About this Episode

The Journey ahead – The lessons and the Opportunities.

The biggest lesson to take from 2020 is we have the ability of foresight, yet we ignore the signals. We allow our drive for instant gratification to blind our vision ahead. And we don’t adequately prepare because we believe our money protect us. Yet many are beginning to realise that money for retirement is not necessarily the thing that will feed us, shelter us and keep us safe.

Futurists like Amy Webb and Bernard Marr combine their understanding of history, science and trends, as well as risk management parameters to come up with reasonable scenarios that we can put in place to provide greater assurance of resilience.

In 2021, things will most certainly be tougher before they get better. The economic and social fabric repair still has a long journey ahead, with more viral strains of covid, and the slow pace to deploy vaccines, we know there’ll be more disruption, and someone will have to pay the cost of the stimulus packages that many well-off countries have been living on.

Katherine Ann Byam (MBA, FCCA) is a business resilience strategist, consultant and career coach. She’s the founder of Dieple, Digitally Enabling People, A digital transformation consultancy firm based in the UK helping start-ups to scale up.  She supports leaders in tackling design challenges that create and sustain business an professional growth in an evolving global marketplace.  She hosts Where Ideas Launch - the podcast for the sustainable innovator an a career show on Youtube called Harnessing the Courage to Lead. 

Kate spends her time between the coasts of south England and west France, enjoying writing as a creative outlet.

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Episode Transcript

The biggest lesson to take from 2020 is we have the ability of foresight, yet we ignore the signals. We allow our drive for instant gratification to blind our vision ahead. And we don’t adequately prepare because we believe our money protect us.

Yet many are beginning to realise that money for retirement is not necessarily the thing that will feed us, shelter us and keep us safe.

Futurists like Amy Webb and Bernard Marr combine their understanding of history, science and trends, as well as risk management parameters to come up with reasonable scenarios that we can put in place to provide greater assurance of resilience.

In 2021, things will most certainly be tougher before they get better. The economic and social fabric repair still has a long journey ahead, with more viral strains of covid, and the slow pace to deploy vaccines, we know there’ll be more disruption, and someone will have to pay the cost of the stimulus packages that many well-off countries have been living on.

Expect health and politics to continue centre stage. The big things to watch are:

The transition of power in the United States

The UK’s transition to a fully sovereign land with its own trade deals.

The growing humanitarian crisis in lesser developed countries all around the world, especially impacting the poor, women, and children.

Everyone will need to manage their resources in this lean period and we can hope for more home spun frugal and sustainable solutions to emerge.

The Opportunities for you

Support local economies — the regions and districts where you live.

Seek out post pandemic strategic partnerships. Look forward to diversifying even further your business / employment portfolios.

Embed further redundancies in your supply chains.

Repositioning your brands, products, services across multiple social strata, as the middle class will take an initial beating. Make strategic decisions about how you compete — choosing your allies and foes in business wisely.

Big Initiatives for 2021

Everyone is waiting for that collective shift of mindset a new year brings. In theory we are already riding on the shirt tales of hope post-Christmas. January is a month of purpose and hope, so we should ready ourselves to ride that wave.

We’ve been dabbling in Virtual reality for years, but the age of the gamer is upon us. Improved digital user experience is really heating up as a trend.

I for one am really excited about haptic suits, even though I’m no gamer. I recently watched ready player one — a 2018 movie and got excited by this feedback loop, although the idea of haptic suits has existed in some form or other since 1994.

We’re likely to experience greater interest in Agroponics as sustainability claims its seat at all households and tables.

The battle for the truth and its conflict with knowledge will rage on without question.

Look forward to anti-trust action and fractionally fairer tax regimes to deal with digital juggernauts.

Health will continue to be centre stage, as covid has woken up the possibility for greater surveillance in this area.

Expect new economic fiscal measures to address growing global debt; we are not yet ready to change our systems of governing and assessing value. This will mean more corporate restructuring, higher taxes, and pressure on employment and naturally questions about the future of work and employment.

Protecting the rights of the individual employee will be more complicated in an age of increasing remote first work. For both employees and entrepreneurs, the competition in the marketplace will become even tougher, relationships even more important, and relevant skills the defining factor.

Travel will return with more invasive conditions and surveillance structures.

People will be craving better digital experiences, or off-grid alternatives.

Expect more cybercrime, and offline.

The Olympics. Will bring us some hope.

By the end of 2021, the new directions should be clear as we look to the horizon again. We will be in a constant state of learning, as the shelf life of “knowledge” as we know it becomes shorter and shorter.

Be ready.

 

About this Episode

Today we interview Jennifer Loudon on how she’s digitally transforming water.We talk about some of the difficulties surrounding water in our world, her intelligent water services business in the US and what we can all do too make a difference.

Jennifer Loudon is an environmental scientist with 20 years of laboratory experience in wet chemistry, microbiology, molecular biology, ecotoxicology, marine biology, and protein biochemistry.  She has a Bachelor’s degree in Marine Sciences and a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences from Rutgers University in the United States, and is currently pursuing a graduate certificate from Stevens Institute of Technology in Environmental Engineering.  Jennifer is an active volunteer in several local and national water-related professional associations.

She has made a life out of being a water nerd.  For the past 11 years, Jennifer has been Laboratory Manager at Raritan Township Municipal Utilities Authority in Flemington, New Jersey, U.S.A.  In 2018, she was nominated by the Water Environment Federation, and selected by the UNLEASH organization, to be one of 1,000 young professionals from around the world to come together at the UNLEASH Innovation Lab in Singapore to develop and accelerate innovative solutions to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by partnering with multiple stakeholders that are at the forefront of innovation and global development.

In May of 2020, Ms. Loudon founded a smart water startup, Intelligent Water Services, that offers wastewater treatment utilities an efficient and streamlined way of managing industrial users through a Process-as-a-Service business model coupled with advanced technology.  Recently, Jennifer has begun offering services as an independent consultant for other startups.  Her areas of expertise include biological and chemical fields of study, as well as grant funding application submissions. Her husband and her rescue dog help keep her sane, and she can be seen dancing around the lab on extra stressful days.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:02  

Welcome, Jennifer to our show.

Jennifer Loudon  1:38  

Thank you for having me, Katherine. My pleasure to be here.

The historical conflict over the access to safe and clean water.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:41  

It's wonderful to have you. So I want to know a little bit about water security. And I know this is such a massive topic. There has been so much global conflict around water that probably people don't even know about. And I'd like you to tell us a bit about what water security really means for us. And some of the history of this topic of water and conflict.

Jennifer Loudon  2:06  

Yeah. Disclaimer: I promised I will try not to be a total downer going over this. But yeah, as you mentioned, it really is a very heavy topic. So much so that the United Nations has created an entire Sustainable Development Goal around water and sanitation SDG 6. Water is life. Water and sanitation are two sides of the same coin. And without either of those working to maximum efficiency, we would be lost. Especially right now with COVID kind of shutting down a lot of things throughout the world, water and sanitation is an essential service.

And there's a reason for that. We can't really go in developing countries or in developing nations without either of those services. And unfortunately, one in three people have no access to safe drinking water throughout the world. Either that's because they live in remote areas or places where the water source is polluted. But imagine just going about your day to day activities and not having access to safe drinking water, especially in a pandemic. Two in five people around the world don't have access to soap and water to wash their hands. One of the simplest and most effective ways to combat illness transmission.

 And two in five people don't have access to it. On the sanitation side of things, six in ten people don't have access to safe sanitation facilities. That's 2.4 billion people worldwide. That's something here in America we certainly take for granted - being able to go to the sink to wash our hands, being able to go to the bathroom to use the toilet. There are places around the world where again 2.4 billion people do not have access to that.

Think about that for a moment. It's heartbreaking, but it should also be encouraging something that we need to do we need to act on. And that's what prompted again the United Nations SDGs. SDG 6 is pardon the pun, water and sanitation flows through many of the other SDGs that the UN is working on. In a lot of the places where they don't have access to safe drinking water on premises, women and girls are responsible for water collection in 80% of those situations. So that brings in SDG 1 zero poverty, SDG 3 good health and well being, SDG 5 gender inequality, which leads to a problem with SDG 4 quality education because these women and girls should be in school. They should be out living the life but they're spending their entire day collecting water because they don't have that on premises.

On the sanitation side of things, more than 80% of human wastewater is discharged into rivers or seas without any sort of pollution removal, 80% there's open defecation that's happening that we're actively working to stop. And there are issues where the water source that's being used for somebody's drinking water is contaminated either by sewage going into there, or by industrial applications, either in developed nations like here in America, like I'm presuming they're in the UK, or even in developing nations. They are still trying to figure out their industrial processes and all of that contaminated discharge is going into somebody else's drinking water source.

Unknown Speaker  5:46  

 Oh, that's absolutely true. And I knew that I visited Mexico and there was a lake, one of the biggest lakes in the country. Actually, you can't even go in there. It's so infested with industrial waste, etc. And in India, the main river that everyone uses for everything is also heavily contaminated. You have California and the issues with food and how water is siphoned off to grow almonds which are highly water-consumptive. You know, you have all these stories. You have the battle between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and the flow of water there. You have China, Tibet, Nepal, and all of these areas where there's conflict around water. So this is a huge challenge.

Jennifer Loudon  6:37  

Oh, definitely. And here in the United States, Arizona has currently undergone some issues with its legal water rights. You know, there's a doctrine there on “first in time, first in right.” Basically, the first person who puts the water to beneficial use, either for agriculture or for home consumption, whatever has that right. before anybody else does anybody downstream of that.

Taking it a step further, there was a news article that I came across just yesterday, where CME Group is set to launch water futures contracts for the stock market. Because of the water rights in California, particularly farmers, they're going to allow investors and farmers to bet on the future price of water because the California Water market is so tight and so incredibly competitive.

 So it's going to be traded on wall street like gold, oil, and other commodities. We are at this level of water scarcity even within the United States, taking that even to a global issue. In the grand Renaissance dam, there's a hydropower electric project in Ethiopia - it's going to be Africa's largest hydropower project which is awesome considering alternatives for energy generation. Again, SDG 13, climate action - it flows through all of them. But the problem is that the Nile River is the main waterway that runs through Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Egypt, drainage basins run through East Africa including Ethiopia that is constructing the dam.

The problem is that the tributary that runs across part of the country, Egypt has objected to the construction of the dam. And Sudan has found itself called in the middle between Egypt and Ethiopia. Because of the importance of the Nile as a necessary water source in the region. There's a lot of concern that that may end up in just a giant international war. Yeah, there's a problem.

There are not only physical water usage wars being waged, but there's also physical, water quality wars being waged in different parts of the world. As you have followed just historical wars, particularly in African nations, you will get warring tribal leaders that will actually purposely sabotage the water supply of their competitors or their competing tribes. So it's the rights, it's the quality, it's such a scarce resource, and everybody knows it, that they are willing to go to such unimaginable lengths to both protect what they currently have access to, and to make sure that their "enemy" doesn't have access to.

Bringing together the massive amount of brainpower that’s needed to bring about solutions to the problems around water conservation and security.

Katherine Ann Byam  9:31  

It's quite scary. So now I want to pivot us a little bit because we've scared everyone enough. So what models around the world do you consider to be working or need more exploration? 

Jennifer Loudon  9:44  

Yeah, one of my favourite experiences throughout my professional career was being fortunate enough to be able to go to a programme called Unleash Innovation Lab. It was in 2018. The programme is called Unleash and it was held in Singapore by a separate organisation, but they're linking all of the Sustainable Development Goals, and bringing a thousand young professionals from around the world to come together to develop and accelerate innovative solutions to those SDGs. And partnering those VIPs, including myself, which was fabulous, with multiple stakeholders that are at the forefront of innovation and global development in this. So we were able to work with investors.

We were able to work with technology developers. We were able to work with people who were actually experiencing these issues. And I think it's programs like Unleash that are bringing together this massive amount of brainpower under one space, and really posing these large questions, we know that there isn't going to be a single solution that is going to magically solve all of the world's problems. But think tanks like this and programmes like this, where it's like, "okay, we have some major problems that we need to figure out, let's bring together the best and the brightest, and see what they can come up with." So there's a company that is taking water infrastructure to another level for places that don't even have wooden piping systems, to distribute clean water to places. Water.org, it's Matt Damon's company. It's really kind of cool to have that kind of star power on the waterside of things.

I'm still trying to get Matt Damon to come to some sort of water quality conference. So if anybody out there knows him, you know, by all means, shoot my contact information his way. They do microloans to these developing nations and never mind having infrastructure that's falling apart. They don't have any sort of infrastructure for water and sanitation. In developed nations, we kind of have it easy, where we just need to invest in it. We need to get some additional understanding and really try to be mindful of the conditions of our sewer infrastructure. It needs support, it needs investment.

Next time, your rate is projected to go up for your water or sewer bill, there is a reason for that. Water.org is trying to, from the ground up, get microloans out there for people who don't even have that amount of water infrastructure. And it's allowing people who are living in poverty the financial long-term solution versus just struggling day to day to find out where their next few litres of water is going to come from.

So I think that that's also a model that is really going to help kind of fill in the gaps around the world in places that don't have a set organised infrastructure. But again, even something like that isn't going to solve all of the problems. But getting think tanks together, trying to figure out unique ways of not only employing new technology, new administrative and utility-oriented designs,  microloans, and different ways of how a utility is structured. And that's actually what I work with on the utility side of things.

Shout out to all my water and sanitation essential personnel out there working hard during the COVID-19 crisis. But it's going to take more than technology. I think the administration and the water distribution issue is really going to be where those models and those innovators like myself are going to really step in on things.

Katherine Ann Byam  14:09  

Those are great ideas. And I want to touch now on what you're doing. So the actual business that you started up in May is Intelligent Water Services. Tell us about your company, and the problem that you're solving.

The need for a process and technology that leads water utilities to become sustainable and adapt to a circular economic model.

Jennifer Loudon  14:23  

 Yeah, so like I just kind of alluded to,  I'm more focused on the water quality and the administration part of things. I think that at Unleashed, I've met some amazing people who are focused on deploying technology for water and wastewater treatment itself. That is fantastic! I was decidedly out of my league and in that regard I am going to leave that up to them. Coming from a wastewater utility background, I started to find inefficiencies, just in the (again) United States as a fully developed nation in most regards.

Thankfully as of November third, we tried to get rid of the undeveloped parts. We are fully developed in that there's no excuse why we have water and sanitation issues. So from the utility side of things, looking at inefficiencies, I've come up with a way to streamline the way wastewater treatment utilities manage their industrial users. So basically wastewater utilities get input from all sorts of different areas, whether residential - things that you flushed on the toilet roll down drainage, hospitals. With the 

Coronavirus crisis, we're working with a lot of hospitals as well as industrial users, manufacturing facilities, food processing plants, things like that - all of the stuff that gets swirled down the drain there also goes to wastewater facilities. So I've come up with a way to combine the water quality aspects of SDG 6 with the sustainable cities and communities of SDG 11. And that's why I'm working on a process as a service business model, coupled with advanced technology to help these water utilities become more sustainable and to not only have better water quality but also jump into the future of a truly sustainable and then circular economic model. 

How can we be more responsible with our water resources?

Katherine Ann Byam  16:31  

I love this. This is really exciting stuff. And I'm looking forward to you sharing your link so that people can find out more about what you're doing. I think this is great work. I think the final question that I have is - How can we as individuals better manage our water resources? I know we are going to make a lot of people more conscious of this issue now but I'd love to know what we can do as well.

Jennifer Loudon  16:53  

Yeah, so I wish I could say there was one key tip for everybody to take home. But the biggest thing is to just be mindful about your water usage. There's a website called the valueofwater.org and its value of water campaign is looking at water and the importance of it and again, trying to help wrap your head around the value of it and that we shouldn't take it for granted, so be mindful of it. There's another website called imagineadaywithoutwater.org that actually well imagines a day without water. It's trying to get people more engaged and more understanding about their individual water usage habits.

You know, it takes 19 gallons of fresh water to grow one apple. So thinking about where your food comes from, and the amount of water going into growing that food, and thinking from a climate change perspective where your food comes from and the carbon usage for that food source wrapping water into that, you get like a food-water-energy nexus. So try to be mindful about it, engaging in social media, with friends, family members, frenemies at this point - anyone just to kind of share what is the value of water to you? "What is water worth to you?" You can host an event in your community.

