. And he said in my introduction, I've been in the bank for 30 plus years. And I'm very proud of some of the things we've done. But I don't think I could be more proud of what we achieved in supporting our customers and providing funding that was absolutely critical to them.

Katherine Ann Byam  4:00  

Now this is a really important part of the story. I think there's been a toll on everyone. There's been a huge toll on everyone. Everyone's had to pivot to make adjustments from the entrepreneurs to the big corporations as well. And as we look at the comeback now, it's interesting to see how much adjustment people are willing to continue to make as we move into sort of Cop 26. And you know this, this is a sustainability podcast. So we're going to talk about get into the green finance topic. But as we move into cop 26, what do you see as the bank's role in sort of supporting the netzero agenda, first of all, and also looking wider at the Sustainable Development Goals and how banks enable sort of progress to happen across the plane.

Mairead Taylor  4:47  

 All financial institutions our role is vital. If we don't do this, and if we don't do this right, it could be severely damaging to the world's economy. So us Doing nothing or us doing a bit is just not enough. We have to be leading on this, we have to be providing support. And our biggest mission is supporting our customers to help them transition to a carbon reduced world. And we want to take our client with us. That's absolutely imperative. And therefore, shrinking to those targets is not a sustainable world. So we need to really support customers as they transition, and some customers are way ahead in that. And some customers are still wondering, you know what, what to do and how to do it. But we have to take all our customers, we also have to get our own house in order. And we've made that commitment by 2030, we will have all our financing activity by having the climate impact, sorry, of our financing activity by 2030. So I think that's absolutely key, because that's where we have the biggest responsibility, the biggest challenge, but also the biggest opportunity.

 So I think, yeah, really key being part of all the, you know, we've joined a coalition of organisations in the race to net zero, we signed up to the science based target initiatives, there's so many organisations that we've we've been founders of or, you know, at the start of that journey, and I think that is key, because going to the sort of broader SDGs we need to do this in a fair and balanced way. And we need to be supportive, that customers won't be able to get there on day one. So we're actually what that transition journey is, is a key risk for businesses. And that's when we need to be at our most supportive of how we help them to get there. So I think banks have a really vital well, and part of that is through education, education of our colleagues and education with our customers, US learning from them being brave, being courageous, this is transformational for the whole world. No one's been here before. So we will make mistakes, our customers will make mistakes. But actually, it's to bring back that agility. 

And that learning fast, it's okay not to get things right. And I think one of the big things is that we won't have all the answers on day one, and all the solutions will keep evolving and changing. But that doesn't mean let's wait until we've got this nice gold plate framework to go through, we actually all need to start doing it now.

 And then as we learn, things will evolve more technology will come in more technology changes in the way that consumers want to buy things, our own behaviours, what our own expectations are, how we invest our money, and pensions, all of that will help to make a really systematic change in what our customers expect from us, and what we expect from us as individuals on planet earth really. 

So I think that's really important. And I think, you know, from a bank's perspective, we are particularly focused on three Sustainable Development Goals, affordable and clean energy SDG, number seven, climate action number 13, and partnership for goals number 17. But it's really key that we look at all of the SDGs because you could make some short and medium term decisions, but if it's at the cost of some of those other critical SDGs, we're not building a sustainable economy, we're not building a sustainable world, it's not going to address the unfairness and the imbalance that we have. I think, you know, that's really important. And that's why climate sustainability ESG has to be at the core of our strategic thinking, not like this is what we want to do. Okay, now let's put an SDG lens on it, or let's put a climate focus lens on, we can't make those decisions without that being our overall decision tool.

Katherine Ann Byam  9:00  

Absolutely agree. What do you anticipate will change for SMEs as a result of the new ESG guidelines. And I focus on SMEs in particular, because the means to do things differently is different for smaller businesses, and there is a sense that a lot of smaller businesses may not even be able to operate in the same way once we really start to make changes to these rules. So what are your thoughts on that?

Mairead Taylor  9:27  

So if I take a little step back, I was given some interesting information. Well, it just shows you how critical it is that we get this SMEs right, and according to the World Economic Forum, they represent 99% of the world's 125 million companies. They contribute more than 50% of the global GDP. And in the UK, SMEs have been responsible for 70% of all job creation since 2010. There are 6 million UK SMEs accounting for 99.9% of them. Is 61% of employment and 52% of turnover, you have to focus on SMEs. Doing anything else is just nonsensical. And also history tells us SMEs, yes, they can have restrictions because of resource, and maybe not the wider networks that some, some bigger organisations can benefit from. But they’re agile, they are innovative, they often are very brave, very courageous. And actually, they can see things and how we can either create new things, or reapply existing technologies and automation and systems and use it in a totally different sector or a totally different way.

I think it's fundamental that we do work and support SMEs, I think the changes that will come in the 20 2050. net zero target is legally binding. But we're yet to see significant legislation or regulation that is forcing or encouraging incentivizing all businesses, but particularly SMEs. So I think that will evolve. And I think that's really important that on the lead up to cop 26, and particularly after 26, I think it's really important that SMEs do engage, because there will be changes and therefore being ahead of those. And having made some progress on areas that we're focusing on clean transport, clean energy, green finance, carbon tracking, and behaviours, clean buildings, and I've got a top 10 sort of help guide for SMEs that I can happily share afterwards.

 And it's not covering everything, but actually it shows us the knees, the things that they can do, that's within their control that they don't need in house expertise, that number of them don't need money, it's actually just a change of how you might do something or approach something. So I think there will definitely be changes, I think there will be a lot of incentives. But ultimately, there will be tax implications for not doing things you know, higher tax, carbon tax and that kind of thing. I think it's how we can work with big corporations, and government and grants maximising what we can do in order to then help provide it for people that are unable to help themselves. Currently, if we change our mindset, there's an awful lot we can do with what we've got. And I think that can make a big difference. 

But an example of one that's currently in is the measuring of the carbon footprint. So I think it's very hard for an SME to make changes until they know where they are, what's their base point, and so bringing out tools that will help them so you know, we've partnered with Cogo and Microsoft Cogo for SMEs up to six and a half million in Microsoft for six and a half million more, just in order to start actually to help businesses know exactly where they are, I think also is using the resource, the capability and the knowledge that large corporates and non government organisations have to help those SMEs that supply chain up and down Intel flowing and support I think is key. 

So SMEs can help corporations be much better, and corporations will be able to help SMEs by taking people with us, big corporations taking SMEs on their supply journey, not leaving them behind. And banks, absolutely supporting all of those. So I don't know if that really answered your question. But I think there are more changes afoot. And it's better to try and be ahead of what the way you can be so that you're more leading the way rather than having to be told, well, now you have to do this. And you've got to do it by then, you know, the the diesel, the diesel cars in it, you know, an example of that,

Katherine Ann Byam  13:49  

That brings me to a topic that I probably didn't tell you about beforehand, but it's really around stranded assets. Right? So we're going to be facing a lot of that. Definitely. It's been a topic of conversation. Before the pandemic, the pandemic actually accelerated the conversation in many ways. What are your thoughts on how people deal with that?

Mairead Taylor 14:09  

Big question, and I think this is where it's fundamental. So the insurance companies produced a report quite a few years ago on this that insurance will, you know, there will be assets that will be uninsurable in our lifetimes, if we do nothing, or if we get to a 4% to four degree rise. And that's obviously unsustainably worldwide that you just know, the implications of not being able to insure an asset.

So, insurance companies and banks absolutely have to be doing something here, stranded assets help nobody. So, I guess if you're talking about bigger assets that suddenly you know, if you're moving from oil to hydrogen, or actually it's not having that transition plan as to how are you going to do it and in the smaller SME space, it's being aware that's all of our incentives to do something. So I'd like to think, you know, everybody cares about the planet and everything. But if you just look at it purely from an economic viewpoint, you think about all the hard work and everything that you've built your business up for, and why you've done it to suddenly, then being told that you can't sell it, or it's not insurable is unimaginable. 

And therefore, that's the reason you know, the reason that everybody needs to start taking action and doing and doing something will never move away from not having some stranded assets that but actually, if you've if you're well on a journey to pivot what you do to an order that your reliance on that stranded asset has actually changed. and the value of that is no longer there. Because the demand for it isn't, but actually, you've created a new asset in what you do, or how you do something, I think is key. But yeah, it's a big, big, big topic.

Katherine Ann Byam  15:55  

into just massive, I mean, some bolts involving from your car to the building that you live in, I live in an apartment building. And you know, when I think about the complexity of all of this change, I know it's not, it's not necessarily the most suitable of buildings. So what happens to this building in a few years, you know, these things do create a lot of anxiety, actually.

Mairead Taylor  16:15  

Depending on where you're living. And now, you know, I was listening to a call yesterday where they said, Sicily  we're recording heat up to 50 degrees, you think of all the natural hazards that can happen as a result of that. So it's, you know, North Africa, not it's not just in the Middle East. Now, it's spreading all over the world, that the physical risks, and the transition risks of climate change are huge, and both mitigating and adapting for those is what we all have to do. But we all can do something and that I had the benefit of going on a course with a bank at Edinborough University, and absolutely the best course. And I didn't really know anything before that. I still declare myself a real novice now. But actually, it's amazing. The different things that you can just do in your household, the different things of how you can do things at work. And if you're, you know, I will say to staff, you don't need your employer to be the one to lead you, you can lead your employer, if you're very good at what you do bring that to your workplace and demand, more demand better.

Getting it right, definitely attracts talent, it retains talent, benefits, both from a well being fulfilment, and from an economic viewpoint of you know, while absolutely proven so I think Yeah,

Katherine Ann Byam  17:44  

I have another question, because we've talked a bit about the potential for there to be sort of penalties/taxes coming on stream for your carbon output. We've also talked about the sort of natural, intrinsic incentive for us to do something about the problem. But are there also some sort of positive incentives that are being put in place to encourage SMEs who are greener than others? Who aren't who are net positive? For example? Are there things that we're putting in place to sort of reinforce that as a behaviour?

Mairead Taylor  18:17  

Absolutely, so I think there will be Why do I think there will be tax benefits and there'll be things that you know, outside of the bank, but I can talk about NatWest and I know that, you know, green mortgages we've had our green mortgage product is going really well. All those clients that have got the green mortgage, are benefiting from a lower lower rates because they're generating less carbon and recognised for that we've got green bonds, and both the issuer of the bond and the benefits of the bond are benefiting from that the proceeds are being used to support the Sustainable Development Goals. 

We've got a green loan coming out later this year, which we specifically for SMEs, which will again, they'll benefit from reduced rates because proceeds have been used to reduce their carbon footprint there will be more it will continue to evolve with partnership with Octopus customers are benefiting from getting EV points and charging points in at a lower cost than it would normally cost. We've got an app we've just launched EV, eight switch thinking it just helps you monitor what you're using, when you will say your diesel car and to work out then how beneficial it would be to have an electric car. And so that you can actually see the financial and economic benefits to you over a period of time. And there's loads of different tools, some of the some are products, some are solutions, and some are just tools that will actually help make decisions and of course, as we all change our behaviours then the benefits and the costs of these things will will reduce and it will become easier for everyone to To make Yeah, make the biggest changes.

Katherine Ann Byam  20:02  

Absolutely. So I'm going to change tack a little bit now because I don't usually get bankers to come onto my show. So I'm really curious about some other things. And the main one is around digital acceleration and the growth of sort of alternative currencies, etc. What further changes can we sort of expect in banking in light of the sort of modernisation of financial tech.

Mairead Taylor  20:28  

A lot? succinctly, so I think technology will continue to evolve digital automation, the way that you make your ecommerce payments, how you use your bank and other financial institutions will continue to evolve and change in some respects to a way that we can't, you know, potentially picture at the moment. But I think what's really important is knowing, keeping the balance between technology, digital and automation, with relationships, I think that's the key to to lose sight of relationships, to not be their customers in their moments of truth, and have that ability to have face to face and be able to talk to somebody, you lose that at your peril. And I think so it's that happy ability to have multi channels for customers to choose how, when, and why they interact with you at different moments of time, it's banks using data to really make sure that we don't just generalise offers of support, but we actually really do make that fun, that personalization, so that anything that we are sharing is really relevant for you at that particular moment in time

So there's lots of great ways we can use technology and automation and AI to really transform a customer's experience and improve it, but balanced with human relationships. And that is important, our CEO calls it sort of marriage that both are really important. And knowing that as an example so I think I haven't suppose he's got the exact percentage, but our over 70s that used, our online app in the last 18 months was huge increase, and possibly some of them never would have done that. If we hadn't had the past 18 months that we've all experienced, a number of them wouldn't ever go back. And we'll continue to see demand and change as technology and how things become more simple and safe. You know, because you've always got that convenience versus privacy concern. 