You can get water in the news. Again, trying to go back to social media, publicising things that are going on in the world regarding water. Water and sanitation are some of those things we take for granted because it's out of sight out of mind. And it's been that way in most developed nations for quite some time to the point where it's like nobody really pays attention to what happens when they flush the toilet.

Or when they turn on and off the tap at their sink. Again, it brings it back to imagine going a single day without having the access that we all enjoy. If you're listening to a podcast, chances are you're in a highly technologically evolved area where you enjoy water and sanitation services without giving it a second thought. So be mindful of it. Like I said before, be mindful of the conditions of water and sewer infrastructure.

There's a reason why rates do need to increase. Think about the amount that you spend on your quarterly water bill versus what you spend on your monthly cell phone bill. Just to put things into perspective, it's one of those things where we need to invest in. And we've been almost delaying the inevitable of things being broken and things being old and now we're paying for that. Now how can we get around? Kind of a call to action for everybody. We need to change the way we think about things.

And that's both on the technology side as well as just the human consumption side. And I kind of go from the water industry and bringing in technology, I'm kind of trying to bridge two worlds. And so I've started to pick up role models from each side of things, both on the water and the tech side. And one of the people that I've really kind of latched on to what they say, US Navy Rear Admiral and an absolute pioneering woman in STEM, Grace Hopper. She has a lot of fabulous quotes throughout her life.

But one of the things that she really mentioned, and this is one of the tenets that I kind of live by, and what started me to really want to start my own company with this once I came up with the idea of linking water, IoT and blockchain, which can be a whole separate podcast at some point. But she said the most dangerous phrase in the language is, "we've always done it this way."

Katherine Ann Byam  21:10  

Absolutely, to agree with that.

Jennifer Loudon  21:12  

If people can change that mindset, then we're going to be on our way to better water management, to better global resource management.

Katherine Ann Byam  21:24  

Absolutely. Wonderful. Look, I think this has been a great session. Thank you for all your insights and for sharing with us and for moving us to act because I think we're all scared now.

Jennifer Loudon  21:36  

There is hope I promise.

Katherine Ann Byam  21:39  

Tell everyone how they can find out more about what you do and to support your mission.

Jennifer Loudon  21:44  

Yeah, so to come into contact with me the best way is to find me on LinkedIn, just Jennifer Loudon. I have a nice little professional looking headshot that I got done for free at a conference a few years ago, back when we met in person. Find me on Instagram, jen_loudon, and my company is called Intelligent Water Services. And you can find me at intelligentwaterservices.com.

Katherine Ann Byam  22:13  

Awesome. Thanks for joining us, Jen.

Jennifer Loudon  22:14  

Thank you. My pleasure.

About this Episode

Where Ideas Launch is taking a trip down under. In a country of 25.7 million people, almost all of whom live nearer to the coast than inland, this is a place of interest for climate, evolution and change.

Today we have two guests and we will be exploring sustainable work and sustainable supply chains on this little island 😊

Fiona Mehmet from Brisbane is the founder of Allthingsfi a sustainable brand, marketplace and ethical business. Allthingsfi provides high quality locally made products to the community, through ethical and fair trade practices. The Allthingsfi mission is to end poverty and human trafficking through conscious fashion solutions and ethical decision making.

Terri is an Australian Lawyer with her own boutique commercial law firm based in Sydney, Australia.  She is currently working on developing new workplace solutions for businesses. She believes everyone should be able to thrive at work and hopes she can educate and influence more businesses. Her aim is to create more legally compliant and productive workplaces that allow employees and managers to thrive.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:35

Where Ideas Launch is taking a trip down under. In a country of 25.7 million people almost all of whom live nearer to the coast and inland, this is a place of interest for climate change and evolution. Today we have two guests. Fiona Mehmet is from Brisbane and is the founder of All Things Fi, a sustainable brand marketplace and ethical business. All Things Fi provides high-quality, locally made products to the community through ethical and fair trade practices. The All Things Fi mission is to end poverty and human trafficking through conscious fashion solutions and ethical decision-making. Welcome, Fiona.

Fiona Mehmet  1:28  

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:31  

Great to have you. We also have Terri Bell. Terri's an Australian lawyer with her own boutique commercial law firm based in Sydney, Australia. She's currently working on developing new workplace solutions for businesses, she believes everyone should be able to thrive at work and aims to educate and influence more companies to be more legally compliant. Welcome, Terri. Wonderful to have you both, ladies. I'm really excited about this show. So we all met in a sustainability group online. And it's a great community of young businesses growing on purpose. And I'd like to cover with you both and maybe starting with Fiona, what drove you to build a sustainable business in All Things Fi?

Fiona Mehmet  2:16  

I actually had an interesting background so I volunteered abroad and now unfortunately work for some immoral companies. So the idea of All Things Fi was born. And we wanted to align equality values and ethical business and provide opportunities with the love for fashion, creativity and expression. And so marrying them both together, we created All Things Fi. We decided we were going to source a product that was ethically made and a creative process around that. And just made sure that everyone that we worked with and source from aligned with our values, so they would ethically do the right thing. And that may mean following fair trade requirements as well. So just making sure they're ticking all the boxes, and also sourcing locally as well. So we can help provide for the community and build that community-based feel around the brand as well.

Katherine Ann Byam  3:22  

And did you feel that this was a gap that was existing in the Brisbane area when you started or was it also a trend around you.

Fiona Mehmet  3:30  

And there is a niche for Brisbane but there is also a gap in Brisbane especially because it's a bit more of a country town than a city. But it is growing and, and it is keeping up with Sydney and Melbourne. But it still got that, you know, country feel to it. So you can still make your mark. And there are a lot of gaps and a lot of opportunities left on the table that you can pick up from and be creative with and make your mark.

Katherine Ann Byam  4:02  

That's really awesome. So I'm going to move to Terri now. And Terri, my question for you is which of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals sits at the heart of your business? And why?

Terri Bell  4:13  

Well, if I could pick them all I would but #8 would have to be the key one for me. Obviously, when you look at employment and workers, that's a key driving factor for me. So I want to make sure that as many people as I can are working in a happy environment and that they're rewarded for what they're doing. And I think that flows not only in Australia but through the whole supply chain so that's really the driving factor for me. 

Katherine Ann Byam  4:49  

Yeah, I think supply chains are under a lot of stress not just because of sustainability from the climate side but also from the human capital side. So I'm gonna flip again to Fiona. In your experience of working with sort of underrepresented groups (because I know this is an area of purpose for you) what are your thoughts and how conditions around fair workplace practices are progressing in Australia in general?

Fiona Mehmet  5:14  

I'd say that's doing well at the moment considering a lot of brands have taken their manufacturing inhouse or taken it back to Australia from importing because of the availability, and obviously the COVID situation. That's been a necessity that they've taken on board. And then they've had a look at manufacturing here and realise that it is a little bit more expensive, but it is fair trade and so they’re meeting the requirements just off the bat. And I think they're also realising that there are consequences for old habits with regards to fair working environments in manufacturing.

And so unethical actions have consequences. And I think people are just being more mindful of that, and obviously, putting more strategic practices in place to make sure that they're meeting those requirements. But I do think that some brands do have to be careful about greenwashing as well. I wanted to bring this up because if it's not a part of your branding, it's very obvious that you're greenwashing. (Yes, that makes sense.) And you know, it's not part of how you've built your branding.

For example, some brands have just picked up a sustainable or like conscious collection when that wasn't part of their initial approach. And so you can't do unethical fair work practices, and then have a sustainable collection - it's not the same. But if you can try your best and marry them both and make sure they both align, then that's definitely a better way to move forward.

But I think that the fair work practices in Brisbane, Australia, especially are doing really well. There are some new social enterprises entering the market in regards to factory work and manufacturing and providing opportunities. So we've aligned with them recently and they're fairly new as well. So they've only been around the past two years. So they're growing, and I have waiting lists for next year. So you can see it's working and the momentum is building. So that's really positive to hear.

Katherine Byam  7:30  

That's exciting, actually. And Terri, I really am curious about B Corps, because you told me in your bio, that you're now working towards getting your business B Corp certified in that you're helping other companies with this. So how are B Corp companies starting to play a more significant role in Australia and in the wider world? 

Teri Bell  7:54  

For those people watching at the moment that have never heard of B Corps. The concept behind it is about mixing purpose with profit. And if I just excuse my eye drifting over a bit, I'll read exactly what from their website so that I get it right. They say a certified B Corp is a new kind of business that balances purpose and profit. B Corporations or B Corps make decisions that make a positive impact across their workers, their customers, their suppliers, community, and the environment.

So it's about looking at all of those key areas. We were just having a look before we jumped on and in Australia at the moment, there appear to be around 257 B Corps currently. And it's interesting because since probably a year ago, when I learned about it, I've noticed and maybe because I'm noticing it more, but I have noticed more of my friends becoming involved in groups or having talks about B Corp.

So for example, in human resources, they're talking about big corporations and how they can make a big difference for organisations. So it's, it's much bigger overseas, it's quite new in Australia. But it's very exciting. I did a presentation to a business group on Friday about my journey and what B Corps are about. And it was really interesting to see.

I guess, older or traditional businesses in there (for example, a very large accountancy firm) suddenly dawned on them what this was about, and how they could possibly implement this into the business. I think what I like about it is that it requires this authenticity from the top. You can't just have a marketing campaign or promote sustainability. You've got to really think about your business and your practices, how you're implementing and how you're dealing with each of those things across the board. So it's having a big impact, I think. And it's getting more and more momentum.

Katherine Ann Byam  10:18  

Yeah. What are the types of brands that are setting the trend here from your experience?

Terri Bell  10:25  

So, obviously, there's Avon, which I think we've spoken about before. So they're into network marketing, and they deal with beauty and healthcare. So that's kind of cool looking at how they've implemented more sustainable packaging there. I think they've always had these practices, but they've looked at their business as a whole and implemented other things.

And so they've improved which is fantastic. We've got some great Australian ones. So there's Intrepid, Patagonia, and  Who Gives a Crap, which I know you haven't heard of before, but that's well-known particularly after COVID. They were sold out. So that's a toilet paper company. They basically deliver a big box of toilet paper. So that's fantastic and lots of fun. Who would have thought toilet paper could be fun. Yeah, there's quite a few. 

Katherine Ann Byam  11:25  

It's great to see that this is becoming more mainstream. And also, I believe that there's also a drive for the sort of alternative stock exchange rate. So that sort of long-term stock exchange kind of viewpoint. And I know that there are a few people that are pushing for this to become more of the thing. So it's exciting. And Fiona, what do you consider still needs to be improved with regard to supply chain integrity for sustainability. What are the opportunities you see?

Fiona Mehmet 11:57  

And so there is a lot of information out there. And so I think it is finding the right resource that gives you the correct information, which is number one. Also bringing in a consultant that can actually strategize and look at the whole of the business and put in practices so you can make sure that it becomes more sustainable. So we're not against everyone having a business for profit. We know everyone needs to live and have a lifestyle. But we just need to make sure that we're doing the right thing by people first, and then the planet. So that way we can, you know, marry them both. But I think bringing in a sustainability consultant would help the supply chain have a higher integrity, and source the right resources as well by getting the right information. Because there is a lot of information out there. And you're not just making sure that you're doing sustainability and what it means for you and your company, but you're doing it the right way as well. So not just jumping on the bandwagon, if that makes sense.

Katherine Ann Byam  13:17  

Yeah, it's interesting, because one of my guests challenges purpose-driven businesses. So how do we really balance the profit because you can't be in business just for purpose, and you can't be in business just for profit is what we're learning? How do you achieve that balance? And I think there are a lot of people who don't think it can be profitable. So it'll be interesting to know as well your experience from that perspective.

Fiona Mehmet  13:46  

Yeah, definitely, I think all your actions have to align with your purpose, or as much as possible, in order to have a very successful life that includes your business. So even to have a financially successful business, you have to make sure that it is purpose-driven because people can tell inauthenticity, and it is the buzzword now. And I think if you don't resonate with people, they can tell that you're just doing it for the money or you can hear the sense of desperation in someone's tone, that kind of thing when they are just doing it for the sake of doing it. So when you align with your purpose, then I think profitability follows what you do with that profitability. Then we align with your purpose as well or the purpose of the brand, which is normally quite personal anyway with the founders of businesses, and then the people that work for you or work with you. So I think to be a purpose-driven business, you have to be a purpose-driven person, but also to align it with your mission as well. So you're gonna have a community-driven mission. And you know, and that's how you create momentum. And that's how you create profit. But then it all gets put back into either the business and then empowering other people to do what they do best.

Katherine Ann Byam  15:17  

I couldn't agree more. And, Terri, from your perspective and the businesses that you've worked with, what do you think they most commonly get wrong in approaching this, this idea of workplace sustainability? Well, what are the common issues that you find?

Terri Bell  15:37  

Straightaway, you have businesses not really thinking about what drives people and expecting them to produce their best work. So I mean law firms are a really great example. Because we traditionally work on a time basis. So we clock all of our time down, and we build based on our time. Many years ago (probably 15 years ago) I got very frustrated at the fact that they weren't looking at people's strengths. And we're focusing on what it is that they weren't doing as opposed to strengths. And I think we've come a long way since 15 years ago. But that's the issue I see a lot of.

So when there are workplace disputes, for example, it's often that one person has done the wrong thing, generally. And it's about really trying to find that purpose. I guess, for everybody there at work, we don't just work. We have lives. And going to work early in the morning, then leaving late at night, and not having a life is horrible. So I really do feel quite strongly about the fact that we have to try and look at ways to give people a place to thrive. And there's that word, but it's true. And I mean, we can overuse that word. But yeah, it's important. So I see that where businesses go wrong is that they just slog people really. And even in Australia, where we have great working conditions compared to the rest of the world. We are known as hard workers. We work long hours. So I really think business owners and leaders can take a lot from that. Richard Branson said that well-known quote about workers being or employees being the most important part of your business. And I think he's right.

Katherine Ann Byam 17:47  

Yeah. I think one of the insights I've had this year. We talked about words that are buzzwords this year like "authenticity" or "thriving." Another buzzword has been "sustainability" fundamentally. And what I've seen since this year, I was talking to another group leader of a sustainable group. And he told me that his group was 3,000 people in March, and it's now 60,000 people. And this is significant because it's showing the shift in consumer perception. And your consumers or your employees, you know, it's again, that whole society, that community, they're all the same people. And if you're not acknowledging their need for purpose, you're not going to meet it with your business.

Terri Bell  18:31  

Yeah, absolutely.

Katherine Ann Byam  18:34  

It's a powerful shift. So I'd like to ask you both and probably I'll start with Fiona. What recommendations do you have for policymakers in Australia, in particular, as this is the Australia segment of the show?

Fiona Mehmet 18:46  

And well, I definitely say, with regards to policymakers (because I've experienced it firsthand, and been through fair work procedures) is to actually think of the sheet of paper as a person, try and get their back story. Have more empathy, and more compassion for other people's situations. But also when you're going through different settings, new policies and new procedures, try and gain a balanced perspective. Because like good leaders and successful businesses that are run by high achievers, they normally think of what the customer needs first. So think about who your viewer is, who your audience is, where are they?

What do they do, and try and get into their minds first before you set any more policies based from an office space and try to get out there more engaged with more people. I think that's where you're going to get the best information and that's where I've got the best research and feedback from my customers. And that's how we've evolved so well. And that's how we've been able to deliver what they wanted because we asked the question, so I think that's really important.

Katherine Ann Byam  20:14  

Very good point. And Terri, It's interesting. It made me think about where you were coming from with that question. And I guess from a workplace point of view, I was thinking of policymakers in terms of fair work compliance, for example. And it is quite difficult for small business or even big business, we've seen a run in Australia of a lot of companies underpaying their staff. And I think there's a real issue here with the way that our laws are structured insofar as they're quite difficult to understand sometimes.

And so I'd like to see some more innovation happen in our workplace system and our laws so that it helps business owners and companies to be more innovative, I guess, and not just strive for the basic wage so I'm not quite sure how that looks. I mean, I've got an idea about just at a basic level. We can't wring out Fair Work, for example, as an employer to ask a question. But you can't necessarily rely on that answer. So just from a basic, basic level, it'd be great for workplaces to be able to get some sort of a binding kind of a statement. And, and I think that sounds very lawyer and compliance. But you know, it's not wishy-washy or anything, but I think it really does make a difference to how people engage with their workforce when you are able to understand what you're meant to do.