But I think the main thing is knowing that it's being able to offer all of the options, all of the solutions at the right time in the right place. I think, you know, if you take crypto currencies and think if they become regulated, then that will bring further changes in. And there's words in our language now that probably weren't there a few years ago, and there'll be words in our language in a few years time that aren't here now, that ongoing focus on what our customers want, what can we do to improve their experiences? And how can we add value? If there's a lot of services that we currently do that can be done differently without involving banks and other financial institutions? So what value are we going to add? How are we going to make a difference to create that value for our customers?

Katherine Ann Byam  23:31  

Now, I'm totally with you on that. So I want to ask you one last question, which is, what are you telling your children

Mairead Taylor  23:38  

My youngest is 22, nearly 23. And then I've got a 34 and a 30 year old and I've got three amazing grand daughters. So one of the things I did is that when I signed up to the cogo app, I obviously reduced as much carbon as I could in house. I'm still on a journey because Rome wasn't built in a day. But I've used Cogo app to help me do some positive offsetting through critical offsetters. And I've just used that and then you get a certificate. So I've put my granddaughter's names on, I've given it to them for birthdays and Christmases. And now they're young, but the idea is actually just that the eldest will be three in December, but they're always seen that it's something that's really important to me. 

And interestingly, there's a couple of books out now that are really good that you can actually bring alive. So I'm learning all the time, you know, you've got a mixture of friendship groups and family and you talk to people and it's important not to lecture and it's taking people with you, but it is something that is very close to my heart and I am passionate about it. We put climate in all our money sense programmes, which we've been doing for over 30 years. As we've added time to modules, we bought into what's called our business builder, which is a free digital online for entrepreneurs. Anyone can sign up to it. That's all we've got a lot of Climate modules in it. So it's about education, keeping on the agenda, a customer and a banker, and neither might have the answer at the moment. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it, or try to connect people to who can help. So

Katherine Ann Byam  25:15  

Thank you so much for joining me, my readers and I think it's, it's a conversation that we're probably going to have again, there's going to be a lot coming out of cop 26. So I really look forward to continuing to engage with you. And thank you for joining us on the show.

Mairead Taylor  25:31  

Oh, thank you very much for having us, Katherine. And as you say, I think the cop 26 it's the actions and what we do afterwards is going to be the real key. Thank you.

Katherine Ann Byam  25:41  

Thank you so much. 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 group club supports positive impacts. 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.

About this Episode

Today's guest is Austin Kasso. He's originally from Oregon, and he moved to Indiana from New York after graduating high school in 2009. To pursue his passion for agriculture, with a vision set on revolutionising local food systems. Through his campaigns and contributions, he was named top 10 local food hero in the state of Indiana. In 2014. He created the first sustainable living group on Facebook, which has grown to be the most popular group on the subject with almost 100,000 members sustainable living was featured by Facebook and Austin was voted one of the top 50 sexiest environmentalists in 2021. Last year, he founded a new digital media platform exclusively for sustainability called stryver, which has already listed over 100 sustainable businesses in over 40 categories with a goal to populate the world's largest oil in one repository for green brands and campaigns. He believes in cultivating purposeful connections that empower people to shape a sustainable future.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:03  

 Austin welcome, finally, to where ideas launch.

Austin Kasso 1:30  

Thank you so much for inviting me to your show. I appreciate it.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:34  

Yeah, it's been almost a year now that I've been in your community. And I first joined because I wanted to get the word out about what I was doing. But the community was was so active, it was so passionate, so convicted in what they were doing, and it was really impressive. It was already over 50,000 people at that time, and it's just been growing astronomically ever since I guess my first question is what really sparked your passion for sustainability? What got you into this?

Austin Kasso 1:59  

I remember back in high school and around ninth or 10th grade, is when I started to really develop an understanding for what I wanted to pursue after high school I was already thinking about my future and what really what I wanted to contribute to society and it was based on just all what I was observing and what you know, I wanted to help alleviate poverty, I wanted to really support the pursuit for social and civil and environmental justice to but put it in a nutshell.

So you know, I've read a lot of books about a lot of different things from you know, philosophy to Buddhism to to economics, and even cognitive science. And so, you know, I've kind of developed a a worldly perspective as I was growing up, and then around that time in high school, I decided that I want to go to my cousin's farm in North Carolina, and experience what it was like to actually live and work on a homestead. I'd say that's what they had. I mean, they had 100 chickens, cows, they had a whole fish pond, they had goats fit, huge acre vegetable garden, you know, all sorts of vegetables, very bio diverse, I mean, they would unload the whole pickup truck first of manure, and we would shovel it we'd stand knee deep in the manure and shovel it into the garden and spread it around and I mean it was worked out from from morning to night and I you know, I grew up on Long Island, where I spent most of my time playing video games on the computer after school and then but it just wasn't you know, it was it was something that made me happy but it just wasn't totally fulfilling.

And what I discovered from working on the farm was that it was fulfilling in such a way that it changed my life in such a way that it actually when I came back, my grades improved radically. I went from being a cnd student to straight A student so and then it just continued on into college and that's when I had decided I was gonna move to Indiana to study agriculture and be more involved with urban farming. And I had such an energy and passion that ignited from that time that time in North Carolina that making headlines in Indiana right away just my second year of college I already had made the the college magazine

Katherine Ann Byam  4:33  

Well it's it's an incredible story. I think I shared a little bit the snippet of that I used to be in the farm with my with my grandfather, and it's something that I took for granted because I was very young at the time. He had what I consider to be a huge forest. You know, when I think about it, no and I go back and visit home. No, it doesn't look as big as I remember. But he would spend his entire day there so he was already retired. He'd wake up in the morning very early at six am, he'd do his prayers, then he goes straight to the garden, you'd come up for lunch, then he finished off, and then he'd rest.

 And that was the cycle every day, you know, this is part of the thing. And what was nice about it is that the neighbours would bring food as well. So they would always be this food swap going on, you know, if the neighbours were doing chickens or having some type of vegetable, and my grandfather was doing fruits and avocados and stuff like that, and it's really different the kind of the quality of the life that you live, when you have such a community when you have such a spirit. And you could never be like just quietly in your home and alone, where that's what I feel now that we sit quietly, no homes struggling all alone, in March 2020 year group was still at about 3000 people. What happened

Austin Kasso 5:46  

in? Yeah, in 2020, it's, you know, I'd stagnated for years. Since I started in 2014. It was, I think it was more along the lines of 6000 people actually, in 2020. But either way, it had rapidly started growing to 20,000 people in just a couple months at the beginning of 2020. And I think mainly, it was due to the pandemic, I'm not sure it's just it seems that it correlated directly with that. And then, and then, you know, every time there was like, another, you know, climate event, you know, like a hurricane or snow storm, you know, like what happened in Texas, there's a huge correlation between what happened in Texas, and huge growth in our group at that time, as well. And then the recent hurricane, we also had a huge spurt that brought us from, you know, another 10,000 members, you know, in addition, so it seems to correlate a lot with existential crises.

Katherine Ann Byam  6:51  

Yeah, definitely. And as sustainable intrapreneurs, you know, I know, we're all about sustainable living, but at the same time being an intrepid it, you have to have some sort of relationship with money as well. And we struggle with this. I think, in general, a lot of the sustainable businesses that I meet, struggle with converting their idea into something that sustains them. And it's not just about, you know, making the capitalist stream, it's about making a sustainable living, from what you're doing, what are your thoughts on how you can create more value and monetize value for your incredible community?

Austin Kasso 7:34  

Yeah, so I think that was the one thing that I tried to avoid for the longest time, because it made me sort of uncomfortable, you know, I was very, I pursued the business of urban farming in Indiana, so I wasn't unfamiliar with business or pursuing a campaign or, you know, doing things for profit. But really, you know, it came to the group, I just, you know, I didn't think of it as a way to create a monetizing scheme, or, you know, I just didn't, you know, didn't really understand how I could use it in that way.

 But I understood that the group itself was becoming more and more impactful, and I wanted to figure out a way to actually leverage the impact that we can make as a group. And that's what led me, you know, I was observing, you know, well, how, what is it about this group that I can actually, you know, serve people that's useful in a way that can also help build the momentum, and leverage or impact together, so it comes more so from that perspective of less, it's, it's more about the people than it is about the profit, and but you still have to make money to drive it forward. So that's, that's when I was starting to see that, you know, the most common thing in our group is that people are asking, Where is it all in one source for tangible products or crowdfunders, or, you know, blogs that I can find in support?

Because, you know, people are always saying that they're looking for looking on Google, and they're having no luck. And then they're also, you know, trying to understand, you know, what are people's, you know, what are people's businesses in the group that they can support, you know, they, you know, they want to, they're part of a bigger community, and they want to support smaller businesses, and, you know, sure they can, there's a way to do that on Amazon. But at the same time, a lot of people in our group are just not a fan of Amazon. And it's a growing trend that, you know, well, Amazon's just not the, you know, all in one answer.

So, and we're trying to come at this from a less bigger corporate agenda perspective. You know, it's, we're coming at this, you know, we're the smaller guys, we're the underdogs, so it's more meaningful to us and it allows us to also give back more so we have a niche market that we can really Focus on. And so that's where I got the idea to create strivers to collect submissions for businesses and then you know also to promote them in our group because that was also a big thing that people wanted to do was promote their business in our group, since it's so popular and it's such a niche market, it's there's a huge incentive there for sustainable brands, you know, to post their content,

Katherine Ann Byam  10:24  

what has been some of the challenges in managing such a large community? Have you had any challenges?

Austin Kasso 10:29  

Oh, yeah, from the very beginning, it wasn't so bad. But then as it grew rapidly, we had more and more people involved. And so we had more diverse views involved. And so there's a lot of clashing between different perspectives on what is considered to be sustainable. And I can understand that, you know, I'm sympathetic to everybody's cause, and, but I still want to create a space that was inclusive for everybody, and sort of that sometimes the aggression can turn a lot of people away.

 So we had to really focus on moderating the group, you know, from a sensitivity, you know, enforcing our rules, which are, you know, respect everyone's views, and be kind and civil in your comments. And I had to develop a team, and our team is actually, you know, largely responsible for helping to maintain the positive environment that it is, and people are really appreciative of that. And, you know, it's something that also people say that they can't find another groups because, you know, they say, other groups, admins don't care as much about the conflict. And, you know, a little bit of controversy and such can can drive engagement, but you know, has to be respectable controversy.

Katherine Ann Byam  11:50  

It's, it's an interesting one, it's something it's the one thing that kicks off in my group, my group is usually just really businesses trying to help each other. But then there are some times maybe just a few people who would come in and say, Well, you know, you can't call your business sustainable. If you haven't done everything, like don't call it sustainable, it's greenwashing. And in some way, I kind of empathise with that, like, I can identify with what they're saying, because we do call out the big corporations for their little slip ups.

So as we progress in our journey, you know, it's it is a journey, it's a journey at the end of the day, and none of us will be perfect. But at the same time, it seems to black and white. So this is some of the things that spark up definitely for people. And I think the other thing I would say, that I see in my community is a bit of, I would call it decision fatigue, and a bit of climate anxiety and decision fatigue, of always having to check everything, that everything, you can't find the right suppliers, you can't find the suppliers who are ethical enough? And how do you how do you sort of support that side of it? If it comes up?

Austin Kasso 12:58  

Yeah, so you know, I think giving everybody an equal say, or an equal Avenue, it allows for just, you know, humanity to be the final Judge of what is sustainable. Because I mean, what is sustainable is just what's going to sustain, you know, and what's going to carry forward. So if it's, and there's a number of ways you can do that. So if people are learning, and I think the biggest thing about our group is that it exposes all those different perspectives and exposes, you know, the facts behind them the experiences, and it kind of helps people understand what, what the reality of sustainability is what that conversation looks like, on a more worldly basis.

And so, you know, as we're, you know, for instance, with our platform, and I have, you know, similarly multiple businesses who, you know, may look at each other differently, but they're all one where one way or the other, they're trying to pursue a positive impact and they're, what they're doing might not be 100% perfect compared to someone else. But, you know, if we all help support, and direct resources, and channel, you know, our support through, you know, these avenues to, you know, support all these businesses together, you know, on a platform like ours can help everyone else achieve their goals and strengthen their own sustainability goals.

Katherine Ann Byam  14:27  

Absolutely. What's next for Striver? And how can others get involved with what you're doing?

Austin Kasso14:33  

You know, there's a lot next for stryver I want to say but right now, you know, we have some exciting recent updates that you know, are soon to be published where, you know, members can now create single listings, and if they want to be discovered on our platform, but you know, they're they're not really ready to promote or they don't have a budget for marketing campaign, you know, they now have an opposite opportunity to create us. listing. And then later on, I don't know how soon we can achieve this, but it is the next stage of things is where we're going to create more interactive features for free members on our website to, for example, follow businesses on our platform and get notifications when they submit new content.

So it's kind of another way for people to get noticed on our platform and then we're going to continue to find more ways that we can create interactions on our website between members and businesses and create add, you know, avenues and opportunities for businesses to actually help improve their marketing campaigns, you know, through through our platform, you know, they can, we're looking at building in more services later on, like a more one on one consulting till very affordable. And the goal is to really just help small businesses improve their campaigns to get better results when you know, when they're promoting on our platform.

Katherine Ann Byam  15:58  

That's great. I have one final question for you. Yeah. Are you fulfilled?

Austin Kasso 16:03  

Absolutely. I am more than fulfilled. I'd like you know, I guess I'm so happy about this platform being successful. Because a year ago when I first started it, it was it was like a, an arts and crafts project, you know, where I was just, it felt like a scrapbook of things that I was trying to put together and I was just like, is really gonna work. But now it's like the concept of it. I just kept building at it and building at it, and it's finally shaped into something really, really fantastic.

Katherine Ann Byam  16:33  

Congratulations and all your success. I'm really in awe of you and really admire what you're doing. And I wish you the best of luck as we continue on.

Austin Kasso 16:41  

Well, thank you so much.

Katherine Ann Byam  16:45  

This episode was brought to you today by the Eco business growth Club by Katherine Ann Byam and by the space where ideas launch, 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.

About this Episode

Kate Davis is a leadership coach for business founders. She believes passionately that everyone should be able to do work that makes them happy, in an environment that makes them feel valued and heard. Happy people are motivated, energised, more efficient, and more profitable. Happy people make for better, more sustainable businesses. Kate is an ICF accredited and giant certified coach. She has 20+ years experience in growing, developing and mentoring teams in high pressure operational businesses. And as an experienced corporate Change Manager. Kate, welcome to where ideas lunch.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam

Kate, welcome to where ideas lunch.

Kate Davis 1:02  

Thank you so much for having me.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:04  

It's such a pleasure to host you. So Kate, I'd like to start with how did you get into leadership coaching in the first place?

Kate Davis  1:12  

So I'm going to give you the abridged version because it's a bit of a long story. Apparently everybody has at least three careers in them. And I'm definitely like that cat. I'm on my ninth life, I think. So I started out as a solicitor I worked in the city and property litigation, I hated it. I love working with people. I hated being the bad guy. I hated working with people when they didn't want this thing to be happening to them. They didn't want to be changing, they didn't want to change. And so I rebelled. 

I worked in live events management for nearly 20 years. I was the director of operations. And I loved being able to work in environments with people, where the idea was to actually go out there to inspire, innovate, amaze and, wow, people. And seeing teams that were under enormous pressure, a lot of the time event management, one of the most stressful jobs along with being an ambulance driver, But because people loved what they did, and because they were, they were energised and motivated by what they did. Then it was very easy to put teams together and keep them motivated, then I had two wonderful children and flying off all over the place wasn't wasn't sustainable with mum-life. So I moved into transformational change management and business architecture, again, helping people to navigate change, helping people to understand themselves and the processes that they work under better. 

But I came to the conclusion that I'm not very good at working for anybody else. And I wanted to really develop this side of the mentoring and the coaching. So hence where I am now. And having seen leadership at its best and its worst over the last 30 years, it's really important for me to be able to develop people into being great leaders. So you know, as you said in the intro, enabling leaders to create environments where people feel valued and heard, and that their work is important, is really important to me.

Katherine Ann Byam  3:13  

I hear that. What do you see as the biggest challenges for startups today, when it comes to moving from early stage to maturity, so I'm talking about, stepping into the shoes of the CEO,

Kate Davis  3:25  

The challenges that are normally brought to people are obviously heightened at the moment, because hopefully post coming out post pandemic, the same problems are still there, but they're just, you know, the data has been turned up. So in terms of competition, especially with business founders, there are an awful lot of people who started their own business over the last couple of years. And you know, the online space is a very noisy place. There. Obviously, the global challenges, pandemics, Brexit, climate change, you know, all of those different global issues, national and global, global issues. But I also see in all of this and trying to grow a business, especially one that has grown well, where I can see people struggling is where their businesses almost outgrown them, and they're finding themselves overwhelmed. They want to be a good leader, they want to be able to grow their business, they want to be the boss that they never had, perhaps, but they find it very overwhelming. And that's where I think people like you and I are best able to step in and say, right, let's take a breath. Let's see what's important. Let's see, do we need to move things around? But also understanding that idea of self leadership and self management, so that you can be the leader that you need to be as well as the needs of everybody else needs you to be? And I'm always going to go back to how to fix it by being clear about your mission and your vision. You know, you and I are big Simon Sinek fans, understanding why you do what you do, keeping that at the core of everything you do and how you're doing what you do around that, but really staying true to the mission. And the vision, the purpose behind your businesses is definitely the way to help people to move from startup to CEO, should we say,

Katherine Ann Byam  5:09  

Yeah, my podcast addresses sustainable businesses. And I think that we have an additional challenge to the normal business. And I say this in quotations, because we have three bottom lines to take care of. So we constantly have to be thinking about what we are doing to take care of the business and the people in it. So making sure that it's sustainable for us, making sure that we're relevant to the people around us in our communities, and making sure that we're fit for the planet? And what are your thoughts on ways that sustainable businesses can sort of enhance their reach and impact while balancing the sort of three things that they're juggling? It's a complicated question, I guess, but

Kate Davis  5:57  

Well, it's, it's not a complicated question, your questions, there are many possible answers. I think in terms of trying to elevate your reach on your impact. Networking is incredibly important in business anyway. But I think it's even more important when you have when you are able to find people or other businesses who share common values, being able to network so that you can actually help it to support one another, you can collaborate together, that actually anything where we are effectively fighting against a common enemy at you know, we're trying to educate and, and inform, we're trying to spread that, that that wider message, whilst also running, running a business that supports that having people around you who who get that and where you can help them. And they can help you as I say, collaborations, or whether it's simply another, you know, another sounding board to go, you know, am I on the right track, am I banging my head against a brick wall, that's really important from from the business perspective, but also the business owners perspective, because it can feel very lonely doing it on your own. 

The other really important thing is to get really clear on your message, being able to translate something that you feel really passionately about into language that the people you're trying to impact will understand, being able to have that, that that line of communication, where, you know, you may be talking about concepts they don't understand, but you really want them to be able to understand and you need them to buy into that message, getting that line of communication and getting that message really clear, I think is paramount 

And get used to banging that drum, you know, the online and even bricks and mortar business everywhere is very busy. And we often think well, I can't keep talking about that same thing again, surely everybody's bored. No, most people are not hearing things. You know, how many times have we said that in terms of social media posts, how many times you have to post for somebody to actually be able to see it get used to banging the drum get used to keep saying the same message over and over again, you may be bored hearing yourself, but other people need to hear what you have to say. 

Yeah, and I think that the same that I would say with any business customer service, making sure that the customers that you that you're bringing in feel in the same way that I'd like your employees to fill this out in the same way of being feeling valued and heard and that they understand you and you understand them. If you are delivering exceptional customer service, they will bang your drum for you, they will help to spread your message, they will help to elevate your impact.

Katherine Ann Byam  8:28  

What are your top tips for growing and shaping great teams? 

Kate Davis  8:32  

That's a good one. Um, I think first of all, I'm going to get back to mission and mission and purpose. If your values and your mission are clear, and people are on board with that, then you are a long way down the line to building a great team. If you're operating in different directions, it doesn't matter how good everybody is at their job, if everybody is working towards the same aim that's really important. And being able to paint that picture for people. You know, as I was saying before, getting really clear on your message outwardly, it's just as important to have that message clear inward as well. 

And then get really clear on what you need. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We all have natural talents and the things that are learned behaviours that do not sit very well with us. And that's absolutely fine. really understanding where you have gaps. I, for example, are not very good at being in the here and now. Give me a spreadsheet with lots of data on it and I'm really falling asleep but I know it's important so I know I need somebody on my team you can do that. Whilst I go, hey, let's go and create some stuff. Understanding where your skills and talents are, where other people's skills and talents are and so so that you're matching each other's gaps so that you've got a really strong foundation on which to build.

And being able to communicate properly with them. If you're bringing different people who have different skills and qualifications, different natural talents, they will communicate in different ways to you. Understanding yourself and how you communicate what it's like to be on the other side of you is really important. So that you can communicate properly making people feel, as I say, valued and heard, and people will therefore be able to work better with you, and be able to pull better together to be able to form a great team and a great business.

Katherine Ann Byam  10:21  

Yeah, absolutely. great tips. What are the mindset shifts that a new leader of teams needs to make in order to make that transition? And that leap? Let's call it the up-level?

Kate Davis 10:33  

A really good question. And again, I could go on forever, but I'm not going to, I think the key thing is, it is about self-leadership is understanding yourself, being able to see how you are as I was just saying about being able to hear what other people hear from you, being able to check in with yourself, seeing your limits, but just seeing them as not as you know, I'm failing at this. But actually, okay, that's something I need to work on. Or that's something that I'm never going to be great at, can I get somebody else to come in to support me in that area, 

Understanding that you are actually a piece in the puzzle rather than it being all on you owning those feelings as well, allowing yourself to say, you know what, I've got a bit of imposter syndrome here, I can't believe I'm in this situation. And these people are now listening to me and, and looking to me for answers, call yourself up on things. Don't call yourself out. This isn't it isn't a blame thing. But call yourself up on things and recognise things, own that reaction, own the way that you're behaving. And therefore, you'll know how to respond, bringing the support in when you need to.

And making sure that you're looking at after your mental and physical health, you will be going through all sorts of changes, you'll be working hours or working in different ways that you're not expecting to making sure that you those old adages about how you can't pour from an empty cup, empty jug, and all those things are more or more important than ever, making sure that you are fit and healthy mind and body is really important to be able to lead people because they need you to be helpful and healthy,

Katherine Ann Byam  12:04  

Absolutely could not agree more. What role would you hire first?

Kate Davis 12:08  

Oh, that's a really good one that depends on what you need. 

So you need to do that skills gap, you need to work out where your skills and strengths are. 

And where you know that you're not very good at. So say, Don't ask me to look at numbers because I can't do them. And I'm totally cool with that. The first person that I would always bring in is somebody who's comfortable with the numbers because I'm not, you need to do that skills analysis, which sounds very formal, but it's basically what am I not very good at? But what do I know I need? That's where I would go first?

Katherine Ann Byam  12:43  

Yeah. What about the things that you can't outsource?

Kate Davis 12:47  

What are your thoughts on what those are the things that you can't outsource? I would always say, just go easy on yourself. If you know that you need to do them and you know that they're not within your zone of genius. You know, they're YouTube has an answer for everything Google has an answer for you know that there aren't the answers out there. Take it easy on yourself. If you're learning something that is not something that is in you know, within your within your natural talents, but you know, you need to do it. Just be kind to yourself, because you'll do it, you'll manage to do it. But you'll it'll take you twice as long as if you're telling yourself off about it as well.

Kate Davis 13:21  

Absolutely. Kate, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your advice with us. And thanks for joining the show.

Unknown Speaker  13:29  

Thanks so much. It's been lovely to talk to you.

Kate Davis  13:33  

This episode was brought to you today by the Eco business growth Club by Katherine Ann Byam and by the space where ideas launch, 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.