Katherine Ann Byam  21:58  

Absolutely. Yeah. One more question for both of you. And this is going to be your top tip for someone who is getting started to be in their own sustainable business, what would it be?

Fiona Mehmet  22:12  

Oh, that's a good question. And I'd probably say don't do it for the easy option just because you'd like the challenge and do it because you're solution-driven, you're mission-driven. And just make sure it's something that aligns with you because you can still be (I don't think everyone's cut out for self-employed business) an amazing leader in an employed position. And you can lead from that space as well. So I think you can be a leader either as self-employed or sole trader or you as an employee as well. So I think, just really figure out what you want first, and be clear and and move forward with whether you want to be a sustainable employee or a sustainable business owner as well.

Katherine Byam

Great advice!Terri Bell

Good answer. I guess it just comes down to starting any business. It's hard, right? It's a hard slog. And so if you're not aligned with what you're doing, and you don't love it, don't start it is I guess what I would say.

Katherine Ann Byam  23:29  

I think I agree. Thanks, ladies for joining me, and it's been a fantastic episode and I'm looking forward to engaging with you more in the coming weeks.

Fiona Mehmet  23:37  

Thank you.

About this Episode

In this episode, Idea to CEO, we take you on a journey through 4 key elements to building your business, going through the Idea, Development, Commercialisation and Growth.

Neema Amin (MBA) – Escape Strategist, is a business coach supporting freelancers, consultants and micro businesses to obtain financial freedom and create a life and business they love. She has built several 6 figure businesses over more than a decade of Entrepreneurship.

Katherine Ann Byam (MBA, FCCA) is a sustainability business strategist, consultant and career coach. She is the founder of Dieple, Digitally Enabling People, A digital transformation consultancy firm based in the UK helping start-ups to scale up, and coaching executive business leaders.

Together we run a group and a purpose-driven movement called collectively driven, a community for women to grow sustainable businesses and incomes for their families. We formed this collective as we wanted to make an impact using collaboration as our model. We believe in a system that serves everyone and not just a few. We believe in levelling up incomes so that we all can live an outstanding life.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:01  

Today, our guest is Neema Amin. Neema serves as a coach, advisor, and sounding board to founders and entrepreneurs, helping them to reach their vision by defining the fine details, and merging this with the clarity and core values to achieve their vision of success. 

By the age of five, Neema lived in three different countries, spoke three languages fluently, and was a regular guest accompanying her dad to work. She knows what it takes to build something from the ground up. Welcome to the show, Neema. 

Neema Amin

Thank you so much for having me, Katherine. It's wonderful to share another forum with you. 

Katherine Ann Byam

Neema and I are business partners at Collectively Driven. And this is a group designed for people who are underrepresented and who want to grow businesses that they love, and purpose-driven businesses. And one of the things that we go through in this group is that journey of going from idea to CEO. And this is what we're going to be talking to you about today. So this session is going to be a little bit more fluid and a little bit more mixed between Neema and myself. Typically, we like to start with “mission.” And I wanted to know from your perspective, how important is the mission in getting your idea to grow?

Neema Amin  1:18  

It's incredibly important because if you don't know why you want to start something and what you are aiming to grow, then you have no foundation essentially. Your business and your idea is a combination of your values and your desires. It's mixing the financial alongside the responsibility. So your mission essentially compresses all of those things.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:49  

I totally agree. I like to call it a question. So it's really about the question, the problem that you want to solve in the world is formed by a question, which you then need to tailor somehow. And this is when we get into the jobs to be done or the problems to be solved for your customers. So I like to poke on this a bit. Because often we want to solve a problem that we have imagined exists. But maybe that's not the only way to do it.

Neema Amin  2:20  

Exactly. And I think when we start out as entrepreneurs, we have a desire to execute on a product or a service because we are really excited about it. It's something that we want to do. And starting out, most entrepreneurs, myself included, actually going out there and talking to people about it is really scary. Because what if somebody tells you it's rubbish or people aren't interested. You're not also ready to hear, "that's a terrible idea. I don't think you should go forward with it." But it saves you so much time by actually going and asking those really tough questions at the beginning as opposed to getting much further down the line, getting absorbed by your idea and finding that it doesn't solve a problem or it's not an idea that your audience is ready for right now. They need something before that idea to get them to your actual idea. So you've got to think about it from lots of different perspectives.

Katherine Ann Byam  3:26  

Absolutely. I agree. And I think one of the one of the safest ways to approach this is kind of looking at the job that your customer is trying to get done within the context of the idea that you have, what problems are they facing with that job. And the way to go about this is to get into market research. And I think a lot of people are daunted by market research, and I think it's where most entrepreneurs fail. I don't know what your thoughts are.

Neema Amin  3:51  

Absolutely 100%. I am yet to work with a client that hasn't done the market research and is excited about the market research. I guess I'm a little bit of a freak who could stay in the research and analysis rabbit because that's my background. That's how I started my work. But most people are so excited to move on and actually bring their idea that product to life that they feel that they themselves are the research that they know that this is what the market wants. And unfortunately you have to ask the market.

And as an entrepreneur, you've got to be pretty thick skinned to hear, "You're not good at this or I guess you're not good at this. Your service or your product is not good for me." But I guess people don't quite phrase it that way. You know market research is tough because it's a process and most people don't like to follow a process. As an entrepreneur you think you just go and do things. You don't. There's a strategy behind it. It's a structured approach. You can start small by not going out and talking to people. You can do the book work around it. But at some stage, you've got to go and talk to your potential customers to find, do I actually solve a problem? Or am I the problem? And I need to find a different idea to solve a different problem?

Katherine Ann Byam  5:19  

Absolutely. And I think that there are ways that these daunts you as well. Because if you don't find the right client to speak to about the idea, you can get misinformation, right? So you can get either false endorsement or false discouragement. So this is why when we get deeper into this whole concept and in the development of your idea, you really need to start thinking about a niche, an ideal client, and about finding the places where your niches are where your ideal clients hang out.

Neema Amin  5:57  

Absolutely. So when you are doing your research, I generally recommend that you keep all your questions really open ended. People like talking. There's nothing that people like doing better than talking about themselves and about the issues that they're trying to solve. So don't box them in by asking, "Do you want this? Or do you want that." No tick boxes, keep it open ended.

The idea behind niching is that you can't solve a problem really really well if you are trying to solve it for ten different clients that will have ten slightly different issues. The idea of niching is really getting into that crux of who is that client that has these characteristics that has these issues that I can really focus on and create a product or service that is perfect that they will sing and dance about buying from me. That is niching and finding your perfect client.

Katherine Ann Byam  7:03  

Absolutely. And I also think that with the open ended, you could still get things wrong, because when people phrase things in a certain way, there's an interpretation issue. So I like the idea of having a prototype - minimum viable product. And people look at me like, "I'm not building a product...” sometimes “so why do I need to do this?" What's this MVP about? But I think it's also relevant to service-based industries and companies, and ideas of coming up with a beta - a small version that you can test and really get the true feedback. 

Neema Amin  7:40  

Yeah, I guess it's just working in an agile way. If you're a solo business or a partnership, you can react to the feedback that you get from your clients even in the beta version like "I didn't like this, but I think I'd like more of that." So you can adapt very quickly. And that's quite difficult for a lot of corporations to do in the traditional sort of waterfall methodology that's used, which is why they're also moving to agile.

So the idea behind the MVP, I think even we've done this in our business where we went in with an idea of these are the kinds of clients we want to serve. And once we started taking action and talking to people, we started moulding it a little bit more around those ideal clients. So until you take some action and build out the building blocks of that MVP, it's difficult to move on without spending a lot of time or money on building something that might not be needed.

Katherine Ann Byam  8:45  

And I think that the testing and the feedback is also important in terms of capturing the quality of it, capturing the white space of it. Right. So I think a lot of people we look at what's there without looking at what's not there and asking the right question about what's not there as well. So I think this is also quite an important step in the journey.

Neema Amin  9:09  

I think with most product services, you are always looking to continuously improve on it, because you never sit on your product or your service. You always want to make it better. So the question that you can ask is what could we have done better? What did you feel that it was missing something? What would you like to see more of in the next product? You can be that honest with your customers. Because if you can't ask straightforward questions, you're not going to get those answers. They can't read your mind and you clearly cannot reverse.

Katherine Ann Byam  9:52  

So true. Words have never been said. So the next bit, I think that when we're moving through this is you're getting ready to commercialise this thing, so you're really getting ready to, I would say your first tier of scaling, it's not the mass scaling yet, but you're starting to scale the idea into something that's a viable legitimate item or product - whatever it is. So you kind of need a strategy for that. And I want to tease out a little bit about going to market strategy from your perspective.

Neema Amin  10:28  

I normally recommend having a soft launch because when you go all out with that big old launch, I think it puts a lot of pressure on you, it puts a lot of pressure on your product or your service as well, too. I guess I think of it in the big corporate launches, if you've got all of this going on. Even the corporate world is learning that a soft launch is not the end of the world. So you can soft launch with your MVP. And that's the way of teasing out what some of your clients find useful in that product. Getting those testimonials at that point as well.

If something failed in that product, whether it was your tech or part of the service wasn't great, you can improve that and put it into your bigger launch. And you've also got to work backwards from that launch date. So part of your strategy is looking at how big your product or your service is. And you can do this in terms of the overall price that you're charging for it, the size of the audience that you're looking at, and work backwards. So I normally recommend anything from two and a half months to sort of start putting information out there, what are you starting to do? What is this product or service about? Start warming up any partners that you're working with?

 So I did this a lot with partnership-based businesses where you would have your partners going out to their partners to sort of tell them a little bit. And this is when we could do things face-to-face over lunch and over coffees like, "Hey, this client is bringing out this new product and it does X,Y Zed. Do you think you know you might be interested in it?" So getting all the arms of your business to start working for you. So you're not doing everything all the time?

Katherine Ann Byam  12:24  

Absolutely. I love that you mentioned “launching” because launching is a big deal. I don't mean to scare you but launching is really consolidating your effort into one space, one channel, and I don't mean one channel in terms of one media channel, but it is about the effort that you're putting in toward one thing.

And especially if you want to be honest, it works for products as well as service-based businesses how you do at the launch phase. If you're a product base, you want to make sure that your stock is available in multiple places and multiple points so that once you bring that social media, or you leverage whatever media you're using to do your launch, it's all in place for you. So there's a lot of pre-work leading up to launch. And you really want to make sure that when you're doing your big splash launch, that you have synchronised every possible step of the way.

Neema Amin  13:21  

Absolutely. And also, if your launch isn't going well, and that can happen, you can start looking at what are the points that are not going well? Start identifying what's not working, where are those issues? What can we do to turn this around? If you're not getting interest, where are the sticking points? Is it something to do in your process? Or are your customers not being reached? What is that? So that's the other reason for having that launch period over a longer period of time. So you can actually address those issues as you go along.

Katherine Ann Byam  13:55  

Absolutely. And it speaks to your point about being agile as well and almost doing a pre-mortem as you say, working with what could possibly go wrong. What are the things that technically happen to other people and doing that pre-mortem helps to save you some time in the process as well. I think a lot of people when they get to this point, "Well, I'm just gonna fly. I'm just gonna get in my wings and I'm gonna fly," which is great because you're going to need that optimism.

You're definitely going to need the optimism to carry you through the points when it gets messy. But don't underestimate the importance of one, having a team to support that (which has probably a different way of thinking) but also in getting the steps in place so that you can anticipate and really see early on when the warning signs come. And I think a big part of this is metrics, right?

Neema Amin  14:55  

Exactly. To be honest with you, I think you're taking “big corporation” thinking and putting it into your small, tiny business. The difference is you are small so you can be agile and move incredibly fast. You are the decision maker so you're not putting it in front of a different board and going through ten different meetings. You can move that quickly. As to the metrics, you've got to be looking across your channels - “Where are we doing well? Where are we not doing well and need further reach?” This couldn't be organic growth that you're looking at, reaching out through collaboration, through partnerships, and obviously, there is the paid route as well depending on which channel you're using.

Katherine Ann Byam  15:47  

Yeah. Also, we couldn't underestimate the importance of tech. I mean, regardless of the type of business you run, we all need digital messaging. And part of that is the tech that you set up to support your launch. And the tech ranges. You can do chatbots, email marketing, social media, or guerrilla marketing. There's so many approaches that you could take great, but you need to have the tech to leverage this and to scale this especially when you have a small team of people working on this. Any tech tech tips that you've had on your journey, Neema?

Neema Amin  16:34  

I would say keep it simple. Keep it inexpensive to start with. Because if you're not bringing anything in, you don't want to be spending thousands of thousands. On the tech. Once you've started doing your analysis and you've launched, you'll start understanding what kind of tech you actually need to build up this business because what you thought you might need might not be the ideal platform for you.

 And remember, just as it is in a logical prep, once you're on a platform, and you've grown, it is incredibly expensive and complex to move to another platform. So be absolutely sure that what you're buying is actually what you need. But my advice is keep it simple to start with. You don't have to be perfect going out to market. You're nimble. You're small. It's okay to be imperfect. Perfection is overrated. I think I can't remember who said it. But there is an entrepreneur that said, "If you look at your first MVP and not be embarrassed, then you should be embarrassed that you're not embarrassed, it should be that ugly." And I know some of the things that you and I have done, I look at them and I think, "Oh my God, really we put this out there?" But we learned from it. And that's what it is, it's putting yourself out there and learning about it.

Katherine Ann Byam  17:59  

Absolutely. Then we get to that point that we've done our first commercialisation, and we need to start thinking about scaling and growth in a really big way (and the way that you do that for service and product-based businesses could be slightly different.) For product-based businesses, especially if you're a sustainable supplier, you really need to think about a lot more things.

 You need to think about the ethics involved, you need to think about ethical sourcing and do all of that research. If you want to have a third-party contract manufacturer for your product, etc. You need to think about who you're working with wherever they are in the world, and what are the standards, modern slavery, and all of these things. So there's a lot of complexity involved in a product-based business when you're looking to start scaling up. And for service businesses, it's about outreach, and connecting with more people.

Neema Amin  18:58  

Yeah, absolutely. You should still be doing organic growth. 

You should still be creating those relationships. But as you're growing and expanding, your time is going to become limited so you need to look at other ways of growing. So this can be through expanding your product range. This can be through (I think you're going to touch on this) partnerships, collaborations, and I think you touched on a really interesting point about the sort of people that you want to do business with.

 And even in service-based businesses, there was a client who entered into a partnership with a partner that had questionable ethics and this is where it gets really tough. Do you want to expand fast and reach that goal? Or do you hold on to your ethics? And that's, I think, a really personal question for every entrepreneur to answer. My answer won't be the same as everybody else's. But there will be tough spots, because your desire to grow is going to play with your, with your ethics and your values.

Katherine Ann Byam  20:11  

And I think this almost takes us back to the beginning because it is kind of above that mission that you start with, who do you want to be as a business owner that will help you through these extremely difficult moments?

Neema Amin  20:25  

That's a really good point, I think. So, you know, obviously in big offices you have the mission statement, or you used to have it open at reception. Clearly, we can't do that in our home offices. But I think we need to find ways to remind ourselves of what those core values are. Of course, you know the right thing to do but sometimes you need a little nudge.

Katherine Ann Byam  20:46  

Absolutely. And the last point (and by far, not the least) is about the whole business development and sales piece. And you know, when I talk to solopreneurs and stuff, I think this is easily the biggest challenge anyone faces - how to reach more clients, how to convert clients, how to take those leads into funds.

Neema Amin  21:11  

It is the toughest part because nobody, or let's say very few people like doing sales. No one likes being sold to. And I think that's part of the problem. You know, when you're having a conversation with somebody, as soon as they dip into that conversation, “So I have this great product..” and you think, "Ah, you're gonna to sell to me," and unfortunately that is part of it. But this is all part of your building a relationship. You know, you don't go into a conversation saying, “so I'm gonna sell this to you.” You warm up your audience.

You warm up those relationships about what you're about, where you have some energy. And as you're expanding, you've got to find other ways of selling other channels. You can't rely on that one-to-one that one-to-few, you've got to be doing that one-to-many. So it's a lot about putting yourself out there. So getting rid of those working on those sort of mind blocks that you have around selling. It's almost as if you've got to play a different part. You've got to pretend you're somebody else, not actually somebody else but get in that mode of, "Okay, I'm the super saleswoman, and I'm gonna knock this out."