About this Episode

Are you building a green business that works for you and for the planet? Season three of where ideas launch walks you through the process of ideas and creating, developing and scaling and green idea from start to success. I leverage my experience along with the experts and micro-entrepreneurs running green business models today. Join us for this short series of 16 episodes of positive business impact for change.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:03  

 Becoming the CEO.

It really fascinates me how much reference we place in titles, it seems they are woven into the fabric of the story, we tell ourselves every day about our accomplishments, or what is what we're entitled to. But the titles truly serve us, or more importantly, help us to become better servant leaders?

This is the question that I put to myself today on this episode. Servant leadership came into my vernacular in 2016. When I returned to regular work, after my sabbatical year, it was all the rage, and certainly everyone talked about it. But quickly, it was clear that too many artefacts to an old world existed in our structures, which made servant leadership hard to digest.

For example, the parking privilege of the heads of function, or the titles that they have stored, or the frameworks that we had for decision making. Most of the artefacts supported a pre-existing world, as much as we tried to become better servant leaders to our teams. When I started my business, I immediately promoted myself to the CEO, I was the only employee on record. But I immediately wanted to step up into my role of shaping the business in the likeness of a strong and connected thought leader. I'll tell you what, though, the trouble is that although it's not impossible, it's very, very difficult to step into a true place of leadership, when you are also the lady simultaneously driving the bus, handing out the flyers, serving the drinks, checking the tab, and trying to figure out the best way to minimise waste, recycle, or build a circular business model from your business. There's a lot that we have to digest and figure out when we're leading businesses that offer a modern age, when you're trying to operate within the heart of the doughnut, or let's say the green ring of the donut that keeps rearward speaks about in her work on donut economics, you have a lot to consider beyond just the team, the business fundamentals, but you also have to consider your impact. And the doughnut philosophy is, is pretty much this, that there's a sort of social foundation that we can't drop beneath. So we can't get into the hole of the middle of the doughnut, because that's where the social foundation doesn't exist. They're basic necessities that don't exist for some people. And then we have an ecological ceiling, a boundary to the donut that we kind of go beyond. So this is where you have climate change, ozone layer depletion, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, and air pollution, among other things. So the idea when you're designing your business is to design to stay within this lovely green band, which is considered the social ingest space for humanity. But taking that on as a single intrapreneur, trying to create that framework while trying to save yourself. So often pretty difficult, right. And the essential thing that we need to do first is make sure that our business stands on good foundation of itself, almost before we can pull anyone else from outside of that ring. Or we can design our business models to simultaneously pull ourselves and others out of the middle of that circle. So this is a lot to think about. And definitely it's a challenge for many of us building our businesses today. The CEO mindset therefore starts with building a great support team. And nowadays I'm calling it a hybrid team, with people automation and great slick systems, as well as building a fit for purpose business model. Now, when you're building a team, it seems scary at first. What if I have a poor month and then another poor month? What responsibility Am I taking for someone else's income? If you're thinking like that, this is a good thing. It means you understand the stakes, it means you understand what it means to be inside that circle. But the B track to that soundtrack in your head is how do you hire so that the additional headcount that you bring in so the people you decide to lift up or expense that you take on unlocks more capacity to expand the reach of your business? If you're a solopreneur, your first hire can be among perhaps three key roles, or possibly all of them, if you are able to afford it. So the first is an operations expert to help you set up the right automated and technical solutions in your business. If these are not already in place, then you have virtual assistant, so someone to help manage your time and your diary. And then you can choose from another three sets. Depending on your ability to afford them, perhaps you can do all of them, or perhaps just one. But the three that I'm talking about are a social media manager, who takes the load off the organic lead generation and your business, an ads manager if you prefer to use ads, rather than organic traction. And that person can also take some weight off the lead generation activity, or a PR manager or a team who writes content for you to be featured in press and other media. So all of these are all of these activities are needed to help grow and scale your business. It's up to you to decide what balance you want to inject into your team, and what fits with your business best, what fits the interest and the need and the design of your business model best as well. Other hires would considering an associate or an understudy, who can start delivering some of the more routine aspects of what you do. And this can potentially overlap with your operations manager depending on the skills required. You may also want to consider an accountant. That's a hugely for many business owners, knowing that someone competent is looking after their books, and preparing financial statements, things that you're going to rely on in your business. You can also think about a business development manager to look at bigger contracts, collaborations and partnerships going out there to strategically make connections for you and your business. If you're scaling, you need to be mindful of the bandwidth you have for your business. And as such, you may need to look at your service model. For example, perhaps you might need to add more group services rather than one to one services. Or you need to bring up that team of understudies to be able to provide some of that one to one basis so that you only provide the absolute bit that you need to provide it giving some of the more routine aspects to that understudy.

Price also becomes a consideration if you only have so much capacity to scale your service in terms of hours. But most of all, as you scale, you need to consider that your impact is becoming more we talk about growth. And we know that cannot be infinite growth in a finite world. However, when we talk about growth, sustainable businesses, we're really talking about untapped capacity, untapped demand, we're also talking about sort of head on competition with businesses that are operating in a less sustainable way. So in a way, your untapped demand is a latent demand in the market for things that are more sustainable. So if people find things that are more sustainable, they're going to reallocate funds, and allocate them to your product. There is some competition, there is some head on competition that you will be taking on in order to grow. And you need to be aware of that too. That part of your game is going to be competing with businesses that haven't made the transition that haven't made the commitment to lifting people to the right place and to and supporting initiatives for the planet. As you scale and grow your impact. Your advocacy work becomes even more important. The funds you can contribute to helping people escape, the doughnut expands and management of that impact becomes even more important ensuring it's reaching the right people, the contributions you were making to reduce your impact on the outer limits of the doughnut also become more important. And ensuring your growth is neutral or positive for the planet will be essential. In the next episode, we go into the mindset of becoming the leader of your business, and some of the things that can derail you. Before we close However, there are two more important things that we do need to cover when you're building out your scale and your business to grow for the future. And they are legal, and HR. Please don't underestimate the importance of having good legal contracts in place for looking at the right ways to put those contracts in place so that they are fair to both parties. And also looking at the employment law as the employment rules, especially as we move towards more remote working more flexible working employees living in different countries and different jurisdictions from where your business is based. So you do need to get expert support to do those kinds of roles. But the good news is you don't have to hire them full time anymore. So tune in to the next episode to understand the kind of leader you need to become in order to really be able to deliver On these goals that you've set yourself, I'm looking forward to supporting you through this in the next episode with my guest. See you soon. This episode was brought to you today by the Eco business growth Club by Katherine Ann Byam. And by the space where ideas launch. 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.

About this Episode

My next guest is Katy Davies from Piece of Cake Coaching. She's a strategy coach, and before coaching, she actually started her own cake business, KatyBakey. Katy's natural ability to break things down and explain them in simple terms means she can help her clients cut through the overwhelm, gain clarity in their business and take action to get the life that they want. Using her business MOT, she works with her clients to sort through the tangle of ideas in their heads and helps them create a clear and actionable plan to achieve their goals. solving any problems that pop up along the way, helping them get organised, manage their time more efficiently, and understanding the online social media world and how to market their business is part of Katy's expertise.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:03  

Katy, welcome to Where Ideas Launch. 

Katy Davies  1:12  

Hello. It's lovely to be here.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:14  

Wonderful to have you. And you know, in this season, I've been digging into things like the idea to CEO and how green businesses can make their start, and then grow and scale. And now you're coming in to talk about the growth part, which I'm really excited about. Because I think a lot of people aren't sure about their businesses. They step tentatively into it, they use it as a side gig, they're not sure they're ever gonna replace their income. But I know that you were able to successfully replace your income with your cake business even before you started your coaching business. So it's a pleasure to have you on the show. And it's a pleasure to get into that journey that you've had as well.

Katy Davies  1:52  

Yeah, I can't wait to tell you.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:54  

So tell me how you got started, Katy. Share with all listeners how you decided to move from where you will tell us where you were before, and how you leverage the skills that you had to use in your cake business.

Katy Davies  2:07  

Okay, so where I was, my journey is a little bit convoluted. And I never really knew exactly what I wanted to do. Like a lot of people, we don't really necessarily have a calling and our higher purpose always and we don't know what it is right away. So I did a physics degree at uni, I lacked that. And I didn't really know what to do. So I got a job as a receptionist in a design agency marketing agency in the West End. And I quickly became an office manager and I worked through all of the roles in the business,  HR, Finance, invoicing contracts. And I did all of the different roles within the agency. And I went there for 12 years and had different roles throughout the whole time I was there. And eventually, by the time I left, I was upstairs in the studio. And I was a project manager and I ended up doing marketing for the agency themselves. Because typically, they were lousy agency and they were terrible at doing their marketing. So 12 years, I did all sorts of things and learn all areas of the business. And I became really frustrated. So what I had on the agency was kind of run by the finance director, the creative director. And when I worked on the back end, I kind of was under the direction of the finance director. When I moved to the front, I kind of had these two bosses, and they couldn't decide what to do. And I found it really frustrating. And I just kind of thought, you know what, I can do a better job of running a company myself as you do. 

And baking was my hobby. I've been doing it for about a year. And I've got really into it where even when it's your hobby, there are lots of rules around food safety. The council has to come down, inspect your kitchen and give you a rating. And so even just doing it as a hobby became quite complicated, and I was putting a lot of effort into it. So I decided to just go for it and I quit my job. And I launched headlong into being a cake maker. And obviously, my growth was helped by the fact that I had that background. I had that background in the agency for 12 years. So I knew how to do my invoicing, I knew how to do my accounts and I have to do my marketing as well as doing the cakes. So that was eight years ago. And my journey through that got me into the entrepreneur world which is very different to the corporate world. 

So all of a sudden you have all your friends also run their own business. And because of my background, I ended up helping people. And they'd be like, how did you do this? How did you get to do this, and I don't really understand this. And a lot of entrepreneurs, know what they do, but they don't know how to do the rest of it. So I kind of naturally started coaching people. And eventually, it was my own coach, who said to me, You need to start charging people for this. So about two and a half, three years ago, I actually started the coaching alongside the cakes. And obviously, with the pandemic last year, the focus switched. There weren't any weddings, and I've kind of been doing this much more over the last year with the coaching.

Katherine Ann Byam  5:38  

What do you think were the sort of key ingredients that allowed you to have the growth that you had because I'm guessing that you didn't start in the first month replacing your corporate income? 

Katy Davies  5:53  

No, definitely not. So I mean, I was quite sensible, I made sure I had some off-season savings behind me. And that obviously gave me a bit of a time deadline, which is a bit of a motivator is always good here. But so I think having the background that I had did help with my growth, obviously, because I knew all the whole area of my business. So if you don't know the whole layout of your business, don't be afraid to get help and ask, but I think, especially with the cakes, and with any business, the same with the coaching is, so knowing your audience, and being intentional with your marketing, and because if you know getting your branding, right, getting that kind of thing, right from the start, you might not you might find your way into it, but try and bear it in mind, I think it is critical to attracting the right kind of client, because using the cake example, and you know, there's a whole, are you making birthday cakes? Are you making cream cakes? Are you making cupcakes, you're making wedding cakes? like who are you actually like, Okay, if you just say cake, it's too vague. Who are you actually trying to attract? And then that will filter down to everything you do. So the images of cakes that might be out in the wild are going to attract the people back again, who are going to buy that.

So if you put lots of pictures of tiny cupcakes out, people are going to want cupcakes, if you put lots of stuff out about wedding cakes, people are gonna have a wedding cake. So I think it is really critical to understand your branding, who are you pitching to, who is your audience is your ideal client because you need to grow an audience to be able to kind of grow your business. And you need to make sure you're attracting the people to the audience, to your business, that value your products and services. And by few and having a large audience of the wrong people is not going to help you. It's like it is a numbers game. But you can have the wrong numbers like. You can have millions of people on Instagram following you. But if they're not following you because they want to buy from you, it's not gonna work. So if you have a small committed audience of those right people, then that is going to make it much easier for you to put your efforts in the right place and if you know who you want to attract. Are you going to be doing it on Instagram, or you're going to be doing it on Facebook, or you're going to be doing it on LinkedIn can help you make those decisions early on so that you're not spreading yourself too thin. And you're kind of not putting all of your sufferings on press and you're giving your audience the content that you want. So I think really knowing who is your audience? Who are you trying to attract? Who are you trying to sell to really does help?