Because when you just go in as Neema is trying to sell. it's like Neema is hiding under a table, hiding behind our hands, and telling you that, "it's an okay service, if you really want to give me some money for it." But Neema the super saleswoman is not going to do that. She's going to tell you that, "hey, this is a great product, you should be so lucky to be buying this from me. And if you don't buy it, you're missing out." It's about putting yourself out there.

Katherine Ann Byam  22:56  

Absolutely. And I think I think it's a challenge for a lot of people, but it's really about as you say being authentic in what you're selling, and in the value that you bring. And it's important to step into that and really think about your product as you enjoying it. So when you even come up with whatever messaging you want to message around your product or your service, it's really about stepping into, "how would I feel? What difference would it make to me if it were me consuming it?"

And this is your litmus test before you even go before someone? How would I feel about paying this much or working in this way or getting this additional bonus, or getting this feature that you want to add to your product. You really need to step into “how would I feel” in addition to all the research that you've done. So this helps you to become the persona as you talked about.

Neema Amin  23:55  

Exactly. If you don't love your product, how can you sell it?

Katherine Ann Byam  24:01  

So this was a really wonderful session. Thank you so much for joining us and for having this open conversation. I think it's great that we can share these tips with a lot of people. If you want to find out more about what we do, you can search for us I have a “Women In Sustainable Business” group on Facebook that you can also search for, and you can get into these communities and learn about what we're doing and how we're helping businesses to grow in these interesting times. 

Neema Amin  24:35  

Absolutely perfect. Come join us. All right, thanks very much for joining the show.

About this Episode

I met Nicole during a women tech workshop, and later joined her Women in Stem Reimagined Course as a guest Speaker. I interviewed her as part of my courageous career show, and decided to share her advice on my podcast as well.

We talked about:

• Important skills in organisations for the next 2 years.
• Tips for organisational transformation
• Vision for women in Technology for the future.

Dr Nicole Tschierske is a scientist and positive psychology coach who helps women in science and tech use their heads and heart to get seen and noticed in their company. She's an experienced change manager and coach, and we are going to be talking about her experiences and learnings on the change journey.

Nicole lives in Hamburg, Germany, is a food chemist by training and holds a PhD in chemistry next to certifications in coaching, positive psychology, change management and advanced problem-solving.

When she’s not buried in research papers and books on Positive Psychology and Positive Leadership you can find this scientist-turned-coach taking long hikes in the German countryside or mesmerised by Mary Poppins on the screen.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:05  

Welcome, Nicole.

Nicole Tschierske  1:19  

Hi Katherine.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:21  

So you are a food chemist? How does a food chemist find her way into people and change?

Nicole Tschierske  1:27  

Yeah, it takes a crisis. So I was working in product innovation as my first job or the first years of my career in the industry. And then as it is, within those big companies, sometimes there's a merger. Then it takes quite a while to reorganise and resetle things. So what affected me was experiencing change, or the impact of it firsthand, and ending up or being put on hold for quite a few months. And I had hardly anything to do because they were sorting out things and discussing and trying to agree on how to move forward. I like working, not working was really, really horrible.

So that led me to seek out a coach to help me get out of this energy slump. And then within a few sessions, he had me all going up again and pursuing new pathways and so on. And so how did he do this, I want to be able to do that too, for people. And that's when I then started coaching, training, and getting into all this kind of space. And then as luck would have it, the opportunity arose within the company to lead the change management workstream for a big business transformation project. And it's like I have this newfound passion and destined opportunity. I know the team is great. And so I jumped right in.

Katherine Ann Byam  3:03  

Well, that's amazing. And how have you transitioned this change management work? In this time of remote working? How has that worked for you?

Nicole Tschierske  3:15  

So basically, I started in the role before COVID happened. So there was a lot of travelling involved, going places, meeting people doing training in person, having those types of conversation, and this engagement and working with the team in meeting rooms and all that. So the way you would think about project work. And then we couldn't travel anymore.

And what has changed is really the level of intention needs to be a different one. So really, what are we doing? So being really more focused and prepared and being mindful also of what's going on? And being mindful of what we don't see that's going on? So there's a lot more checking in. So the mechanics of it are fairly simple. You just sit on the same chair every day and dial into different types of meetings, but the intentionality needs to be different. But I'm happy to report that the team found a way of working and probably having become so cohesive beforehand, through all this great collaboration.

But this really took it up a notch, so we really stood even closer together. And we're just really very intentional and conscious about how we interact and how we run the project in different phases. So it worked out fine so far.

Katherine Ann Byam  4:56  

No, that's brilliant. And what skills do you consider to be the most important for employees in large organisations, given what's happened with COVID, given the kind of inflection point that we're in right now? What skills do you think are the most important that people should be focusing on now?

Nicole Tschierske  5:14  

So three things for me. And there is no particular order, I find them all equally important. So one is learning - learning not just in the sense of taking part in a training or reading a manual or textbook but actually learning from life and from what's happening. And not just every half a year when you do lessons learned or review or something, but on the go. Having these heartbeat retrospectives every week, asking yourself, what's working? What are we going to change? And then really learning on the fly, so to speak. So that's one. And by that, also always being able to get ready for what's next because we noticed this.

And this kind of prepares you for change properly. Second one is emotional intelligence. And I know sometimes the big buzzword, but really knowing how to stick with data, not drama. And just knowing how to navigate uncertainty, taking a step forward, and taking decisions even though everything is volatile and ambiguous. If we want to use those words. It is just a reality and you need to learn how to cope with this; not only how to cope with it,  but how to still excel in those types of environments and make progress.

 And so that's emotional intelligence. And the third one is relational intelligence. So building relationships, connecting with people and having those. Even now that we are missing being in one room, having almost feeling the social fabric, we have to put so much more effort into creating our relationships and maintaining them because that is what's needed to really be affected and get anything done.

Katherine Ann Byam  7:21  

Yeah, I think you've raised three very interesting points. And on the point about learning, there's an element of experiential learning, I guess, that we need to bring out. But how would you recommend people get into that experiential learning? Because, if I think back, maybe some of the ways that people did this in the past would be to take a gap year, for example. So before you even get into the job, you take a gap year, you tour the world, and you experience different cultures, and that already gives you something new, right? Something experiential, how would you recommend people go about bringing an experiential element into their learning journeys?

Nicole Tschierske  7:59  

One thing is learning from the things that you do every day. It's something that I established with,  let's say you implemented a change, and then you still need to ramp up phase and stabilise it, and really embed it in the ways of working. And so what I then do with those teams that just went through this is go live implementation phase, to really have a monthly learning loop session where we just pause and just reflect on. "Okay, what's really going on? What have we achieved in the past months? What are the gaps that we're having." - so being intentional about learning from the experiences that I make every day in my job. 

But what you mentioned about creating other experiences for ourselves, I'm pretty sure there are a lot more projects going on in everybody's company once they touch your own role. And so maybe there's an opportunity for that, for you there to volunteer. Maybe there's an environmental working group, or diversity and inclusion versus working group or whatever. People create stuff all of the time. So you can find those types of projects that are outside of your role where you can engage.

Katherine Ann Byam  9:21  

What are your best three tips for approaching a transformation? So getting into big scale transformations, what are your best three tips?

Nicole Tschierske  9:30  

Actually thinking about it - it's not so much. The strategy is really how you set yourself up. So one thing is, from a company perspective - allowing the resources to take care of the change management and having a dedicated change manager is very good.  It's a perfect point to start - so you have someone who can operate and orchestrate the whole people's side of change. But having just one person managing change for 500,000 people that are impacted is just not sufficient. So all of your project team members, all of your subject matter experts, all of your line leaders, they all need to play a role within change.

And for those that are heavily involved in driving the project for what I think at least 20%, allowing for them to spend on really just engaging and taking the rest of the organisation with them. That would be a good place to start. So that is one thing -  allowing the resources. The second thing is really integrating change management and project management. You may have two different people doing this but the activities and the tasks need to be in one plan. You cannot have a plan here and the other plan here.

They should be combined in one so nothing falls through the cracks. And the third point is increasing your organization's capacity for change to upskill people, both leaders and frontline employees, to know how to go through change successfully and how to implement it because when you ask something from someone, I'm always a fan of giving them the tools to be able to meet those requirements.

Katherine Ann Byam  11:19  

Absolutely. Really good points and thank you for that. Can you talk about your bigger vision for women in tech? So I know this is an area of passion for you. You know, and you've you've transcended tech, and you've taken your skills to another level in terms of that organisation playing field that you have now. Tell me about your vision for women?

Nicole Tschierske  11:38  

Yeah, so I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm going to say it's my vision for everyone who is an employee, or who works for a living. I work mainly with women in the STEM fields, because I can relate most to them, because it's my own background. And our brains are sort of wired in the same way.

But really, my vision for workplaces in general is that just people can thrive and have an opportunity to be their best at work and really enjoy going there every day because I don't know how you feel but if we have to work over four decades, we better have some fun doing it. And so that's really important for me and in creating those environments, and showing people how to really step up and be there and seize opportunities, but also providing those opportunities equally for everyone. I just would love to see things going that way.

Katherine Ann Byam  12:39  

I agree with you. This is one of the reasons the show is called the way it's called, right? This idea of transcending work is something that I've fallen in love with simply because it no longer means work? So if you want to bring yourself to doing something that aligns to your purpose, that you feel a more intrinsic joy from rather than the extrinsic rewards that you get. This for me means so much.

And we have a comment from Joe. “Change Management is often seen as the nice to have on projects. What's your approach to companies that take this view? How do you get them onboard and see the benefits of proper change management as part of transformation?” Excellent question.

Nicole Tschierske  13:21  

So Katherine, I know you have an opinion on this as well as you'd like me to go first. So when you speak to companies about this, they always think about finance, finance, and finance. So I always bring it back to - change management can really help you given that the technical solution you provide is the same proper quality. But change management can really help you increase that return on investment or even get this return on investment. Because no perfect system or great process will do you any good if there's no people out there who are willing to use it and use it in the way it was intended.

And so that is one thing, maximising return on investment, and the other bit is really minimising the disruption to the business during the transition phase. So because change creates upheaval wherever you go. Things won't go as smoothly as before, and that's natural, and it's normal. But how can you then accompany and enable the organisation to go through this so it doesn't have customer impact?

Katherine Ann Byam 14:40  

Yes, I agree. I would probably add that the pace of change now is no longer human scale? So it's accelerated beyond our ability to cope naturally with it. And therefore, this is why you need that extra support? You need to bring people along in the journey. And you know, they say that most people are actually aversive to change? They don't want to step into change. And now we are accelerating so many things.

The shift to remote work was supposed to happen three years from now. We've all got pushed into it while being pushed out of walking on the streets and having things that are normal. So you really need to hold people's hands through this journey. So this is part of the process. And without it, you don't have an engaged workforce and what you really want, is the point we spoke about before, is people brought into a greater journey, a greater and bigger picture. What do you hope for a new beginning in 2021? Difficult question. 

Nicole Tschierske  15:52  

2021. Well, I think we all had a really great reality check this year. This year it feels like so much has happened. It could fill a decade. You have the bushfires in Australia in the beginning. Then somehow, COVID hit. Then there were all of the racial injustice topics in the US and all over the world. And we have all of the crazy elections. And I'm not even talking about the U.S., but also Belarus.

And also there are many, many things happening all over the world. And it's just looking around and say, "Man, this is a real reality check," and I hope for many of us a wake up call to pay attention to how we treat each other, how we treat our planet, and to make not a small New Year's resolutions, but actually starting to change the way we live and how we conduct ourselves on this planet, to create a world that can sustain peaceful living for everyone.

Katherine Ann Byam  17:09  

I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much for your thoughts and for your generous sharing, and thanks for joining the show.

Nicole Tschierske  17:16  

Thanks for inviting me, Katherine. I always love talking to you. 

Katherine Ann Byam  17:20  

Alright, see you all next week. Take care. 

About this Episode

I discovered Mathilde on another show and had to get to meet her, as her story and business was so inspiring to me.

We talked about Fresh.Land and how the idea for her sustainable business came about.

How she overcame challenges in the start up process

Advice for others wanting to make a positive impact on the planet.

Mathilde Jakobsen is CEO and Co-Founder of Fresh.Land, an award winning green tech startup with an innovative and disruptive model to the food industry.

The company shortens the journey from farm to table by connecting farmers, logistic partners and consumers in one integrated digital platform. With Fresh.Land's just-in-time model, instead of months, it takes just a few days from harvest to delivery. By cutting out 3-5 middlemen, farmers secure 20-50% more value and consumers get fresher, tastier products.

The model has a lower carbon footprint compared to that of the conventional chain — 88% lower, according to a study by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) — as it eliminated the need for cold-storage and ripening chambers, which are large greenhouse gas emitters.

Fresh.Land has been identified by Forbes as "truly pioneering" and "one of the most promising green start-ups in the EU", and awarded the "Climate Solver Prize" by WWF. We thrive to be the lighthouse of the food industry, setting new standards and leading the way for green transition. In Fresh.Land the trees and fields are our "natural warehouse" and products are only harvested after the order is placed by the consumer.

Our model disrupts the giant old food industry that has long been ripe for disruption.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:02  

Welcome Mathilde!.

Mathilde Jakobsen  1:33  

Thank you. I'm really happy to be here today.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:35  

Thanks for joining me. So I'm inspired by your work. And I'm sure my listeners would like to know what prompted this idea and how did you bring it to life?

Mathilde Jakobsen  1:45  

So it's very interesting because when we started out, the intent was not actually to do a platform, it was more a small hoppy project where we were trying to help Filipe’s dad who is an orange farmer. And the thing was that he was struggling to sell his oranges every single year to the middlemen, because the middlemen always wanted to pay a lower and a lower price. And they were criticising his oranges saying, "Oh, they are tasteless, they're imperfect," and so on, instead of actually appreciating them for what they are. So we started exploring opportunities for him to cut the middleman and go straight to the supermarket.

And that's actually how the idea started. Now, what we saw was that a lot of other producers like avocado producers, tomato producers, they had similar challenges with that business. And, we saw the new generation of farmers, which Filipe represented, not willing to go into farming, because there was no future in farming in that perspective. So we were kind of thinking, Okay, how do we make sure that our food system can survive? We need to invest in the farmers, we need to give them better opportunities.

 And that's kind of how the idea to Fresh.Land came along. And then the other side of the coin is that Fresh.Land actually brings the products so fresh from the farmer to the consumer that you don't need all the chemical treatment you normally would have. And this has huge benefits in terms of, like what you're saying, the health of the fruits and the taste of the fruits, because they are fresh. So when they come four days from harvest, it's really a whole different product and the product you normally find in the supermarket.

Mathilde Jakobsen

 3:29  

Yeah. Now it's really fascinating because if you think about the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, you're able to hit several of them with this one idea. In what ways is it special and sustainable in your view? Can you express exactly how you do it?

Mathilde Jakobsen   3:44  

So what we're doing first is really kind of re-engineering the food system. So where a normal orange would have to go through three to five middlemen and be on his way to the shop. In Fresh.Land, we get straight from the tree to the final consumer - no warehouse, no cold storage, no ripening chambers.

 And this is actually quite interesting because 72% of all carbon emission in the food industry is happening post harvest. So we can reduce that journey and reduce the time the fruits and vegetables have to lay in cold storage and in ripening chambers. We can actually cut almost that entire emission. It's not the transportation that is the biggest issue, it's actually the storage. So by eating fresh products, we can really have a significant impact on the carbon emission in the food industry. And that's what we're doing with Fresh.Land.

We are selling the fruits in the season that is right now on the trees growing on the fields and bringing that straight from the farmer to the consumer. That has huge environmental benefits and it also significantly reduces food waste because it just comes fresher and we are less picky about quality because for us, even an ugly tomato is a good tomato. It's about the substance. In FreshLand, and we didn't want to, we rethink the food supply chain and bring both a more sustainable food supply chain, but also more equitable bringing more value back to the farmer.

Katherine Ann Byam  5:13  

So tell me a little bit about how politics has been in terms of shaping this idea? Have you met a lot of opposition?