Katherine Ann Byam  8:46  

That's always a challenge as well because we tend to start with "well, this product can serve anyone, so we want everyone in the audience." And there's an interesting thing in what you were saying I was listening. And one thing that came to my mind is about the whole idea of the product suite. So there's one thing about knowing your audience. So for example, you have a big target for weddings. But once you're finished with the wedding, there are other things, but even before the wedding, there are other things. So it could be a bridal shower, it could be a kids party, it could you know, and I think it's so important to understand your product suite. So tell me a bit about how you develop to that in your business as well.

Katy Davies  9:25  

So the product suite so obviously, cake baking is a kind of might be a slightly different business model, but you don't start making five-tier wedding cakes, you start making a single-tier birthday cake, and so you end up with a product suite that actually might kind of drop some of them along the way. But I had a very clear client journey established once I got onto the wedding cake so my client journey my Instagram strategy is very much my grid either wedding cakes and that attracts my client and they order wedding cake but like I say.

Then on my stories I show all my other products suite, so they might like say order bridal Hindu cake and then obviously they might do a christening cake and then they might do... because once someone's following you, they don't need another wedding cake. So all my stories I show all the other cakes I do and then they become my repeat customers and they then yeah, as they grow they have the first birthday cake the christening cake, their parents' cakes, their husband's cakes their wife's case. And so yeah, I have a very clear journey for them through my products to keep them as a client you can't always do that depends on your business. But it's good to know what that's going to be so that you can be intentional with it.

Katherine Ann Byam  10:53  

This is the second time we've we've touched on social media. So let's get on the visibility part because I think that this is one of the biggest bits of the journey that people initially feel uncomfortable with. You know, people who are doing the do in their business often struggle with being the face of the business also. So tell me about your tips on visibility.

Katy Davies  11:17  

So yeah, being visible is kind of key. You have to do it. There are different ways of doing it. And so yeah, you have to put yourself in a position to sell. Now my cake business is very different to my coaching business. So again, if you're a product-based business, or if you're a service-based business, you might have different ways of doing it, I managed to hide behind the cakes in my cake business, I didn't have to put myself front and centre because I was selling a product and so my Instagram grid is full of beautiful pictures of cakes and that kind of does the hydrate. Then obviously they do meet me in the consultation and it's all about personality and making that connection to sell the service as such. But with my coaching, I have to be, "I'm the coach. It's me." so there are pictures in my face all over my quote on Instagram, which took me a while to get over. But if you're not comfortable doing something and you can do baby steps, but depending on what your product is or your services, you know you're putting you in the centre of your business will make a big difference. 

But again, it's once you know what you're selling and who you're serving to get your message out there is key and being consistent. So that's I think a mistake a lot of people make is they're not consistent because they've not really necessarily thought it through and they're trying to do it Instagram is trying to Facebook. They're trying to do this, trying to do that. And if you're starting off and you can't afford to outsource while you're in a period of the grind you aren't going to potentially do it all yourself so be consistent pick the things that you know you're that's why it's so important to know who you're selling to and then pick the things and just be consistent with it and get yourself out there. 

You're trying to build the know the like and the trust so you want them to know who you are, I know what you do. You want them to like what you do and you want to like you well and you want them to trust that you're going to do a good job and then they will buy from you and so being visible is kind of the only way to do that really you need to get that out there and don't be afraid to get help so if you're not a natural salesperson then you might need to get some help with your sales copy because if you don't sell you won't have any sales is like all the pieces do need to be there for it to work as a whole but you need to ask for this out as well so you need to go out and be visible show what you're doing show up, be consistent, get everyone used to you, what you do need to ask for the sound as well.

So you need to pop that in there and I did of course you know. I wasn't great at selling. It was something I wasn't confident in. I was really lucky. I would manage to convert my consultations to a sale without asking for the sale. But I had to work so much harder to have done all the work before we got there so they're almost ready to buy. But you know, if you answer you need to just yeah, put yourself in a position to sell.

Katherine Ann Byam  14:40  

That's so important. And I think the next element of this as you step it's almost it's the other way around even you first have to build the audience and the network. So there's a piece on social media, but then there's also the networking and I think when you're just getting started, networking is probably even more critical at If you agree with that, tell me your thoughts on this.

Katy Davies 15:02  

So networking was something I didn't really know what it was to be honest, not in the same format that I do now. So obviously working in an office, there were meetings, and people would come and do things. And I know my boss would take people out for lunch, you know, which is the kind of networking there is the specifically structured networking meetings, but there is also organic networking. So building a network of people connections here will help you in your business. So obviously, in the wedding industry, building a network of florists, and bridal shops, and wedding planners and other people who, you know, depending on which network you're in, that they refer to as a kind of introduces. So instead of constantly trying to find the end client, like a million clients, you make a connection with a florist with a bridal person with somebody else in your industry, who has the same clients as you is adjacent to you, is not your direct competitor.

And then instead of so I was very lucky, I met and worked with a florist very early on in my cake business, who would constantly refer me her clients, so they will go for a consultation with her, and then that she'd say to them, "do you need cake?" and they'll be all and she'd pass in my detail. So you can do that organically. But obviously, if we go to networking meetings, it's a quicker way to kind of find these people. And to do that, there are lots of different ways to do it. I did it very early on. The first things I did, when I started my cake business with I went out looking for a network to join, and I went along as a guest, I went along as a visitor, I kind of scope them all out because they're all very different. So there are some we meet every week, some were every month.

They all have a different demographic of who their members are, there are some industry-specific ones. So if your industry is very niche, like there are specifically wedding networks, or there's the more generic. We have one person from each industry, and the key to networking properly is to do your research. And to go out there and find out what one's around what ones will work for you. And think about how much of your marketing do you want it to take off. So I did join one where I went every week. There’s one you go month there at the moment there is obviously there's the FSB, which has kind of no commitment at all. And you can just go wherever you want. And so there isn't really big brains and different networks and things. But the key to them is to do your research, pick the right ones, and know why you're going and what you want the outcome to be when you actually get there. So the biggest mistake that I see people make networking is they pick something to go to, and that's it, they stop there. That's all they do. They're going to go. And that's it.

They don't think about it anymore. So if you can find out beforehand as much as you can, who else is going to make yourself a target Hit List of Who do you want to be introduced to? Who do you want to speak to? And find out for getting on? What do you do when you do speak to that person? What do you want that outcome to be? Do you want to arrange a meeting with them? Do you want to just exchange email addresses and you'll connect with them later? Again, be ready for your audience. So always know your audience for the networking as well. Because depending on what kind of networking you're going to, people have a different connection strategy. So in the wedding world, I was always swapping Instagram accounts at the FSB, everyone's swapping LinkedIn account. So it's kind of knowing what you want out of it. And also, all of these different networking places. You need to find out how long you're going to get to speak. Some of them give you 30 seconds. Some of them give you a minute, you might have five minutes. So how are you going to introduce yourself? What are you actually going to say if I say "Hi, I'm Katy, I'm a business coach." 

Katy Davies  19:16  

And that's it. If it's kind of forgettable, it's not really gonna have an impact on anybody. They're gonna meet a million business coaches. So if I said something like, Hi, I'm Katy, I'm your strategy coach, I help you get unstuck in your head. I have a free Facebook group where you can go and download my free guide. Five Ways to Up Your Instagram engagement that might get their attention more and tell them something, give them something. What do you want them to do? If you give someone an instruction weirdly, they do tend to follow it. So if you kind of says to them, follow me on Instagram, find me on LinkedIn, this is where you can find me.

This is where I want you to go. This is what I can do for you rather than just being on for guests. Because of these networking events, you do need to kind of stand out. And that is a mistake that I see a lot of people do is they're too vague with their messaging. They have an intent have, they haven't gone with an intention of what they want to get out of it and what they want the people to do, what action do you want them to take? And how do you want to connect them and something else that when everything's on zoom, a lot of things on zoom and the chat function is great?

So while you're saying all this, be prepared, have all your links have your email address or your LinkedIn. And like, as you're saying it, tell them to say, I'm going to pop the links in my in the chat.  And then it encourages people to actually connect again, you're giving them an instruction, you know, go there, go to my group, join my group. Let's see you there. So yeah, networking, I really Yes, Katherine, 100%, behind the networking, but be intentional with it, do your research. And don't be vague with it. Be unforgettable. If you're going to spend a few hours out of your day going, make sure you get something out of it.

Katherine Ann Byam  21:08  

Yeah. And you know, we're going to slightly move again and pivot a bit, because I want to get into some of the other things that I've talked about on this idea to see your journey which is about automation. So, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of advancements in technology now. And actually, when I got into the business, it was about helping small businesses and medium-sized businesses adapt and adopt more technology in their systems and ways of doing things. So let's, let's talk a little bit about systems that help you scale.

Katy Davies  21:40  

One of the key things about setting up systems in automation, I mean, you need some kind of system, even if it's a folder when I very first started now I had an Excel spreadsheet, and I would put my invoices in and I would print them all out. And I'd use that like my kind of workflow guide, you need some kind of system, but as you grow, that's not going to work. It needs to be automated. And what I've done with my coaching business very much, which I didn't do as much with my cake business was I've implemented things before I need them. So I think that is if you know, you want to grow, okay, you can cope at the moment. But then if everything you're doing the networking, being visible that knowing your audience, and so at some point, you're gonna get an influx of sales and inquiries. And can your systems cope with it?

How do you like you have to kind of plot out a client journey, how does someone enter your world? And what happens to them? And what part of that process can you automate? So with the coaching business, I very much have my contracts automated, just been linking up my calendar, so they automatically create the zoom meeting and emails everyone and so you can take hours, think about what takes you time what is a repetitive process? What can you do, and most of it is to do with the communication between yourself and the clients the buying process, the signing contracts, depending on how bespoke your services are. So in my cake business, I can't automate it nearly as much because every cake is bespoke, it's different is handmade, everything's different.

Whereas the coaching business is a lot more formulaic, so I can easily just like they buy a product, they buy services all done automatically. But the biggest thing is to do it early. Don't wait till you're too busy, because then you'll be too busy. And you won't be able to actually spend the time putting in the systems and the processes. So it's kind of admin-based, it's communication-based, it's sending things out, it's the purchasing cycle. It's just plotting out your client journey. And I don't know if you want me to go into the systems I use but it's just trying to take out those things that take up your time.

Katherine Ann Byam  24:06  

Do you think that these things are easy to learn? is there one particular piece of automation that you would recommend that people tackle first? 

Katy Davies  24:17 

What you said by easy to learn, so I find with my coaching clients, it varies. Some people just can't get their head around it and there are tech VAs out there. And if you get to the position where you are really kind of getting to the point where you are growing, outsource it. If it's gonna take you an entire day to do something, outsource it. Get a tech VA and but the other thing is people are so willing to help. I know so many people who pop a question in a Facebook group and "I'm trying to connect my zoom in the gym... it's not working. People will help you so don't be scared to ask.

And I find it easy so I'm lucky. Tech naturally doesn't faze me. I tend to get to work quite easily. So I mean that things that I think having a good invoicing system having your account set up properly, because as obviously, the bigger picture, you need to know your numbers, you need to know how much money you're making in your business. And if you're sitting there every month spending hours doing your accounts, there's not a really good use of time. So I mean, the system that I find really good with coaching is Dubsado.

I think it was designed for creativity specifically, but you can have all your contacts in there. And it's all automated workflows. So you know, you can, send them the invoice, they pay the invoice, it sends them the contract, they sign the contract, then they pick a date, and it creates the zoom link, and it sends them the meeting and it just does all their stuff when you're not constantly going, Well, if they've signed it, yeah, all I need to send them the next day all they have done this bit. And so I think setting up a calendar so people can meet you easily. It's great, have a good accounting system. And this kind of sending people contracts and things if that's part of your business, they're really key.