Mathilde Jakobsen  5:23  

Oh, yes. So when we started out, actually, one of the first experiences we had was that the middlemen that our farmer stopped working with, they basically took advantage of them having access to the farm. So they went there on the weekend when no one was there. And they picked all the unripe lemons. And this basically meant that our farmer couldn't sell lemons for the next half year, because all the new fruits that were supposed to grow and be ready to sell in half year time, were basically harvested too early.

Mathilde Jakobsen  5:53  

Oh, my goodness, well,

Mathilde Jakobsen  5:55  

And we saw similar actions taken on the middlemen side closer to the final consumer. So when we received the products in Denmark, we didn't understand how come our products are all the time disappearing, how come that the palletes, we are shipping, they are going to the green market in Denmark. But then our logistic partner tells us that somehow they've disappeared, and then they appear again a week later. And what we then found out was that our logistic partner, he subcontracted to one of the big middlemen in Denmark. And they didn't want us to bring the products fresh because it was competing with their business. So they purposely delayed the shipment. So it only would arrive One week later, and thereby not be as fresh as we were promising.

Katherine Ann Byam  6:39  

How have you overcome these challenges?

Mathilde Jakobsen  6:42  

So I think it's about being persevering, so when you have all these challenges against you and you somehow find strength in that because you think it cannot really be true. It cannot be true that a farmer cannot sell his fruits and actually make a living from it. It cannot be true that we cannot get the products fresh out to the consumer because someone is interfering in the process. So we just continued and continued and tried on the way to do small fine-tuning and adjustments. And somehow it has worked.

What we saw in our business is that when we were selling B2B. Of course, it made a huge difference both for the farmer and for the consumer in terms of a fair payment and the taste, and so on. But we still didn't solve the last bit of that puzzle, which was to make sure that from the supermarket, it would also get fresh out to the consumer. So last year in August, we actually changed our business a bit. So instead of focusing mostly on B2B, we also launched a B2C business. And that has been very successful and very good timing in terms of COVID. Because then, when COVID actually hit, we have been able to elevate and help a lot of Danish farmers that used to sell B2B but lost the sales due to COVID. And now they are making a success selling B2C.

Katherine Ann Byam  8:09  

Well, so how long have you been around?

Unknown Speaker  8:12  

So we started out in 2015. Back then it was a B2B business mostly. And then we have been steadily growing year after year. And then we launched our B2C as a focus area in August last year. And that is the majority of our business today.

Katherine Ann Byam  8:32  

Well, and I can imagine that this is also encouraging younger people to get into agriculture. Now what have you seen in the markets that you're in?

Mathilde Jakobsen  8:43  

So what we've seen is that especially the small and medium sized farmers, which are often young agriculturists, as they are lacking a sales channel, they're subject to these middlemen that only value price. And the way they have somehow found an alternative has been selling to restaurant business. But during COVID, the restaurant business has closed down and they have really been left on their own. So in that sense, it has been really, really a great success for them to have Fresh.Land as a platform where they could suddenly sell business to consumers. And that has allowed them to sell between 80 to 100% of their production.

We had a farmer doing mushrooms. And he called us saying he had 200 kilos of mushrooms that was going to waste and he said, Can you help me? And at that time, we had kind of closed our sales cycle for the week. But we then sent out a message to everyone that had ordered and said would you like to also order some mushrooms. And within two hours, we sold the 200 kilos of mushrooms to the existing orders that were already in the system. And this just made him so happy. But it was important for us at the same time that we were not just doing a fine sale but actually building a sustainable business for him.

So he would also want to continue after COVID. Now this farmer is selling 100% of his production. And we have advanced paid him so he could invest in a new vertical farm where he can double his production. So when the restaurant business is actually opening up again, he will be able to supply both his B2C  customers and his restaurant customers. So this is like a true success story that instead of actually having to rely on these help packages, this farmer actually managed to double his production during COVID.

Katherine Ann Byam  10:31  

This is really impressive. And I think a lot of my listeners will be super fascinated by the story. Can you tell us a bit about how you built the resourcing that you needed to do this? Did you go initially through bootstrapping? Did you go straight to VCs? How did you manage that resource build?

Mathilde Jakobsen  10:48  

So it's really about being resourceful with your time. So in the beginning, you do everything yourself, and you learn to do things you never thought were possible. Like, my worst subject in school was accounting, for instance. And I just learned how to do accounting because there was no way around it. We couldn't afford hiring an accountant to begin with. So in this sense, you realise that your capacity is way beyond your thoughts.

So actually, this is a huge boost of self esteem, I would say because you realise you're so capable as an individual. And then of course, in the beginning, you have to somehow get the people you can onboard. You're not so attractive, because you are a small startup, and people don't really believe in you. But I think now we have moved to this scale up phase, where we were Fresth.Land is really the hot startup in the environment here in Copenhagen.

And we're seeing a lot of interest from investors, we see a lot of interest from applicants with the job post we have open right now we received more than 2000 applicants for the open positions. So it's really kind of a different ballgame now, where we have proven we can be a success. A lot of people are coming to us and want to take part in this success. 

Katherine Ann Byam  12:07  

Yes, it's really encouraging. And my final question to you is what advice would you give to young sustainable intrapreneurs? I currently lead a group of 650 female sustainable business owners, what advice would you give them?

Mathilde Jakobsen  12:25  

So one piece of advice - that's difficult, but I will try to compress it. First of all, I think it's really important that you believe in yourself, you believe in your intuition, and you believe in your ideas because belief can move mountains. So what I mean about this is that when Fresh.Land started out, no one believed we could do a kind of a food tech platform without owning big assets and trucks and warehouses and bringing fruits just in time, no one believed in that. But what we have done is basically proving them wrong.

Because if there's any theoretical possibility, it is possible. You just have to insist and insist and insist. And I believe that perseverance is the strongest predictor of success. It is not your skills, your abilities, your network and so on. It is your perseverance, because if you don't let anyone bring you down, you will eventually succeed. So that would be my recommendation, continue and don't let anything come in your way.

Katherine Ann Byam  13:27  

Thank you so much, Mathilde. This was a lovely session. Thanks for joining the podcast.

Mathilde Jakobsen  13:32  

Thanks.

About this Episode

I met Anna during a women tech workshop back in June, and since then we’ve become friends and allies in a journey toward sustainable change.

During our interview we discussed

1. Her motivation to become an ally for social equality
2. The key focus areas for sustainable development
3. Lessons learned in creating partnerships between NGOs and the For Profit Sectors
4. Anna Derinova-Hartmann is a passionate social impact and international development activist. She combines extensive experience in Program Management, Community Engagement, Corporate Social Responsibly and People Management.

Her purpose is to challenge social inequality and institutional barriers by empowering vulnerable social groups and communities through innovation and meaningful connections.

Anna, as she states herself, is incredibly lucky to have been exposed to various working environments and experiences: NGO sector, global corporations, social impact and tech start-ups. Thanks to this versatile experience she learnt a lot about the power of communities, social connections, mutual responsibility and open communication. While contributing to building and scaling numerous start-ups, optimizing and developing business divisions and corporations, Anna witnessed the ultimate value of cross-functional cooperation and human relations.

Anna is very passionate about supporting social impact start-ups and initiatives across the world, coaching and mentoring founders and women in Tech. She is consistently helping to leverage innovation in humanitarian assistance and international development spheres, as well as bridging an “artificial gap” (her words J) between corporate and social impact non-profits.

Anna loves her cats, her husband, reading, networking, engaging in challenging discussions with her Moving Worlds co-fellows from all over the world. She is very open to being approached on LinkedIn with any requests, suggestions, initiatives or just topics to chat about.

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:00  

Welcome to our episode.  Welcome to the show, Anna.

Anna Derinova-Hartmann  1:32  

Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. Honored since I'm a big fan of your podcast. And I'm incredibly happy to be here and be one of them.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:40  

Thank you so much for saying that. I think the podcast has been a surprise for me as well, over the time that I've had it.

Anna Derinova-Hartmann  1:47  

That's usually the best way you know. Once you plan, it all goes just boring, according to the plan. But the surprise usually comes the best.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:56  

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I wanted to talk to you a bit first about your inspiration to do social impact work. I mean, when did you first think about becoming a leader in this space, and tell us about your journey to becoming an ally for social inequality.

Anna Derinova-Hartmann  2:13  

Definitely. I actually consider my life so far on my professional experience a little bit of a computer game. When you go from one level to the other, collect achievements, and then unlock some next level, and you get to fight the boss demons. So that's exactly what my journey has been so far. I graduated with my third Master's from Central European University in Budapest and Hungary, which has always been the symbol of democratic values and freedom in Eastern Europe. And that already gave me a little bit of a feeling that okay, this is the field where I want to stay. But I will need very special tools and weapons and experience and knowledge to fight that battle.

 To add to that, also my experience, studying at Northwestern, which has always been quite traditionally back in the US one of the democratic universities as well. So I found myself in Hungary when I finished with my education on the mastery level, at least. And that was exactly the time when the city was flooded with the refugee crisis when we had refugees stuck in a train station, not being able to go, not able to actually leave the place without proper food,  without proper resources, not even proper hygiene and basic sanitary opportunities.

And then I just went there together remember back days with open society foundation volunteers, we just started sharing food, just talking to people trying to help them. And that was the first time when I realised that there is something the way the system is designed is not entirely okay. And I'm not a big fan of this phrase that the system is broken, I don't think it's broken. I just think that it's designed in a certain way that we might want to redesign. And then I got to work in order to design something right, you need the right tools.

So I started working with NGOs, especially in the field of partnership and cooperation with other stakeholders across and this is the first time when I saw how powerful the cooperation between corporates and the nonprofit sector can be. They just don't know it yet. And once I worked with NGOs for a while, of course, I got that first fever of “God we constantly chase the money.” And it's so hard to actually get enough funds to do all the good.

And I became curious. I'm always curious, I became curious to see how does the process run where the money lies, which is corporate. And, this is where I went next. I worked in a corporate for quite a while. I learned a lot about people and property management experience. And I acquired a lot of tools and knowledge there. Many people will say it's a heart-wrenching experience. The corporate kills your soul. No, actually it doesn't. It just depends. If you do have a purpose, and it's strong enough, it actually won't, it will enrich you because you get the right tools. And after the corporate, I moved over to working actually with startups.

And this is when I realised that one of my passions is working with social impact and social impact startups. And this is where I brought combined my people and business management experience, pro bono consulting, and support. This is where I learned how important it is to be empowering and supporting women, especially in tech. And this is also where I found an opportunity to channel how to, for instance, support refugees arriving in Germany, especially women, to find their niche and to also find an opportunity to work in Tech.

So that, you know, this what I meant by metaphor of a computer game. I feel that throughout my whole journey, which I'm sure hopefully only has begun, I've been collecting all those hidden coins, like Mario and I'm sure there are many more coins lie out there. But what I really learned is that, you know, the job experience might seem a little bit sporadic when you try lots of different fields, and then you feel, “Oh, but that doesn't mean I'm not consistent enough.” No, it doesn't mean that it just means that you try a lot.

You realise what you want, what you don't want, but every time you learn a lot, you get more and more tools into your bag. And then you carry that bag with you and you just become stronger in what you do. And your next journey. And next adventure.

Katherine Ann Byam  6:40  

I love everything you said, I don't know which one to pick up first. But I'm gonna start with one. So you mentioned about systems being either broken or designed poorly. I love that. So what’s really coming out here is that we have systems that are designed for a certain outcome. And that's, that's a fact. That's what's happening in the world right now. And that outcome is not something that we realise that we want. So so it really takes a lot of reengineering, but it's a reengineering of our psyche. It's a reengineering of our way of thinking, our approach to the planet, even when we think about things like circular instead of linear. So what has been your experience in sort of pivoting that mindset in the places that you work?

Anna Derinova-Hartmann  7:28  

And I would say that it's incredible and great that you mentioned mindset. And this is, I think, a very important starting point. This is what I learned. When Currently, I'm combining working in with corporate right now working in a startup, which is trying to turn into a corporate while working with social impact startups, refugee communities, working with the World Food Programme - that kind of startups as well. And what I see that all unites them is that exact mindset. But the mindset, which is very, very open towards changes towards improvement, you know, the worst that can happen if you want to.

If you want to change the world around you, you don't have to be here. You don't have to wear a cape, you don't have to have a Harvard Law degree.  Go there and change the world. I mean unless you're Ruth Ginsburg. I mean she's one of the most badass women I've ever heard about. But what is really important here is your mindset and readiness to break the silos. The most dangerous part that I've seen, is when the silos are being created when one group, for instance, humanitarian people who work in the humanitarian field or in a startup field stop feeling exquisite, stop feeling special, and they just keep doing things because they have been done like that for the last 50 years.

Once that happens, you pretty much the social impact of such mindset is that maybe not dud at least, but definitely hibernating. So that's why I feel that there is such enormous potential and strength in this partnership between different bills. big corporate together with UN institutions, together with startups together with leaders, consultants. And it doesn't matter which one belongs to as long as there is this one strong purpose and the mindset that unites you. If you focus on that,  there is so much you can learn from each other. There is no right or wrong definition of impact, right. It's just either there is one other is none. And at this point, I think as long as we remember that we can still hop on this train to you know, to turn a little bit of an imminent disaster that is coming - to turn it around.

Katherine Ann Byam  10:01  

Absolutely. Again, more juice for the discussion. One of the other things that you just said as well, is about really bringing that mindset together in the social impact startups. And I found in my own work, and especially now that I've become an entrepreneur, become a startup myself, that actually, the easiest place to move is in the startup community. So even in my consulting work, I can influence more in terms of mindset, with companies that are just starting out to design, right, first time, I guess, as opposed to existing, well-established companies and even existing well-established NGOs. Because they all have a similar dated mindset, in some ways. So working with startups is so refreshing because they're open, just like you see. So it's so exciting to be a part of that movement.

Anna Derinova-Hartmann  10:58  

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. But you know, funnily enough, what I also realised is that, if there is a way there is a possibility to bring this fresh, fresh air into a really existing and kind of established organisations, it is much harder but it is possible. And that's why for instance, I believe it is quite a tough battle too. For instance, by jumping on the ship of corporate social responsibility or community engagement in a big corporation, because right away, you need to try to understand what's the real motivation there? Is it marketing?

 Or is it really something that the company wants to change? And but trust me, in my experience, even if it is marketing, I still strongly believe that there is a way to turn it around. Because in the end, you take these crazy resources that this organisation has and you start the conversation by conversations, step by step it will take forever, or for sure, but conversation by conversation, tiny step by tiny step by asking the right questions. And I'm a huge fan of asking questions. Well, exactly asking fantastic questions, by asking these questions, you will start very slowly, like waterworks with the stone, you'll start turning it around. But of course, that requires lots of hard work, perseverance, stopping this, if you will. But then the impact is enormous. Really?

Katherine Ann Byam  12:36  

Yeah. No, massive, massive appreciation for what you've said, because I understand exactly the journey and I know what it feels like, as well as I feel the excitement of things changing, even if it's slow. Absolutely. So I wanted to ask one more question about these Sustainable Development Goals. So a lot of companies that are posting, their commitment to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, even countries and you know, the UK has this rewiring project, bridge, etc. Where they focus on six of these goals. Which one of these do you think is most important to move first? And why?

Anna Derinova-Hartmann  13:18  

Tough question. Oh, my God. I mean, it's like in a candy store. Which one do I pick? Right? Well, I'm a big fan. Incredibly passionate, I would say I have my top three. My top one is definitely battling zero hunger. Is that something that I mean, that's the basics, that something without I mean, let's put it that way. I cannot expect a person or a human being to be fighting for democracy and rights if he or she has nothing to eat or cannot feed his or her kids. And it's just how it works.

And this way, I'm an absolute fan. And I'm in love with the workflow programs and everything they do and how they combine innovation, partnership management actually and humanitarian action. And my top two is responsible consumption because this is something that we can actually directly fix. Honestly, if we want to. I mean, if you, for instance, compare it to water or environmental, I think we're so far already by screwing the environment around us that it's very hard to turn it around. It's still possible, but it's incredibly hard with responsible consumption is something that we are directly responsible and accountable for.

And it's just if we don't want to change it, well, that's not so I think there's something we can do. And the top three for me is the third one is a partnership because I strongly believe that the partnership is the way to go forward. The partnership is actually the only way that the only way to do to achieve success is the quarter success and my purpose. Personal purpose has always been breaking those silos, as I mentioned, not creating them. I think the only way to get better at this is to establish a partnership.

And I would imagine exactly in this particular order - battle hunger, while we look actually how we consume to make sure that we're, for instance, reducing the waste, the food waste, and we see how we can partner with each other because we won't be able to win this battle alone.

Katherine Ann Byam  15:18  

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. Finally, in closing, if you have any tips for social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to make a difference who are building eco-friendly businesses, do you have any tips for them on how to grow their businesses, how to have the right conversations, and how to generate interest? 

Anna Derinova-Hartmann  15:38  

Oh, absolutely. It's always easier to give a tip rather than to do it myself. I'm joking. Honestly, I would say, first of all, identify your purpose. Be very clear about your “why.” I've seen so many startups that were jumping into solutions because it's fancy to build a tech app. And they did not actually start with understanding the reality and ecosystem around them. Do not jump to solutions. And because a technical app is not actually the answer in the end, but most of the time, it actually isn't. Be curious.

I think every entrepreneur should be willing to understand how everything works around them and why it works this way. Very often, when you ask the questions when you are naturally curious, you'll get people around you. And you understand the reason why the system works much faster that way. And I would also recommend developing your product, whatever that product is in small iterations, and keep building on those. Because this way, you're more flexible, you can move 180 degrees, if that's needed.

And honestly, what COVID-19 taught us is that it's very hard to plan ahead about a week even. Do network and be brave, no one will do better marketing for you than you do. So just open up their talk, be it digitally or physically present. Hopefully, their physical presence will return again very soon. But be brave and network with people. And yeah, be open to partnerships and collaboration, because you're not alone. Fortunately, you know, COVID brought up actually so many social entrepreneurs and impact leaders and sustainable businesses that I think we're actually having much more hidden than we thought is there. And as I mentioned before, through this partnership, and collaboration, I think we can fix much more than we even dare to think.

Katherine Ann Byam  17:35  

Wonderful. Anna, it's been a pleasure to host you on the show. I've loved this session. I think I'm going to be playing this back a few times. Thank you so much for your consideration. Thanks for listening. 

About this Episode

discovered Tendayi Viki during a Strategyzer masterclass on building resilient companies.

We talked about:

• What company cultures are more likely to ride the wave of disruption well.
• We discussed sustainability, growth and transformation
• What type of pirate we should be to make changes happen.

 Tendayi Viki is an author and corporate innovation expert. As Associate Partner at Strategyzer, he helps companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has written three books; Pirates In The Navy, The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. He previously served as Director of Product Lifecycle at Pearson, where he co-developed an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York. Tendayi has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He is also a regular contributor at Forbes. 

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam

So my first question for you. 2020, has been a surprising year for us all that has created fertile ground for innovation and disruption. In your experience, what are the characteristics of companies who ride the wave of changes? Well, and those that don't?

Tendayi Viki  1:56  

Yeah, so. So it's been interesting. And there's a lot of conversations going on around what changes that we've seen in companies, right, that are gonna last post-COVID-19. And sometimes I think we're actually asking the wrong question. You know, I think we're failing to make a distinction between two things. We're failing to make a distinction between changes that companies are making to their business models, because they have to because otherwise, they're going to go bust, versus the behaviour, structures, and processes they're actually using to make those changes. And so we're asking whether the changes will last.

But we're not asking whether the new behaviours will act. Yeah. And so and that really speaks to the question that you're asking here, which is, you know, what are the characteristics of companies that ride the wave of change as well. What are the kind of companies that ride the wave of change as well, the companies that have already built the innovation muscle, before the change, or the disruption actually takes place? You know, I mean, I always say this, like, you know, after you've had the heart attack it is too late to start jogging, it's better to actually start developing the muscle before you have to attack. And so what we're finding is that all those companies that had a pre-existing innovation ecosystem, we’re able to quickly leverage spin-up. Startup teams, make small bets, run experiments and tests.

We did that a strategy, though, you know, after the crisis was at testing various, in various different offerings of our programs. Because we already have this practice internally, we're able to do that quickly, versus those companies that are like, Oh, right, well, first, everybody go home. Okay, now we need Legal [teams] to look at whether your computers are compliant, then we need to say that it took them a little much longer time to start thinking about how how how, how they can survive, with the pressure that carried on being on them, a whole lot of these companies figured out something. They built new platforms, new ways of working, and built new business models. But the question is, after the crisis, will they go? Okay, that was fun. Let's get back to what we used to do before? Or will they really deliberately think about developing those innovation muscles now?

Katherine Ann Byam  4:02  

Yeah, it's super interesting how companies are trying now to build a fast digital transformation platform that they can then grow on, and trying to figure out how to manage that implementation as we go. So the next question I wanted to poke into is, in your work, you talk about two main drivers of innovation, which are the external growth factor and transforming the internal systems. So how does the message of sustainability when we think about all that, that COVID has brought about and change in the world and the sort of change and consumer trends as well? How do you feel that sustainability fits into those two levers?

Tendayi Viki  4:44  

Yeah, so it's interesting, right? I mean, in my work, I wouldn't describe them as to lever this such. I would describe them as two goals, right. So if you're an innovation team, or you're thinking about developing an innovation programme, you have two things that you really need to be thinking about right, which is, to what extent is this programme we're launching going to change our company and make our company be able to do innovation on a repeatable basis.

 And so that's what we call the transformation part. Right? So are you building systems? Are you building practices? Are you building toolboxes that people can use on an ongoing basis? Or are you doing innovation, there's just a whole bunch of one-off projects, each one having to negotiate with a company, a new innovation that never happened before. So that's one piece. And then the other piece, which you refer to as growth is, you know, beyond just changing the company, we change the company, so the company can create things of value, right. And so the real way, maybe to actually, I wouldn't call it a third dimension, I will call it relabeling that dimension, right, moving away from calling in growth, because then makes it a single metric sort of focus, but really think about value creation.

And when you start thinking about value creation, then you can think about - Okay, well, are we creating sustainable value? Right? Are we having enough impact? Are we developing business models that are more suitable to the world in the way that is changing? And so, you know, creating that sustainable value becomes, you know, the other dimension. So what we don't want is innovation theatre, right, which is innovation programs that are aimed at either changing the company or creating value, because then it's just wasted, just like, yeah, we had a hackathon. Yeah. You have to really be thinking about exactly what is the point of all the work that you're doing?

Katherine Ann Byam  6:28  

That's really interesting, as well, because I feel as if there is an appetite for pooling lots of ideas. So gathering ideas from customers, gathering ideas from employees, and there's a lot of excitement and buzz around that. Is that innovation theatre?

Tendayi Viki  6:45  

It's not innovation theatre, right. So gathering ideas from, from customers, gathering ideas from employees, and voting up, the best ideas to work on is not innovation theatre in and of itself. It becomes innovation theatre, when you do nothing else, but that. Right? Right. So if you gather the ideas, the question is, then what do you do with them?

Are you able to use some of those ideas to create something of value if you are, then that's not innovation theatre, the idea competition is a stepping stone towards something valuable, or the hackathon is a stepping stone to something valuable. The idea session, when you're doing sticky notes, is a stepping stone towards something valuable. But what happens in most of these situations is like, Whoa, we had a competition. And here's the winner, let's all go home, not next year, whatever, another one. If you start doing it like that, it is definitely innovation theatre, it's the best theatre out there.

Katherine Ann Byam  7:37  

That is quite. The other thing I'd like to touch on on this point is that I also work with a number of female entrepreneurs who are in the sustainability space. So a lot of them create businesses of handmade products or recycled materials and stuff like this. But what's interesting about working with entrepreneurs, as opposed to working with big corporations is that the bottom line is important. Right? It's important for them to be profitable. But it's also important for them to live their purpose and to live their value. So I wonder if this is something that companies also need to be considering how they bring purpose into that mix?

Tendayi Viki  8:11  

Yes, absolutely. I actually think companies need to really be thinking about how they bring purpose because again, beyond just love creating bottom-line growth, people also want to feel like they're making a positive contribution to the world, it kind of gets them up in the morning, and they feel positive about going to work. You know, companies like Unilever, underperform, and are really putting the stake in the ground, like defining themselves as that way become companies that are people who are happy to work for those organisations.

Right. Just a word to the wise for your social entrepreneurship friends, right. I gave a keynote the other day, we're talking about the starving artist, which is people that are so focused on the cause that they forget that they also need to be profitable. And so it's a balance between those two things right, you have to make sure that you've covered both parts of the combination.

Katherine Ann Byam  8:57  

Well said. I couldn't say it better. So my last question to you is going to be about pirates. I love to hear you talk about pirates. So what I'd like you to do is explain to my listeners who are part of a bigger organisation particularly what type of pirates they should be.

Tendayi Viki  9:17  

Alright, Jeff, so Alex Osterwalder, I, you know, I work with them at Strategyzer, but when I'm Associate partner and Alex hates the word pirate to describe innovators, and he says like, you don't want to be a pirate, pirates used to get killed. Right? And so, you know, I'm working on a book of pirates in the Navy and my boss hates the word pirate. But actually, when we were doing the work on the book, we discovered that not all pirates are the same right you don't get like people who just tend to use the words interchangeably pirate, buccaneer, etc. But we discovered that there's a class of pirates called privateers that are very distinct from just the typical pirate because the typical pirate is just a criminal. They're unaffiliated to anything.

They don't have any connection. Anything, they just out there roaming the high seas, doing whatever they want. And of course, that's life, if that's what you want to do. But if you want to do innovation in such large companies, you need to think of yourself more as a privateer, who is also a pirate. But they're a pirate that's actually been commissioned by someone to go out into the world and do work. For example, the British government used to commission people like Francis Drake, to go out and raise Spanish ships.

And then and then bring that back to back to the UK. So what we're saying is simply this, if you're a corporate innovator, it is important that you build a bridge between the innovation work you're doing and the core business with which you work, because there's no chance that any innovation that a corporate innovator works on is going to succeed without support from the leadership inside that organisation.

Katherine Ann Byam  10:43  

That's absolutely true. So thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us. Any closing words for either the entrepreneurs, who are out there making a big splash in the sustainability space? Or the corporates that want to do more? Any closing words?

Tendayi Viki  10:59  

Yeah, I mean, not a lot, really, I mean, the thing I've been most interested in, in all my work, is authenticity, right? So we just want to make sure that we're doing stuff that creates value rather than stuff that, you know, it's just fake and, and kind of just, you know, like people are just performing innovation theatre, rather than actually doing things that create value. So you cannot, if you're a social entrepreneur, create value. If the business you work on is not sustainably profitable, it will die.

 And then the value we're trying to create dies with it. So you have to focus on both those things. You cannot create value if all you do is events, and speakers, and all these things. If you're a corporate innovator, you also have to be thinking about right, making sure that you're also generating revenue or impact or you know, value. So that's really what we care about. And then the question just becomes, okay, if we're going to be authentic, what are the real true things that we can do in order to do valuable work, and that's really where the conversation needs to move to.

Katherine Ann Byam  11:58  

I love it. Let's take the conversation there. Thank you for joining us on Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast. 

Tendayi Viki

Thank you. 

Thanks for listening. This podcast is brought to you today by the Dieple Virtual Service Hub. The Dieple Service Hub is a digital transformation strategy service that supports startups needing to optimise their processes and their performance to scale up growth. We also help medium-sized firms and modernising their operations and our services include sustainable strategy, analytics and tech enablement. To find out more contact Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn

About this Episode

Dani Wallace Is a Public Speaking Coach, Incredible Singer, absolute survivor and a guest on my show.

We talk about her journey to overcome adversity and build a successful business and life for herself and her children. I chose this topic, because many people need hope right now, and Dani delivers this in abundance.

About Dani Wallace
As a former serial self-saboteur, having grown up on the council estates of Preston, Dani has survived the adversity of domestic violence, homelessness and single parenthood to become a leading voice in empowerment around the UK.

Dani uses her knowledge of both traditional employment in the corporate sector and self-employment in the entertainment industry to deliver memorable, inspirational and thought-provoking talks. Through her world class courses, masterminds and VIP experiences Dani helps people all over the world create incredible talks that help them stand powerfully on stage, reaching more of their ideal audiences.

Fearless leader of the I Am The Queen Bee Movement and creator of the Fly Anyway Foundation, Dani helps people the world over Show Up Wise Up and Rise and is a reminder to anyone who enters her orbit that they too, regardless of their journey can #FLYANYWAY!

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Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:14  

Hello, everyone, good night and welcome to the fourth edition of transcending work, harnessing the courage to lead. It is such a pleasure to have you all this week and a pleasure to host my guest today. So my guest is a person who I met just around April, May June area this year. She is an incredible public speaker, former singer, a former corporate employee, former many other things and she has made her way through life in the most amazing and incredible way that you can imagine. So without any hesitation, I introduce to you, Miss Dani Wallace.

Unknown Speaker  0:55  

Hello, Katherine. Hello, my darling.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:01  

Hello, Danny, and welcome to the show. How are you doing? 

Dani Wallace  1:06  

So good. I am so thrilled to be here.

Katherine Ann Byam  1:09  

So I see your backdrop is your morning show. To tell us about this morning show.

Dani Wallace  1:19  

So at the start of COVID, there was a very real possibility that because I'm a singer and a public speaking coach, and I'm really very lucky that I've got like an online business, but I had a whole entertainments business offline, I would go out and do gigs on down the country. And when lockdown in the UK was announced, there was a very real possibility that I was going to end up extending and extending my lane. And it was gonna get late to relate to that was going to have a real effect on my productivity. So what I decided to do was to go live every morning, Monday to Friday, and get ready for work. So I'd get up at 8 am. And go live and do what I'd done. for pretty much the last seven or eight years, I've been going live on Facebook for the last seven or eight years.

 And what I would do is, as a singer, you often play dressing room roulette, in that when you turn up to a venue, you never know where you're going to get put in order to get ready, nice decided to stop playing dressing room roulette. And instead what I would do is I would put my makeup on in the car, and to keep myself safe, I would put my phone up on the dashboard and talk to Facebook while doing my makeup. I thought well, why not kind of go back to my roots a little bit and I just got to put my makeup on for work in the morning.

And then realised two weeks ago that was gonna get really boring. And so I started to invite my friends on I started to invite the entrepreneurs in my space, inspirational people, motivational people in my space to come and get ready with me in the mornings come and get ready for the workday together. And as well in an answer to that, you know, putting on the news in the morning, which especially during that time was it was horrible. Yeah, it was hard to go in and to be motivated people and inspiring people are getting excited about stuff instead of allowing ourselves to be really weighed down. So then I carried on and then another week went by and another week went by and then all of a sudden I've been doing it for the past eight months.

Katherine Ann Byam  3:29  

It's incredible. Every morning at 8 pm I get a notification that Dani Wallace is Live. It's incredible. Dani, you said you said seven, eight years you've been doing these lives on Facebook, etc. Tell us about 10 years ago, tell us about your journey, your transition to becoming the absolute superstar that you are.

Podcast Part 1 starts here

Dani Wallace  3:48  

Thank you. It hasn't always been. So where I am now is I'm in a very, very, very different place to where I was say 10 years ago. And the way it was 10 years ago is a direct result of how I grew up. So I grew up on the council state of Preston. We were very very much on the breadline. And it's funny I talk about this now. In the media and on radio shows and in magazines And things and my mom always gets upset the first time I talked about this. She was like, “Daniela, were we poor” because she was just going through it. She was making ends meet. She didn't say that that's what it was. And I was like mom Yeah, we lost our house. We were having a tough time.

My dad was an alcoholic and domestic abuse was actually inherent sort of through generationally in our family. And as a child, we absorbed that. We watched what was going on and it formed a lot of my choices when I got older. So when I was 16, I essentially ran away with the circus. So I started to sing, and I fibbed about my age and I got on a plane and I ended up singing all over the world in different places. And really what I was doing is I was escaping where I was. And then, I was all over the world. It was fabulous. But people like me, people like us from here don't go on to be entertainers or singers or entrepreneurs or online whatever's.

So there was always, "come back, get a proper job." So I came back to the UK. And I was in a relationship and really what I wanted to create as a stability, and this what I didn't have - this not chaos of my younger years, and it didn't really matter. And who was there to fill this husband-shaped hole and I just filled it with this guy. Bless him. A completely railroaded him into you know, buying a house and you know, getting married and having a baby and he just kind of went along with it until one morning and a couple of weeks after we'd sent out the invites to our wedding.