Katherine Ann Byam  26:23  

Really good tips, probably the last area I want to dabble into is time management. Because you have the queen of this in all of the entrepreneurs that I've met, you will probably be the person that makes time simplest, can you share with us some key tips on managing our time as entrepreneurs

Katy Davies  26:43  

Time management. So that was something that I think comes from the fact that I was a cake maker first. You will probably not find a cake maker who is not good at time management because of the nature of the business. Yeah, you've got a wedding cake to deliver at three o'clock on Saturday, you have to be there, you have to get it done, you have to know exactly when you're doing what when and get all the bits of the cake ready. So most cake makers are pretty much on top of their time. And but especially with my coaching clients as well, you can teach people all the things in the world, you can tell it. But if you don't have time to implement that, you don't have time to live your life, it's not going to work. So time management is my favourite topic. We'll talk about this for another whole podcast. But I will try and do it as concisely as quickly as I can.

 Essentially, time management is different to having a list. So at least is all the things that need to be done. But there's no specific timeframe in which they're getting done, or the order they're getting done. And so if you have a list of a day or list for the week, you will never reset start at the top. And you work your way down and takes as long as it takes. And you don't ever get some stuff in the bottom and the list goes the next day and the next day, the next step in the next day. And you're kind of constantly never getting through things and projects aren't getting started and things aren't getting done.

So the concept of time management, I mean, you have to make it work for your business there isn't one-size-fits-all. But as an overview, a starting point, you would have that list, you still need the list, you obviously still need to know the things that need to get done. But the way I kind of does it is obviously I have my diary. And I have all the appointments and all the non-negotiables and you put your whole life into it. It's not just working. So if you have a family, if you have children, you know they need to be at school, they need to be picked up, there's a party, you need to go to the gym, you're going to the dentist or having your hair done. You know, you have appointments, you have life. 

Katy Davies  29:00  

So I have to explain without showing it but basically, a time booking sheet for the week, which is just all the days across the chart Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, through Sunday Times down the side, you know, whatever time you need, start 6 am or 9 am all the way through to bedtime. It's just the kind of chart and you block out the times that you're going to do things so everything I encourage all of my clients to build is down from your strategy. So you would have your overall strategy of the year, the month, the week the things that need to be done things in your diary. But then, every Sunday or beginning of the week, you filter this down into your time blocking sheet for the week. And you take all of those appointments, you take all of your non-negotiables and you put them into the week, and then you basically see what's left.

What time have you got left? And then you know, make sure you eat, make sure you drink make sure you have time off make sure that you are doing all those things, it's not just about work as entrepreneurs. We need to really take care of ourselves as well. And you kind of see how much time you got left. And then that's why that list kind of comes in. And you look at the list. And that's the kind of like working on the business thing. So you've already put in all the things that are the business. 

If you're making a cake or something, you work it backwards, fill all that in, but then you fill in all the gaps with the so if you need to write a blog, instead of just having, okay Monday, or this week, I'm going to write a blog, you fill in a gap at 10 o'clock on Monday, I'm writing the blog for an hour, and you stick to it, and you work on it for that hour. And if you don't finish it, you've started it, you're moving projects forward.

And if you work well-doing things all in one go, and you need to finish the block, then maybe you find a gap, that's two hours. But the point of the time blocking is to get everything in place, and move projects forward and keep working on things. And I don't know about you. But if you've got a deadline, you pretty much get it done. Like if I've got a load of emails I haven't answered, and I need to leave the house in an hour. All of a Sunday, I managed to answer all those emails in that one hour, when otherwise I could have quite happily sat there for the entire morning faffing about doing things. So there are different ways to do it work to your strengths.

You need to understand your own personality. If you put yourself under too much pressure, is that gonna be counterproductive? If you work well under pressure, having these time blocks and these things, okay, I'm going to share my social media, I've got an hour to get as much done as I can. Piggybacking things as I say, if there's something you procrastinate about if you know you've got a meeting, or you know, you're leaving the house, give yourself like the half an hour beforehand to do the thing that you try not to do, and guarantee you'll get it done quicker. But it's kind of that concept of having a time and a space for everything and reviewing it. And also, then you can really see realistically, can you get all this stuff done?

Once you've blocked it all out. If you physically cannot fit everything in in the week, then there's a problem and you can see why stuff isn't getting done. And then you can like make the executive decision. Do I need to start outsourcing things we need to get up earlier? Do I need to actually move this meeting is there something I'm doing which has taken me three hours a week, that's when the automation comes in, can I find a quick way so it's, it's kind of using that time productively and having that bigger picture of what you're actually doing. Because if we're really honest about it, we can waste a lot of time faffing about and he gets over decision fatigue as well. If you're having a bit of a naff day, and you're tired, not sure when you get up in the morning, it's all planned out for you, you know, what you've got to do.

And you can kind of get going rather than spending 20 minutes thinking what am I gonna do? There are all these things, which am I going to do? It's all kind of mapped out for you. So let's say "Normally, I would spend a whole podcast just talking about time management, I think. Did I miss anything? You probably talked about this so many times.

Katherine Ann Byam  33:15  

I think you have and look, the thing about this is people are trying to build and scale and that's the time when time becomes really under pressure. So I think it's so essential to either get the automation really slick, get a team but even with the team, even with all of that, you still need to be completely in command of what your available time really is. So that's really essential. And the more I guess the more developed and, and mature your businesses, the more let's say you have routine and set structures around things. So for example, I only do interviews on Tuesdays and Thursdays because the rest of my days are blocked for other things, you know, and you kind of get into a rhythm with those things. So this is really, really, really good. Do let everyone know where they can find you.

Katy Davies  34:10  

I'm in Piece of Cake Coaching, and I have a Facebook group, which gives all free advice and tips and things which is called The Missing Piece. You just kind of Google Piece of Cake Coaching on Facebook, you can find me in my group, The Missing Piece.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:03  

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode and the session on the Eco Business Growth Club Incubator. So this incubator was conceptualised after I started working with Women in Sustainable Business in October 2020. And I started to learn what are the challenges that small businesses and micro businesses are facing, and then thinking really broadly about how I can help solve those challenges with the community that I have, the networks that I built, and the structures that are taking off today in terms of digital and technology and platforms actually. 

A lot of the members of my community, women in sustainable business and indeed on my Instagram feed of Where Ideas Launch where I have one over 1000 people who are following and committed to the podcast and the message that we're bringing. One of the main things that they struggle with is really amplifying their own voices. So we do have a bit of a bubble, we work with each other, we collaborate with each other. And we all know that a sustainable consumer and a sustainable business owner are usually one and the same. But we also know that the way we change the world is to move outside of our own little bubbles because what we need to do is really resonate with people who are not yet identifying as being sustainably-minded. 

So one of the ways that I decided to help businesses to overcome some of the challenges is to build an incubator. It's interesting because I went to put out a poll in my group to ask what people felt about incubators and they thought it was eggs in a basket. You know, it was basically eggs being warmed until they became grown animals of whatever kind. And yes, that's kind of what we are, we're small until we can actually get the right systems and product together in order to scale. 

The business incubator has 12 modules. It is pretty intense and each module will be covered during the course of a month. So I'm trying not to overwhelm anyone. And the idea is to level up on each one of those things as you continue to build your business. 

Module 1 is the most fundamental module and I call it micro and small business enterprise business models, ways to deliver value to yourself as a business owner, and to the wider community. As a responsible actor. This module looks first of all at business models and your product suite, and how you design it to best fulfil all the causes that are important to you. We will go through business planning, looking at your full business self-audit. Then we will build 2022 based on your strengths today. As a business owner and the opportunities we've identified together, you will walk away with a complete clear plan and a new direction. We also develop your cycle plan within this module. So we look at how you launch or how you bring new ideas and new products to market. And we help you shape the plan for when you promote and when you rest, most importantly, because we need to make sure that the time you spend in your business is productive and sustainable. 

The third part of this module is the operations plan. So we look at what software will impact and what works best for you specifically. And as an add on to the course you can also have us do a full business audit for you. So if you want to upgrade once you have this programme, and have us do the full business audit for you, we can help you with more detailed operational planning to help you slick your systems up as well. 

Module Two is about ethical and responsible brand stewardship. So something that maybe not all my listeners know but one of my last jobs was as an internal auditor to a FTSE Top 10 Tobacco Company. And what I learned from that job is how important brand stewardship is and how critical my role as internal auditor was to the reputation management of the company, especially in such a controversial industry. I've taken a lot away from my experience in working in this space. And I want to bring back this brand stewardship conversation. So the first thing we will go through is eco branding and what are the fundamentals of branding in the sustainable space and the benefits of nailing this to the growth that you will have in the future. It's so important to really know what the ethos is and how to articulate those ethe in the wider world. Then we look at personal branding because for micro and small entrepreneurs personal branding is essential to the overall picture of your brand as well. You need to show up for your business as much as possible. And therefore we need to look at how you marry your personal brand with what the business is doing. We can then look at marketing, and then we cover how this complements your brand. So we look at marketing from the perspective of branding, we also look at your brand assets. And we explore how these can support the persona of your brand. And we look at your brand footprint. So we assess options to lower your digital brand footprint, and how to optimise it where possible. So module two is pretty big as well. And it doesn't get smaller. 

Module Three is all about copy and content for impact. So we understand the different types of copy and the purpose that they save. So we look at how we inspire, how we motivate, how we connect, how we engage, and how we convert and serve. All of these are critical elements to lifting the profile of sustainable businesses of green businesses with a deeper purpose. And your copy needs to represent all six aspects of what your business does. 

Module four is all about ethical selling strategies. And when I talk about ethical selling, it means recognising that you're there to serve, first of all, and you're there to help people not make bad decisions, you have the event to help people make better decisions. So when we talk about ethical selling strategies, it is about educating. It is about making sure that you're showing up where you need to show up. And it is about challenging the status quo. So we will talk all about that. 

Module five is about product development. And we cover user experience and what's trending now in the gaming verse, and how we can bring these features to your brand. 

Module six is the supply chain. We work on all the things you need to know to know your supplier and all the certifications that will support you. And also how to challenge those certifications when the time comes. We need to be more rigorous with our certification bodies and with our suppliers. So we're going to talk a lot about that. 

Module seven is organic public relations. And when I say organic public relations, I mean public relations that you don't necessarily pay for. It still means reaching out to those who can represent you. So it still means reaching out to journalists who want to cover your story, but ensure that your story is covered in a responsible way. Okay, we will show you how to do that, how to reach out and how to connect with the media and provide a body of research and sources that will be great for your brand. 

Module eight is about data and how to manage your net zero or net positive impact, the tools to support you and how to support your customers with this as well. 

Module nine is finance and legal, how to budget, prepare for scaling, and to attract clean finance. We're also talking about the legal in terms of intellectual property contracts and insurance for your business, I will be getting experts to talk to you about that. So don't worry. It won't be me even if I am an accountant. 

Module 10 is about sustainable living talking about farming within your city house. So this is going to be a really interesting session. I'm super excited about it. 

Module 11 is advocacy. So this is talking about how you advocate for something, how you represent and become an influencer for a path and a cause that is important to you. So we're going to talk all about advocacy. 

Module 12 finally is about partnerships. And we will explore how collaborations and long term partnerships can be built and developed to ensure both parties get the most benefit from the relationship as opposed to being a one-sided thing. In addition, each month we will continue to have two guest speakers. One will always be on health and well-being because if it's one thing I learned as an entrepreneur, your health and wellbeing can go up in smoke in minutes. So I'm really getting a very, very special person to come in and support us on health and wellbeing every month. And I believe that this is probably the most game-changing thing about this incubator. You will have access to all the training that has gone before. So I have a bank and repository of about 80 pieces of training that have already gone by. You will also have new and relevant training coming up as well as relevant resources that are coming online as well. In addition, I have negotiated some deals with two of the newest and biggest platforms that are the major sustainable competitors, Amazon. 

So Lola Fernandez and Austin both have great platforms that I will be getting you access to at a discounted rate as a part of the Eco business group club. So this is the power of connection. This is the power of networking, and I really want you to enjoy these benefits that I am pulling together for you. This is what the incubator is about. If you're interested in the incubator, it may or may not be open at the time that you listen to this episode. But if you're interested in the incubator, do send me a message on LinkedIn. Do reach out or join Women In Sustainable Business. And you'll find out more about the incubator there. The idea is that people join, and they join for life. So we're going to look at those modules, we're going to update them. And if there are changes, as time goes on, we're going to give you those updates so that your business continues to grow and scale. But most importantly, you have that rich community of people who have gone through the same journey as you in the same place pretty much forever and you can start supporting each other. And now I'm just giving you a one-off price for this service. So really looking forward to having you inside. Do let me know if you're interested or not. And I will talk to you again soon.