He just woke up and he went, “Dani I don't want any of this,” and he left. So I was sort of left on my own single parent two weeks after we sent the invites out to the wedding to cancel the wedding. It was too close to the wedding to get anything back. So you can imagine I was feeling, (I'm allowed to swear I'm not gonna swear?) Tonight, and I'm gonna be very guilty. Now I'm gonna keep a lid on my swear words. I just get excited that's all. And but I was feeling rubbish. I was feeling pretty poor. It weren't right Good.

So what I am going very quickly because I was in that vulnerable place. And I got into another relationship very quickly and that relationship turned sour. I experienced an abusive relationship during that time and how to get out of it. And when I got out of that abusive relationship, I was then a single mom of two children under three. And then we couldn't afford to keep the house I couldn't say this kind of corporate job going along the top here. And then underneath my life was in tatters. It was all I could do to hold on to this flipping job like this.

Katherine Ann Byam 7:07  

Yeah, yeah.

Dani Wallace  7:08  

And we ended up homeless. So we ended up I ended up having to lose the house. And, and we were sofa surfing, me and the two girls, Poppy and Daisy, my big flowers. And I've had it since she's like some foliage to finish my bouquet off. And we will sell photography.  We will sleep in it pair in my parents’ house or sister's house friend's houses that were to and from London, at the time with my dog. So one night, and I was talking my kids into bed and I can't say that I wanted to die. But I didn't know how to live. I didn't.

I was like I'm not a benefit to anybody. I'm not helping anybody. Not even my kids like I'm doing the best that I can be the best that I can doesn't seem to be good enough. How have I ended up homeless with these two beautiful children? How they ended up on my backside like this. I can't seem to make a good decision or hold a good relationship down. What's wrong with me. And I had a real like, sort of breakdown moment and I had to decide at that moment. It was either gonna happen to life or life was gonna continue happening to me. I don't think that was going to end very well. Yeah.

So I started in that at that moment, I guess a night in the car and it's raining out. So it's very dramatic. I'm sure it is like when they make a film about my life. When somebody did beautiful or famous plays me, there'll be a scene where she's in the car and it's raining outside and she's crying in the car. And there was that real light that proper moment. And it was from there. I kind of got out of the car and sat down and spoke to my mom. And I was like mom, I can't go on like this. I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know how to ask for help. You know, people at work didn't know what was going on behind the scenes people at work.

So that things went right. But I was trying to kind of put on this veneer that everything was okay and was just in transition. But I was on my knees. Yeah. So I started a journey as everybody does, whether this pivotal point to the film of my life. And when I started to do a lot of work on myself. Okay, so what did taking responsibility look like? How did I choose better for myself? How did I choose better for my kids? What could I do? How do I ask for help? And I started off on that journey. So after that, not so long after that, we found somewhere to live. We were very lucky. And we're where I'm living now.

 So where I am right now is in my bedroom, in the middle still in the middle of the Council of states of Preston because that was where I had to move to. Yeah, so where I'm about to move to is like, I can't even believe that this is happening. But I've we've just said we've just bought a house we haven't we're just buying a house we're in that horrible bit in the middle where all the mortgage has been sorted in your old in on feeler. But yet we're just about to buy and move into what is the house of our dreams? So things have moved on a lot since then. Yeah, but then there was a real moment when I realised that you know, you get to choose and it's really a quote from The Bee Movie that goes, aerodynamically a bee should not be able to fly its little wings shouldn't get its fat little body off the ground. And the bee, however, doesn't care what humans think. Is it possible to fly anyway? And that was it for me. I was like, that's how you choose. 

The bee don't get the memo that it can't fly. You just got to do it. Well, I'm gonna send the memo back that people like us are successful. This lingo, which is exactly what we went on to do. And it's been just a roller coaster ever since.

Katherine Ann Byam  10:52  

So when exactly did you become the queen bee? Was it directly after you watch this movie? How did this materialise into The Queen Bee?

Dani Wallace  11:01  

I would like to say that I watched that film and then directly the day after created a public speaking business that then went on to turn over six figures. But that's not what happened. But it sowed the seed? Yeah. And it got me to thinking so remember, I was telling you about going live in the car? Yeah. So during this time, I had lost my job in corporate. And I think it was one of those situations, whether you are sort of down with universal energy or not. I am not in too much of a woo-woo way, but I definitely am.

I definitely believe in the person and all of that sort of stuff. Yes. And I believe that sometimes when you're too afraid to jump, you shall be pushed. And that's what happens. So I came out of corporate work and started to sing full time. And then my diary filled up very quickly and was very blessed in that I'm good at what I do. So I was able to fill my diary up, and we were safe and I'd be happy going live in the car like this and talking to people about my personal development journey. And I would talk about forgiveness.

I will talk about feminism. I will talk about how to be strong as a woman, how to speak how to do all of these sorts of things, and news and stuff. Some of it would be really funny, and some of it will be serious. Sometimes I would cry and then put my makeup on again. And yeah, it was so during that time, I was really thinking okay, so actually, there were people that were tuning in. And there were people who were watching regularly they would miss me when I wasn’t there, right and there's something really compelling I don't know what it is about somebody putting their makeup on it so the people start to watch and then when they watch and they listen at the same time they started to really start to get the benefit. Yeah, so how can I create something here.

And I really loved the concept of being the queen bee of making a statement, “I am The Queen Bee.” It's a very bold statement. Like I walk into places going, “I am the queen bee” and people have to get everything she has. It's not about that. It's a reclamation. When I'm saying I'm The Queen Bee. I'm not just saying - I am The Queen Bee. I'm reclaiming my birthright to success to a boom race to happiness friendships as we have.

All of this I'm reclaiming that because I was really annoyed Katherine that the Queen was born the queen and I was born on the council estate. so I'm like why neither of us got a say on this. Somebody landed easier than me and I was like why so I thought well in this reclamation in this statement and the bees do the most incredible things that I could do a whole conversation about bees and how amazing analogies for business in life we could use. But I'm the queen bee really spoke to this, standing up and this choosing to fly anyway.

I love the concept of grabbing hold of your own crown and bobbing that on and then you know what seeing your friends and if their crowns a bit wobbly straightening up their crown and sending them on the way as well and that is really how the concept started is. The more I spoke to people the more I realised that we are yes we all get to choose but you know you can say I am the queen. Absolutely as our you as our again anybody watching whether you're male, female gender, binary, you know, whatever it is king bee, queen bee, royal be whatever it is.

And Claudia MacFarlane is asking, Oh, hi, Claudia. In your journey to self-development, what were your biggest challenge and the habits you needed to break? And the biggest one for me, Claudio was the acceptance of myself. So what I always sought was external validation. And what you find is that people often let you down. And I'm not saying that people like, like your friends or your family but when you are seeking external validation when you're seeking peace and happiness, and wealth because wealth isn't just the money in your bank account when you're seeking those things from outside of yourself, then it is very difficult to obtain and keep hold of it.

So what I had to learn was how to love and accept myself in my entirety with my flaws and my perfections like I’m perfectly imperfect. And that didn't come till much later when I started to see where I am now and practice gratitude. So I needed to break being a victim. I needed to stop thinking life was happening to me and realise everything was happening for me. I just got to choose the outcome and my reactions dictating my outcome. But there was this really funny moment that I had.

And I was sad even I was feeling grateful for everything that was going on. And I’m surrounded by brilliant people. And, and when I look back, and I've done a lot of work on looking back on past Dani, that girl sat in the car who just hated itself. She didn't know how to live with herself anymore. And I look back on her and I go, God, I love you. I want to start to cry, like, Oh, I love her so much. She fought really, really hard. And then what she did, is then fought really, really hard to get to where I am now. And then I can now envisage future Dani, because I know that now. Dani loves the past Dani. That future Danny loves this Dani vehemently.

She's like cheering around saying Yes, come on, we've got the good stuff over here. You can do it. I love you. But it's me saying that to me. It's not anybody else saying that to me. It's me giving myself that validation is that understanding that it's got to come from you. In order for it to for you to be able to obtain and maintain that development. you've got to understand and love and acknowledge yourself.

Katherine Ann Byam  16:57  

Absolutely. Now, absolutely. It's incredible your journey. And I wouldn't pivot a little bit to the point in time when we met. We met before as and we were in a group together. But we actually interacted because of Black Lives Matter. And I don't know if you exactly if you must’ve remembered this. So I decided to wire you up that week. And yeah, and it was about a programme you were running. It was a charity programme. Yeah. And Claudia saying that she loves your NGO. Just put that on screen. 

Show notes (Part 2)

Katherine Ann Byam  

So you were running, you were running a charity event.

Dani Wallace  17:39  

Yeah, the Big Festoon.

Katherine Ann Byam  17:40  

And someone decided to flag you for not being inclusive, or she felt that you weren't being inclusive enough. And that week, as I will just tell a little bit my story in that week. I mean, all sorts of things were happening in that week that I wasn't ready to deal with, right? So all of a sudden, it's like people have been, you know, impacted by racism all of my life. But that week, something happened. It was there was a shift, there was a movement that, that just broke things and in a good way.

 But what I saw and what I experienced that week at least online was a lot of women like me coming out and speaking their truth. And I'm not used to hearing that or speaking it you know, and I felt so uncomfortable that week. I remember thinking like I can't handle this. Every story that I read or I heard I wanted to cry like it was it was just such a powerful week in terms of getting connected with things that you've been suppressing for so long. So I empathise with that lady who got in your case, and you will get to tell the story. But I empathise with her because I recognise that even I didn't know the best way to deal with feeling oppressed. So if you can speak about that,

Dani Wallace  19:02  

I absolutely can. And it's really not my place to kind of fill up and get emotional for you and with your base because you're my friend and I love you. And so that week, I put on a charity event now wide. I'm a survivor of domestic abuse and often watch the media with regards to what's been commented about it because I am an ally and a spokesperson when it comes to things that happen in the news. So for example, I will speak on Channel five about it when you know there are no refuge spaces and what have you. So I've noticed in the news that there was an increase of 700%.

We were seven weeks into lockdown and the increase was 700% in terms of domestic abuse, and I was like and wall sat here in the ivory tower thinking I can do something here um, but we live every day anyway, so I'm going to make this happen. So what I did is from my bedroom, I created a charity event to raise money for domestic violence charities women's aid. I was interviewing 24 people ended up being 25 people plus 25 sponsors. So I was like interviewing 50 people over the course of 12 hours to raise money for charities. Now, it is something that I have been making a conscious effort to work on for a couple of years now to make sure that the things that I do are diverse, or we have that in the middle of what we think is our value as absolutely a real core value. So when I was creating the lineup or trying to scramble together in a couple of weeks, this lineup,

 I’m thinking so it's really important. This isn't tokenism, I just wanted to make sure we had a diverse spread of people. So I didn't want a full lineup of white people. Because it was wrong. Like it. It wasn't right. So we had members of the black community, we had members of the Asian community, members of the Jewish community, we have disabled people, members of the LGBTQ community.  You can imagine that's quite broad. Yes. And booked, I thought I've done okay. And like, I never should just pat myself on the back. Yes. Good job, Daniela. That very week was the week that George Floyd was murdered.

And that week was the week where really, the lid was really lifted off the conversation as he's writing proper, about moving things forward, and how should we move things forward. But when you plaster off something that you are never allowed to expose, there's hurt there, and there's pain there. And you know, you've experienced it yourself. And, you know, being a friend of so many members of the black community are being an ally, and really sit in there and just trying to hold space was all I could do is just hold some space that week. And go and stand side by side with my brothers and sisters and siblings and speak as a white ally.

And do all of those, just try and hold that space. Because it was painful.  I'd done this event because I want to pull the event. Is even right that I do it. And I just think, no because there were still lots of other people that need help him right now. And they are also members of the black community that are victims of domestic abuse. So I would be silly if I was going to stop all of this now. So what I did is I made a conscious effort on the day, I was like, made sure that we spoke about this with all of our guests made sure that you know, we were sharing relevant things on the day. And but some somebody really, and it was only really one person, but it was enough that from a real place of her was like “Your lineup is not diverse. In fact, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to create a smear campaign and say that actually.” One of the things that were said is this woman has just raised the Confederate flag.

And I was like, definitely. Because there's a difference between accepting that there's more to be done, and simply being just wrong. Yeah. So again, but as a white person at that time, it's not my place to start going, “Well, actually.” There's so much pain like even is my pain in that is nothing. So all I could do is kind of absorb what this person was saying. And this person was trying to create like me, and just sit there and hold steady and say to my audience, look, yes, there was more than I could have done.

Yeah, there's more. There's more than I could have done. But I don't know what else to do. So what I'm going to do going forward is just keep trying my best. That's all I can do. And I look for ways to move forward together. And you reached out and you were so kind to me that day because I was able to do this and feeling guilty for a bit because so many of my black friends were in pain isn't even the right word. It's generational like rage and hurt.

Katherine Ann Byam  23:59  

It is such a complicated emotion. Like, I don't think I felt something like that. I mean, I felt a lot of things in my life. But I think I've not felt the pain of coming out the way I felt it in that week. Right? That it was a release. And I remember taking an action in that week, that was probably overdue for six months, right because of an experience that I'd had. And I took action that week saying I will never work with this person.

 I will never do this again. You know, but it takes it took that it took that moment of realising Hey, you know, this is meant to be a balanced playing field for everyone. You have in your mind that that, you know, you don't even realise where you get this belief from. So you have this thing displayed, this track running in your head which isn't allowing you to step into yourself and step into your pride and step into who you are. So so it's been an incredible journey and I love that that's the moment that I connected with you. Because you're such a bundle of light and opening so much space for so many people, and this is why you're on my show. This is why I have introduced you to everybody. So Dani, tell everybody about flying away Fly Anyway.

Dani Wallace  25:30  

I think he's, I think when you meet people when I just kind of want to say when you do meet people in those situations when you meet them in love, yes, powerful things happen. And I think that was what I learned at that time. And it was a test for myself,. Could I hold space for anger directed at me that is righteous? It might not belong to me personally. But can I hold space for that person? And the answer was, yes, it was my job. If this all I can do is hold space for that anger, and say, You know what?

 Just if I could, if I could be the sounding board for that anger, for now, while you're getting your thoughts in order, then please let me be your friend. And I love you. And I will accept that anger from you. And I think that was really that was what I learned at that moment is how do I do that? And it's painful for everybody. The whole thing is, you know, as people who believe that their allies suddenly realise that that again, that they the curtain is lifted, and they can start to see, actually what they've been privy to all along. Yes. And they didn't realise it.

So on both sides plus has been ripped off and like all of this stuff. So that's really what I learned. And during that time is how do you hold space for somebody who's angry, and anger might not belong to you personally, but it still belongs to you, it's still yours, you still got to absorb some of it and understand how to make things better. So and So yeah, I just kind of wanted to say that. The Fly Anyway foundation is very exciting. It's something that I've been wanting to create for the longest time; where, if somebody like you, for example, somebody really inspirational like you or somebody like me, had been able to look after me and really helped me with my mindset stuff properly, excited to go and read books and audibles and stuff, there is a degree of having to do the work.

But if I'd have had access to business services, or like things like website design, branding, photography, because I'm clever. I'm very intelligent, which in the corporate an incredible job for years and years, and knew how to build a business. But I was so on my knees that there was no way that I could afford to have a website build, there was no way that I could afford it. But I could barely afford to feed myself and my kids. So what I've done is I've created a foundation of social enterprise, where survivors of domestic abuse who are ready are able to come and access funds and support so that they can create the businesses that they really want.

Yeah, so often, when you are a survivor, you will want to create a new identity of yourself, not a different identity. But the new improved and galvanised version of yourself as sometimes that involves like your work, like what work do you want to do, and survivors often serve as well. So you'll often find that survivors are going to be things that coaches or they'll help people.

They might not have access to brand photographers, or business coaching, or mindset coaching. So what we're doing is we are creating (and this is a call to action tonight). We're creating a bank of ambassadors who are willing to either donate or discount their goods and services because it won't be the 1000s and 1000s of 1000s of people. Yes. And then we'll have a pot of money that will fundraise so that say, for example, you're a fledgling company, and you're really incredible at what you do. But you really want to be an ambassador, we will be able to pay you for your goods and services.