About this Episode

My next guest is Nicole Broad, owner and designer at the Fruit Moth, a clothing and accessories brand with a conscience. Having launched in 2020 with a range of statement pussy bows and detachable colours. The fruit market now offers shopper bags, reversible sun hats, dresses and reworked blouses, handmade in her home studio in Manchester. All of the Fruit Moth's collections are created using vintage and remnant fabrics, and pre-loved clothing. With sustainability at the forefront of the Fruit Moth, no fabric will ever go to waste. Any off-cuts are reworked into small accessories or donated to a local primary school. And all packaging and stationery are made from 100% recyclable materials.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:28  

 Nicole, welcome to Where Ideas Launch. 

Nicole Broad  1:13  

Thank you so much for having me. 

Katherine Ann Byam  1:14  

It's really wonderful to have you. I'm excited to share all the great news that's happening in your world at the moment. But before we get there, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. And the first one is really why the fruit moth? Why that name? 

Nicole Broad  1:28  

So weirdly, it's actually the name of my wedding dress. I'm not married yet. I'm not even engaged. But it's the only dress that I've ever been obsessed with fashion since I was little. And it's the only dress that I've ever not been able to stop thinking about. When I saw it. I was like, I'm only ever going to get married if I'm wearing that dress. Well, and it's a Vampire's Wife Dress. He's my favourite designer anyway. But I just knew that I wanted to get married in it. But at the time, I couldn't justify buying it. I regretted it forever. And then it kind of got to a point where I thought we were going to get engaged, we are at some point.

And I actually emailed them last year, and said, What are you ever going to get the Fruit Moth Silk Maxi Dress back in stock? And they said "No". So but they did give me the name, it's a Liberty fabric. So they gave me the fabric name. So I ended up having the fabric shipped from the Netherlands so that I could get my dress made for me. Six months after that, they contact me again and said, "We found one in your size," the wedding dress and the fabric. But yeah, I knew that I wanted to start a brand. I have always known about SEO at the marketing university. And I thought that's what I want people to feel when they think about Fruit Moth dress or accessories. I want them to not stop thinking about it. So the Fruit Moth.

Katherine Ann Byam  3:05  

That is just brilliant. My wedding dress is in a box waiting for that ring to be on my finger. I can't actually wait to see it. So now you know you've really piqued my interest, really. What drove you to start your own business? I know that you studied marketing and that you actually have this business as a side gig. And that's actually the whole topic of the conversation today starting successful side gigs. But what drove you to start your own business?

Nicole Broad  3:31  

Yeah, as you said, I studied fashion and design in college. Basically, ever since I was little, I've always always wanted to be a fashion designer. Like I knew that that was what I wanted to be when I was probably 12,13 a long, long time. And I went to college, studied Design. And it really put me off fashion designing because everything was using patterns. I didn't feel creative in any way. I just felt like I was making something that someone else had designed. I didn't feel like a designer. And it really, really put me off.

Actually, to the point where I sold my sewing machine and I haven't, I didn't have a sewing machine again until November last year. So that was 12 years ago. (Well) Yeah, so I but then I went and did Marketing at university. So I did International Fashion Marketing at the uni. So I learned how to run a business, which I've been doing. Since I graduated really. I started off in marketing executive roles and added a bit of personal styling for the last three, nearly four years. I've been running a menswear brand for the owner so I do all of the e-commerce and marketing for him. And then yeah, last year it was because marketing is such it's such an intense career option. And there is no time like you have no time.

Other than work, and then you want to go to the pub. So then lockdown happened. And I was like, "oh my god all this free time," I don't have to commute anymore. I can spend my lunch breaks actually doing something for myself. So I have saved a little bit of money. And I thought you know what I'm going to do what I want it to do, initially. And I'm going to fall back in love with it. And I'm not going to use patterns, because that's what made me fall out of love with it. So yeah, I just started making accessories, literally just cut them by eye kind of just for myself. And then I thought, well, just see what happens. Let's just ask, I've set up a business for in my job anyway. So I knew exactly what to do with Shopify

. And what apps I needed, I knew how to do all of the logistics sides of it. Because I've been doing it for the past four years. So I thought, well, not really got that much to lose. I might as well just give it a go. And yeah, then it's just kind of snowballed from thinking that maybe I'll sell a colour here and there. And it's getting to a point where it might not be a side gig.

Katherine Ann Byam  6:11  

Well. That's this is massive congratulations for taking that big step. And I think the pandemic opened doors for a lot of people to make these kinds of pivots. So tell us a little bit about how your journey has been in developing the business? And what sort of challenges have you faced.

Nicole Broad  6:32  

So starting the website was all really easy. And I think as well because I didn't put pressure on myself because I already had a full-time job. I think that really helped me because I didn't really think that too much about it. And I think that's why it has done well because I've just been really honest and open from the start. Not trying to make myself look like a brand. Just Everyone knows that I do it from my bedroom. And I think my customers actually like that. Challenges.

What challenges have I faced so far? Probably actually working from home is a challenge. Doing this from my bedroom has been a challenge. I've recently, literally last week managed to force the other half into the spare room. So our bedrooms are now in the spare room, and I actually do have a studio. So I think it will get a lot easier from here. But actually just trying to fit in all of them because I only work with deadstock fabrics as well. Where there are piles of fabrics. absolutely everywhere.

Everywhere you look, you could sleep any way you look in because there are just piles of fabric everywhere. So yeah, sleeping around that wasn't great and possibly hasn't tested my relationship. But yeah, that's been the main challenge is working from home and actually doing everything from here as well working my full-time job from here. Having my studio here and living here is definitely challenging at times. My Instagram growth at the start was really challenging as well like infuriatingly challenging, but only for a really short amount of time. But I'm very impatient. So when I didn't see numbers straight away, I think that is a challenge for me, as well, because I'm used to working with big numbers. So working my head around only having 100 followers for the first three months was probably a bit of a challenge as well.

Yeah. And did you go to your existing network to tap your followers at first? Or did you just try to grow based on the strength of the brand organically?

I definitely tried to work organically. Unfortunately, the full-time job that I have is definitely not like my customers. And the people that I work with are I don't think that they can really help me in this sort of way out. So I live in Manchester and the brand that I have been working full time for is technically a "fast fashion" brand. So it's everything that I do not want the Fruit Moth to be. So it's really yeah, the network that I had to the point where I just closed out my LinkedIn and made a new one. Like, I just wanted a clean slate. I don't think that there's much that I could gain from that.

Whereas if I was starting a brand that was wholesaling, I would have had so many connections. Yeah, definitely not direct to consumer.  I don't have a network for that, unfortunately. Yeah, I think that's been good as well. To be fair, I think that helps the brand grow organically and not go in the opposite direction. I always knew that I wanted it to be sustainable.

Katherine Ann Byam  9:55  

Yes.

Nicole Broad  9:55  

So I think growing it organically is the only way that you can do that really.

Katherine Ann Byam  10:00  

Yeah, yeah, no, I get that. So in what ways would you describe your brand as sustainable? You know, I'm tapping in here to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. And I'm just wondering if there are other goals in particular that you're addressing with the statements that your brand makes.

Nicole Broad  10:17  

Obviously, I'm still very much in my infancy, I've only just hit eight months. So really, really young brand. And there are so many different goals that I would like to complete for the Fruit Moth. But currently, I do think, I think there's a tendency with brands when they first start to try and do everything all at once, and try and hit everything and put so much pressure on themselves that eventually it just implodes anyway. So I really focused on the fact that all of my fabrics are either remnant or vintage.

Like, I'm not bringing any new fabrics into the matrix. So I suppose that my main goal from the 17 Sustainable Development Goals is focusing on sustainable consumption. And my production patterns, it's pretty impossible to not have a good production pattern when I'm creating it all in my own home. But obviously, as it grows, I would want to keep that as well. Yeah.

And using the vintage and remnant fabrics, not adding to the abundance of like, there are so many fabrics that go to landfill, there are so many garments that go to the landfill, there is no need for me to create new fabrics. And obviously, I need to make sure because I'm working on my own, I need to make sure that I'm paying myself a living wage. Otherwise, I'm not a sustainable brand. And I can't call myself on. I was actually listening to a podcast the other day and someone said, it was Catch Rhys, which is a jewellery brand. And she said that she doesn't call herself sustainable.

She calls herself responsible, right? Which I thought was amazing. I've not heard that word. One of my biggest worries, in fact, was the biggest challenge that I should have said about the last question, pricing. Yeah, it's a minefield life. And for me to work out how much my time is worth, as well as the costs, the delivery, the packaging, the electricity that I'm using in my house, like all of these things normally would just be all consumed within a factory for a fashion brand. But obviously, I have to consider all of them in my costs. And when you're first establishing a brand, it's really difficult to sell yourself like that. I think the imposter syndrome kicks in a little bit. And you say, is that right? Yes.

Should I be charging that much? But yeah, so I think I think that is a really difficult part of, especially having a sustainable business because there are so many businesses that use vintage fabrics, but I just feel like they undersell their own time. Like, it takes a long time to make a dress, like a long time to make a dress from scratch, make your own patterns. And all of that needs to be considered before pricing your items. Yeah. So yeah, I think that's definitely it. And I'll do quite a lot of things for charity as well, donating 10% of my sales to diabetes UK for the next three months, because I'm doing this challenge. And I'm a member of Ecology. And they like to plant trees every month in your business's name. So you pay like a subscription fee and it sort of offsets your carbon. So yeah, anything like that. And I'm always looking for new ideas.

Katherine Ann Byam  13:52  

Yeah, that's, it's really interesting what you brought up about pricing. I share your challenge. It definitely is a challenge for us, as sustainable businesses to come up with the right pricing. I, I like to think about this is as really going back to basics. So what do I really need to live, like to sustain the quality of life that I feel I want to sustain? as well as to sustain the quality of service I want to maintain? What does that cost me together? And then how many units you know and this is the company to pride how many units do you need to sell to make that you know how much you need to invest to sell those many units so I think it's it's really for me breaking it down into numbers. I like to think about it as sustainable businesses are kind of lifestyle choices, and therefore your lifestyle is part of it.

So being able to preserve that freedom that you have to, wake up when you want and do the work that you want to do, add the value you want to do give where you want to give it, you need to just cost that out, you know that your whole life. And then and then put that into, you know where you need the business to be and then choose your pricing according to that. But it's still tricky because quantity and quantity and price have a relationship as well. And I guess this is where your time comes in.

So how many pieces can I realistically produce? Considering the time I need to spend on marketing the time I need to spend on other things, etc? And then work it out based on that. But it's not simple? Yeah, it's just something that I think as lifestyle businesses, we just need to trim up our lifestyle to what we do when we price. But yeah, it's a fascinating conversation. I think there are probably many ways to look at it. So, Nicole, I know that you have had some challenges along the way to becoming a business owner. several challenges, actually, you shared a few with me. I'm wondering if you can share with the listeners, some of what you've gone through and how you've overcome it and turned it into values in your business.

Nicole Broad  16:08  

Yeah, so I've had a bit of a dramatic life for the past six years. And so six years ago, I was 23, my partner's 28. And unfortunately, he passed away very, very suddenly. And that kind of sent me into a bit of a spiral, really. I got into a bit of debt. And eventually, the stress gave brought on type one diabetes, which I got diagnosed with within 2019. At the start of the year. That's been a bit crazy. But also, I think, I think there are two ways that people can go when they have severe trauma. And you can either just give up, and you're done. Like, that's it. You've had enough. Or you can just like, girls, dying definitely made me think life is social, and I just need to grab it. I need to do whatever I can do to make my life worth it. He died at such a young age, he died.

He was a year younger than I am now when he passed away. And he was only just getting started in his career. And it was just so cruel. But I yeah, so now, definitely focusing on this. If I died tomorrow, at least people could say, "but she did that Fruit Moth thing. That was pretty impressive." But eight months was pretty impressive. So I think there's always been a lot of hurdles. I think I'm a million times stronger than I would have been if that hadn't have happened. I kind of believe in fate anyway. I always have. And although that is the worst kind of failure you can ever have. I do think it's taught me everything that I needed to know, to have the confidence and the determination to make life what I wanted it today. 

Katherine Ann Byam  18:07  

I totally get that. And like, you know, really, I congratulate you for all that you've accomplished. tell everyone what's just happened in your business, because I know this is really exciting. 

Nicole Broad  18:18  

It's so exciting. And it doesn't feel real talking about it. And so back in March, just on a whim, I was shopping on the high street. And on a whim, I applied to be a partner. And this was like, obviously, the business was only like six months old. And I heard back and they were like, "yeah, we'd love to have you onboard," which I was really happy about anyway. But then they said, Oh, it said 250 pounds joining fee. So at the time, I was like, "Oh, well, that's nice that they accepted me. But I can't pay that right now.

I've got a lot of expenses going out this month. And I'm not making any money yet." So I just ignored it. And then last week, about 10 days ago, I got an email saying "we've been watching your growth, we really really want you to be our next partner. If we waive the joining fee, will you partner with us?" And I thought it was a standard email. But, but it turns out it wasn't. And I went live on Not On The High Street on Friday.

That is so awesome. I love this brand. I remember going well before when I was more of a consumer. I remember going to this website to look for stuff because there would always be something original, something you hadn't thought about and really exciting stuff. So it's wonderful. I think your brand perfectly matches them which is what makes sense about them reaching out to you so lovely. 

So exciting. And I celebrated a bit too much over the week.

Katherine Ann Byam  19:58  

It's pretty good news. So I feel as if your side gig is really starting to blow up. Alright, so what advice would you give to people just starting out now? Or maybe people who've been in business for a while, but it's still probably struggling with their growth? What sort of advice would you give them?

Nicole Broad  20:19  

Okay, I'm going to firstly go with Instagram because specifically for a product-based business, I think you have to be on Instagram. Now, I think it's so, so important. And I know that there are, there are other social media platforms that I really need to pay more attention to like Tik Tok and Pinterest. I need to up my game. But I could not have grown as a business without Instagram. So I'm like all for it. My account started growing and I started seeing sales as soon as I joined in with a virtual vintage market. An influencer wore one of my pussy bows. And after that one of the founders of a virtual vintage market got in touch with me and said, "Please, please, please, can you apply for our February market."

And at that point, I was literally I was doing like 200 pounds a month sales. And I thought that was amazing. And now like six months later, I'm doing like 2000 2500 pounds a month sales. And I do genuinely put it down to a virtual vintage market and Instagram and the community that they've built is just incredible. And I'm shown up on Instagram as well. Like, I remember us having a conversation in January. Guineas, put your face behind the brand, geez, put your face behind the brand.

And I was like, "Oh, I just don't know, I don't like having my photo taken." And now I'm like, half of my feed is my face. And people buy into that. Like, I think it's so important, especially for a small brand, especially for a sustainable brand. People want to see who is making these things, people want to see who's coming up with the ideas. And I get customers now who are genuinely my friends last week, I had a customer send me a bunch of flowers. When she found out about Not On The High Street. She sent me a bunch of flowers. There are many like these people who are amazing. And they do want to buy into people. (Yeah) And I think I genuinely think it's 80% the person and 20% the product.

Yes, obviously your product has to be amazing. But if you're not there and there's no face to the product, you're just any other brand really, life people are buying into you. And my other main thing, I always say this, "just be kind." The difference it makes, especially in a business setting. But you should just be kind and nice to people. And that's what people want. Like, I comment on all of my customers, I comment on their photos all the time. Like I'm their friend. Like I chat to them in my DMs like I've got some of them as Facebook friends now. And it is all just about showing an interest in people and not just showing interest in sales. And then the sales just come naturally once you've built that connection with your community.

And unless people say that Instagram isn't a community, because people are following you. It's a community, like my little community that I've got. I've just hit 2000 followers last week. And I would say 70% of those followers, I actually tracked them. It is a community in my opinion. But yeah, so Instagram, show your face and be kind. Yeah, my that my three-pointers.

Katherine Ann Byam  23:47  

I love that. I really love that. What feedback Would you like to share with the listeners on our tool communities? So Women In Sustainable Business and the Eco business Growth Club on Facebook? So how have they helped you to sort of position yourself and get yourself ready for the group that has come?

Nicole Broad  24:05  

Women In Sustainable Business is absolutely amazing. There are so many inspiring women and I know there are a few men now as well. But there are so many inspiring women there, reading their stories, and listening to their wins. Like I love it when you do the "Can we have your wins for the week?" That's my favourite. I love reading people's wins. And when you also you just so often go onto Facebook and see someone popping up a question on women in state or business or on Eco-Business Growth hub. You see, you see someone putting on a question you think I was wondering that the other day?

 Yeah. So you don't even have to ask the question. Just scroll down. Just scroll down and read it and you'll probably find your answer. And I saw I think I joined at Christmas time because I took part in the January challenge right. Then I joined the Eco business Growth Club straight away. And that is Like that group just magnified. I feel like everyone knows each other in the club. But all of the members were just jumped at the chance of helping anyone. And that is the best thing. Like, again, it's the community thing that was talking about with Instagram. Like, it's just being kind and giving that free advice. That might be something that you know that you think is normal knowledge but there's someone that doesn't know it. Yeah, and vice versa. Yeah. And yeah, it's just a beautiful little community to be a part of.

Katherine Ann Byam  25:33  

Nicole, it's been such a pleasure to hear your story to see your growth. So I feel like I've been there from when basically almost the beginning and see, see you flourish and see The Fruit Moth grow into the brand that it has become. And I wish you continued success. 

Nicole Broad  25:50  

Thank you so much, Katherine.

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Episode Notes

Growth is scaling your business in line with your goals and sustainability parameters. It can include more substantive financing and capital injection, as well as market and customer base growth.

In this section we review:

•       Marketing a Physical Product
•       Marketing a Service
•       Strategic Partnerships
•       Business Development & Sales

Marketing a Product – A Case Study

Nicola – Hand Crafting Coach.

 Nicola is the founder of a handcrafted business and is an online business mentor and coach helping makers, artists, and crafters in business with her unique approach. Nicola founded her handcrafted business in 2013, after running successful and award-winning handcrafted stationery businesses for eight years.

Nicola started off as a photographer in the days of darkroom development before her sight changed and she made her first pivot into marketing obtaining certification at the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Her decision to start a family then prompted another pivot into her handmade stationery business.

In the beginning, she tried to serve everyone, until they realised it was unsustainable, and that they would have to niche so she can do bulk orders. they then niched into weddings and funerals as they could coordinate bulk orders through both! She worked with Funeral Directors and Bridal shops to consolidate her efforts into a few key strategic partners.

Nicola rewarded her partners too, with a 10% referral fee. The approach was phenomenally successful due to personal word of mouth recommendations, and they were able to display her work as well.

Nicola then pivoted into building a digital service business and a platform for photos, and then built her coaching business for handmade businesses.

Nicola’s strengths were identifying viable niches, building a strategic incentivised network, and of course having a high-quality offer that people are willing to refer to.

Marketing a Product – A Case Study:

Bridgete – Product Entrepreneur Coach                                                   

Bridgete is a product entrepreneur enthusiast with over 12 years’ experience she started her first online retail business in 2008, working from her spare bedroom with 2 toddlers at the time.

She scaled her business to seven figures in a 6000 square foot warehouse with numerous staff and spent many weekends packing orders. She is now building an online retail business as well.

She started her business after the birth of her first child. She wanted more time at home so opted for voluntary redundancy from Dell computers.

She wanted to find the ultimate product to sell and started exploring eBay. The journey started with educational books and fictional books for children. She developed relationships with publishers in London, and her proposition was creating bespoke book collections. This went well for 8 years, until some publishers started competing and eroding the margins for the business.

Bridgete pivoted again to project management, but her heart wanted to remain in entrepreneurship, so she produced a new idea.

Bridgete loves a good laugh and decided to get into designing a line of fancy dresses, fashioning items based on retro looks and fabrics as well as new creations. She built this business with her daughter and imported work from China.

For Bridgete, she approached her businesses by finding a problem to solve within the context of something she loved. Her fun-loving nature took her to develop products with “rude sentiments” too!

Bridgete has built up experiences having traded on eBay, Amazon, Alibaba, and her own website.

Her advice about working with Amazon, eBay and the other players is to be aware that they will push their own products over yours, and the better you craft a niche, the better it is for you. She recommends Etsy, as you can carve your own niche there, stipulating the design of the products and the source of your supply etc.

Bridgete’s latest pursuit is building an account with her dogs as the stars on Instagram. Be ready to explore your interests on any front!

Marketing a Service-Based Business

Katherine – my journey

When I started my service-based business, I knew my personal connections would be key. So far, 100% of my paying customers have come from relationships I have built either from a lifetime, or from months of consistency and effort, showing up with content on social media or through my engagement with their content.

 I did not anticipate that every customer relationship would take so long to build, but I also did not anticipate a global pandemic. Given the time it takes to invest in relationships, it makes sense to me to invest in strategic relationships as much as possible.

Relationship Building for services

As with everything, it starts with understanding the profile of the clients you want to work with, and mapping what you know about them. You can easily use demographic information like age, gender, location, but I have found a more granular way to profile my ideal client, and its stage of life or career, suppressed ideals and views, expat lifestyles. I have found these 3 to be the factors that most draw my ideal clients to me because these features are me.

The next is in the value you give. In a world where knowledge is increasingly free, you need to design a business model where you are not just selling knowledge. This means you are trading in experiences, your own time and work output, or in an emotional reset and support you can provide.

•       Lead magnets or freebies need to include experiences or a complete end-to-end transformation for one of their problems so that they know what you can deliver for them.
•       Group services need to build natural communities and allyship.
•       One-to-one service needs to include a done-for-your element.
•       The price must feel like it is worth more – i.e. The transformation you provide.

The starting point for strong relationship building is reading, then listening. It works best if before you engage with someone who fits your ideal client, research them. Learn all about them. Then when you engage, listen with every fibre of your being. Ask questions. Explore their points and side comments. And when you offer a service, make sure it’s targeted to fit their needs and means.

Growth – Strategic Partnerships

Strategic alliances and strategic partnerships are fancy terms for business friendships. From politics to private businesses these have been around for an exceedingly long time. Key modern-day drivers for strategic partnerships are sharing resources, assets, technology, costs, and capability or to scale more rapidly.

They are much sought after, but also do not always work. They can take legal forms, such as minority equity investment, JVs, or contracts, or sometimes the formation of a new entity for the purpose. They work best when they are mutually beneficial, and the risks, and governance are also equitably shared.

COVID-19 has changed the playing field massively, but many of us have not pivoted and adjusted to compensate. The trends that have accelerated are:

•       Increased automation of higher-skilled work
•       Increased gig work
•       Massive growth and capital moving toward technology enablement.

It suggests that if you are not into technology, you are at a disadvantage when we look to the future.

The types of strategic alliances that can be useful to sustainable businesses are:

•       Team dress/ uniform designs for fashion entrepreneurs with sport or corporate bodies.
•       Supply contracts with major corporate B corps for office goods.
•       Supply contracts with ethical grocery chains for other items.
•       Sponsorship of events that are addressing sustainable causes.
•       Collaborating and sharing audiences among sustainable suppliers.
•       Working with Influencers, including social media influencers, bloggers, and vloggers.
•       Seek funding based on potential up or downstream partner opportunities.
•       Exploring within your local communities.

To explore these points, it is advisable to:

•       Prepare to negotiate. Know what the alternatives are to a negotiated agreement.
•       Understand what might interest the parties and whether you make a good match.
•       Know your ideal client and who shares them.
•       Know who your business is disrupting, as they may also have some interest.
•       Consider the business models that can make the arrangements work.

Growth – Business Development & Sales

Business development is the art of looking forward, and anticipating opportunities for your business, as well as capabilities that will be needed to leverage the future.

It is also at a foundation level about making connections and developing a consistent flow of leads and potential customers for your business.

Business Development is the Opportunity, and sales is the conversion.

When you have low-priced items, you want to design a system that automates sales as much as possible. This may include listing your product or service on sites that do the marketing for you.

For higher-priced or higher volume items, you want to engage with your buyers in a more substantial way.

Steps to consider in selling:

•       Make it entirely about the customer.
•       Understand deeply the need, the problem, and the struggle.
•       Understand the opportunities that could be presented to them if the problem/struggle did not exist.
•       Understand the objections they can have.
•       Be sure your offer can solve the problem.

·       Position yourself or service as the answer.