You know, we're able to support grassroots because grassroots businesses are so important. Now more so than ever. Yes, all this pot of money that will be available for us to pay for business goods and services for survivors of domestic abuse and domestic violence who are wanting to build businesses. So it's almost like we get to hold hands and lift each level. We just hope. Yeah. So we become a hub of small businesses and medium-sized businesses and micro businesses and big businesses actually reaching out a hand to those people out there who are ready to create and allow them the space to do it and allow them the funds to do it as well. 

So the Fly Anyway foundation is on the search for ambassadors and we're going to be having a big sort of zoom meeting about that on the seventh of November. I don't know the eighth of November if I'm live.

Katherine Ann Byam  29:55  

Awesome, so people can participate. How can people participate if they wanted to support the idea? So we, we have Charlotte saying, I'd love to be an ambassador, how do we apply it?

Dani Wallace  30:06  

So we are just in the process of creating the invitation and space on my website where you can go and register your interest to be an ambassador. So before the end of the weekend, there'll be a space on the name of The Queen Bee website, where you can go on and register your interest. And then we'll send you an invite to the zoom. And it's going to be like a town hall at seven o'clock UK time. On Sunday, the eighth of November, we've chosen the eighth of November, because that was the day I was originally meant to get married. So that was the day that the wedding was cancelled. And also the day that I got homeless.

 So I wanted to make that day a day where actually I took real action. So at 7pm on Sunday, the eighth of November's anybody who wants to be an ambassador, can either just make us make themselves known to me. Come into my world, follow me on socials for more information. And then in the next, say, in the next four or five days on my website, we'll be pushing out, how do you sort of sign up to come on to that zoom?

Katherine Ann Byam  31:05  

Yeah, fantastic. So I'm absolutely willing to promote that. So when you're ready to send me the links. I will share it with everyone. And the last thing I guess is to tell us about your book. So So a little bit of story before we get to the book, right? So I think it was about a month ago, maybe just under two months ago, Dani just locked off the show and started writing this book. I have never seen someone turn around the book in what, two weeks?

Dani Wallace  31:33  

Yeah, it was three and a half if you add for procrastination. Yeah, it was a book in two weeks is what I'd seen. So tell us about your new book.

Dani Wallace  31:46  

So what I wanted to do so I wanted to create a book. So I've got a little book, which is like a how-to it's called “Closed Mouths Don't Get Fed.” It's just this tiny little book. So we're a public speaking coach. But because I share my story as a motivational speaker about everyone, really everything that we've spoken about this evening, about my story, where I come from, and how specifically, I overcame the years of generational self-sabotage, to go on to create a six-figure business in the online space, and all of that sort, all of their kind of the entrepreneurial. I've got successful businesses. It's nice. It's good.

And but I really had to do a lot of work on myself in order for me to do that. Because if you remember people Iike us don't go on to make a success of themselves. Right. So what I wanted to do is pull together a mixture of an autobiography that flushed out some of the talks that I gave it give a bit more detail a bit more background on why is that I do what I do. And then so tell the story of the last 12 to 18 months, because then that's when things have gone from that to this. Whereas now you know, you know, I am asked to you know, pass comment in the media on stuff and I am and I do sellout events now. And it is just, it's just phenomenal.

 Yeah, so wanted to do not how-to but like a beginner's guide to getting out of your own flipping way. And, and I thought now more than ever, it's important because I think when you're in fear, and a lot of people have been in fear this year, and rightly so. Because if I hear the word unprecedented one time,  I'll just I'll get vomit. But if I could give a survival guide to at least introduce how to get out of your own way so that you can create success and you stand up and say, “I am the queen bee too.” And that's what I wanted to do. So that's the premise for the book. It's called I'm the queen bee how. This is how I overcome self-sabotage and how you can, too. 

And which released next Thursday you can't buy it yet to buy on Thursday next week because we've got a best seller campaign.

Katherine Ann Byam  33:57  

Alright, so I will be tweeting and commenting and posting that everywhere next week. 

Katherine Ann Byam

Wonderful. Any closing notes from you Dani on how people can find you, how people can follow you, or even get into your morning show. Tell my audience.

Dani Wallace  34:16  

If you would like to come and speak with me and get ready for the day of the show, The Rise Up show applications are open on Friday. So please do give us a follow either you know on Instagram or drop if you're watching on LinkedIn, drop me a message on LinkedIn.

And even though I'm not super active on LinkedIn, I am in my inbox there so you can DM me. You can get in touch with me across the socials at The Queen Bee Dani and all of the kind of kickoff info will be on there so you can apply to be on the show from Friday. If you want to become an ambassador for the Fly Anyway Foundation, we’ll be banging that drum from Monday onwards. And yeah, I think you just come and get in my world. And I'm excited. I'm excited because I'm working with you too.

Katherine Ann Byam  35:02  

I’m excited. So don't judge my public speaking performance yet. Okay. But as of last night, I am working with this woman to help me to be the best I could be, which is so exciting. Like, I can't, I can't wait to get roped into this. And the journey has been incredible for me. I mean, I can tell a little bit about that as well. But when I started in my business, I was afraid to be visible.

 I was doing everything behind the scenes, right? I didn't want to be out there. And that's slowly changed, right? It's slowly changed from around this time last year, but it really changed from around April after I got over the shock of all my business going away with COVID. I suddenly realised hang on here. No, I need to show up here. I need to do something. I need to be who I am meant to be. I need to take space. And it's taken me a while. It's been a journey over the last six months. But I would have never imagined going live on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever a year ago. 

Dani Wallace:

Oh, We’re having a chat on your podcast.

Katherine Ann Byam

Oh having a chat in the podcast - it's crazy. No the latest in the podcast is 17 countries now.  So it's nuts and top 10 in eight countries.  Like seriously, it's nuts. And I never would have imagined that could possibly happen. And that's been a journey of being prepared to put me out there. And it's like, it's not that I had any training, right? I just went, I just did it and now I'm gonna improve those skills. But yeah, but part of it is to just go. It's about courage and I like to say to people confidence is overrated. It's all about courage, right? It's more about standing proud in your courage and saying, “Hey, I'm out here, and I'm imperfect, but I'm still gonna do it, I'm still gonna push on.”  And I think you embody that.

Dani Wallace  36:59  

And that's a difference between people who make it in inverted commas. They're the people that are willing to do the thing that everybody else isn't willing to do--- that are willing to record that podcast and put it out there, that are willing to turn up live at eight o'clock every morning, that are willing to write the book, that are willing to spend all the plates of the incredible businesses, that you run, that are willing to put themselves out there invest in themselves. Confidence is a hat that you put on knowing and accepting of yourself. Confidence doesn't arrive one day people wait for confidence to arrive and it's not a step that you take. You take steps towards confidence.

Katherine Ann Byam  37:36  

Yes, absolutely. So I hope we have inspired many people tonight. If not tonight I hope they all watch it on the replay. If you do watch it on the replay, hit #replay so that we know that you watched and you know we will post links so that you can follow Dani, etc. So thank you Dani for joining me. This has been an absolute pleasure. I love your energy.  You lift my energy. So it's always a pleasure to spend that time with you. And thank you to everyone who's joined and asked questions and interacted with us. So see you next week for another edition of the show. Claudia says thank you very much. Fabulous. See you next week.

About this Episode

I discovered Todd Henry during an online summit on Productivity, and I've followed his work ever since.

We had a great chat recording Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast for the Unexpected Innovator, where we talked about the privilege of finding meaning when many are simply are trying to survive.

Efficiency is overrated he said, and effectiveness contributes to real value in an organisation.

Positioning himself as an “arms dealer for the creative revolution”, Todd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is the author of four books (The Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Louder Than Words, and Herding Tigers) which have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he speaks and consults across dozens of industries on creativity, leadership, and passion for work.

He's got a new book on the way. The Motivation Code. Tune in to our podcast on your favourite player today.

Subscribe to Where Ideas Launch

Episode Transcript

Katherine Ann Byam  0:02  

Todd, welcome to Where Ideas Launch. 

Todd Henry  0.05 

Thanks, Katherine. It's great to be here.

wonderful to have you. Todd, I invited you to the show first, because I love your work. My personal mission is to inspire one million people to transcend the very notion of work, replacing it with purpose and meaningful activity. I believe your book Die Empty expresses this very well. So I wanted to start with one question. You talk a lot about purpose, and that each of us has our own voice and needs to find it. Yet, as the world becomes more digital and inter-connected, it's difficult to slow the noise and find out white space and even earn a living once you found that white space. How would you go about guiding people who may be struggling right now to approach their search for decent and meaningful work?

Todd Henry  2:04  

There is a really great question. I think so many of us right now are just struggling to survive, right? I think even the fact that anybody is able to ask the question, How do I find meaning and my work is an incredible gift. It's a blessing right now, because so many people are just trying to find work or just trying to hold things together. So I want to start with that really strong caveat. That, you know, it is a privileged position that we're even able to ask that question right now. So if you're not in that place, I don't want you to feel anything that I'm saying as a burden or feel as if it's in any way that you're doing something wrong. I mean, we're all trying to get through to the other side of this right now.

That said, I think that there are little clues that are planted in our lives throughout the course of our life that indicate what we're wired for the places where we're wired to add disproportionate value - I call that your sweet spot. And I'm not the only one that calls it that. But that's really what it is, I think it is. The sweet spot on the baseball bat is the area where if you hit it with the same force, you're gonna get more return. The ball is going to travel a far greater distance. And if you hit it marginally off the sweet spot.

 And I think we each have a sweet spot. We have an area of maximum effectiveness. But many of us never find it because we don't look for clues. We don't pay attention. Instead, we morph and mould into whatever others expect of us, which I think in the long term creates a situation where we live our lives bounded by the expectations of other people. And I want to be really clear, I'm not talking about the advice of other people we trust. We should listen to the advice of other people, we need other people in order to understand who we are. But at the same time, we can't live our lives bounded by the expectations of other people who don't really understand how we're wired, don't understand who we are, what it is we're trying to do in the world.

I am of the very strong opinion that very few people in the world are being called to change the world, right. But I do believe everybody is called to change the world around them. So I believe that the way that we discover what we're wired to do in the world is by trying a lot of things, by seeking to be resourceful and add value to any place that we are. So whatever you're doing whatever's in front of you wherever you happen to be working or living or existing or relating to others.

Just try to add as much value any place you can wherever you are and just see what clicks. See what the patterns reveal about yourself. I navigated my way into doing what I'm doing now. But I didn't set out to be an author. I didn't set out to teach. I didn't set out to you know podcast into creating content and work with clients and advise leaders. I didn't set out to do any of those things.

They kind of evolved over time as I discovered the places where I was contributing the most value and I was using my gifts to serve others. So if you take that mindset of I'm going to bring as much value as I can, wherever I am, and add value and be resourceful, and then pay attention to the patterns, then you're going to navigate to where you need to be.

Katherine Ann Byam  5:08  

That's really interesting and loved it especially the part about saying that it's a privilege to be able to look for meaningful work. And, and probably I want to take a little bit of a detour on that point. And ask about, you know, how can we, as businesses even create that meaningful work for our people?

Todd Henry  5:28  

Yeah, I think it just even having the conversation is a pretty rare thing. You know most organisations aren't willing to have that conversation. They're not willing to ask people, whether they feel engaged, whether they feel motivated. Most research would indicate that full three-quarters, two-thirds to three-quarters of people are actively disengaged at work each day.

 And a big chunk of that is because managers aren't seeing engagement as an objective necessity, or they see it as an objective, but they don't know what to do about it. So I believe that the first thing that we have to do is we have to have meaningful conversations with our people about moments when they feel engaged, moments when they feel disengaged, how are you feeling about the work right now?

Are you feeling like your core motivations are being activated in your work? Do you feel like the work that you're doing is challenging to you, but not too challenging? Do you clearly understand expectations? If not, how can I clarify expectations? Those kinds of conversations- we just let things go and we don't have we're not intentional about those conversations. But we have to be intentional if we want to engage the people in our organisation. And so I think that that's the first step is just having a conversation about how people are feeling and living and being inside of our organisations.

Katherine Ann Byam  6:54  

Yeah. Now, that's really good advice. And I want to pivot a little bit to the sort of creative industry - the traditional creative industries. So the musicians, the artists that theatrical performers, so there is an idea that they might be facing an existential crisis. I mean, some politicians have even made some interesting comments about what these people should be doing right now in terms of looking for jobs and work. But yet, I'm somehow excited about the idea of bringing this type of talent or this type of specialist into a traditional organisation to help spread creativity. So what are your thoughts on how companies can go about increasing this cognitive diversity on their teams? Without, I guess, losing what they're good at in terms of efficiency?

Todd Henry  7:45  

Well, I think efficiency is overrated. I believe efficiency is a mark, not a goal. Right? I think, you know, if we can be efficient and effective at the same time, that's great. But I will take effectiveness over efficiency any day of the week because effectiveness equates the value it equates to creating to accomplishing what it is we're trying to accomplish.

And so I think one of the reasons that we typically don't like to have a diversity of thought in our teams is because the way that we measure success as organisations is often how well are we managing our finite resources versus how much value are we turning those finite resources into for the people that we serve? And we have to do both. But I think we err on this side of maximising efficiency when we need to have people with diverse patterns of thought, in our conversations, asking, why are we doing this? And this is the right thing. And what if we tried this? And what if we tried that that's very inefficient at the moment.

But it can be very effective in the long term. We measure in snapshots, not intervals. We should be measuring in intervals of effectiveness, not snapshots of efficiency if we really want to produce the best value we can for the people that were tasked with serving.

Katherine Ann Byam  9:07  

Great response. The last question I want to ask today is How can parents raise their children to be more creative at a time when interacting with others is limited and where they have to go through this digital noise? I see a lot of parents struggling with the balance between screen time and sort of playtime. But even these days, when you can't interact, what do we do with our kids?

Todd Henry  9:33  

I think a couple of things. First of all, you have to understand what you're trying to do with your kids. Right? So I see our job as parents, my wife and I have three teenagers. And so we have one that'll be 18 here very shortly in less than a month. You're basically an adult right at least in age. You're our job is to create wise kids.

We want to instill wisdom in our kids, meaning we want them to be able to spot patterns and make good decisions based on their experiences. So in order to do that, you have to, first of all, you have to be able to spot those patterns, which means you have to be able to think deeply enough, not be distracted, constantly by whatever comes across your field of view.

So pretty early on in their life, like we did not let them watch TV for the first handful of months of their life. We didn't give them phones and just let them have devices at the table when we went to a restaurant to keep them quiet like we made them be present at the moment, we made them have adult conversations, and we're starting to see the fruit of that. Now listen, I never give parenting advice. Because the moment you give parenting advice, you're guaranteeing that your kids are going to you know, take a left turn and it's gonna turn out poorly. Yeah, because that seems to be the pattern.

But I think, you know, understanding your objective, what are you trying to do? You're trying to create kids who are wise. So we have family dinner every night, and we have conversations about what's going on in the world. We'll talk about politics, we'll talk about what happened that day, we'll talk about things we’re frustrated about, we're talking about things we're excited about, we'll talk about what's really going on with a pandemic. And we expect our kids to have a point of view, we expect them to come to those conversations with some perspective.

And I think again, what we're trying to do is model for them how we think about things and hopefully instill a bit of wisdom in them. Your kids get anxious when you shelter them from harm when you shelter them from bad news when you shelter them from all the effects of the world. Because the reality is, they know what's going on. They suspect what's going on. And when they don't when you're not telling them, it creates anxiety because they fear that things might be actually much worse than you're letting on.

So I feel like having respectful conversations with your kids and expecting them to have a point of view. Even if it's an immature point of view, that's fine, just but have a point of view. And then talking with them in a meaningful way about what's going on, I think creates a tremendous amount of runway for them. And I think it begins to instill a bit of wisdom in them. And I think that's our objective as parents.

Katherine Ann Byam  12:19  

That's really fantastic advice. I'm so glad you joined us for this talk. Probably one last question, how can people find out more about you?

Todd Henry  12:29  

The best way to find me Is it my website toddhenry.com. Or if you want to learn more about my new book called The motivation Code, you can visit toddhenry.com/themotivationcode/ and that'll take you to the assessment and all the work that we're doing on understanding what truly drives people.

Katherine Ann Byam  12:45  

Wonderful. Thanks for joining us, and thanks for listening to where it is lunch. Thanks for listening. This podcast is brought to you today by the depot virtual service hub. The virtual service hub is our digital transformation strategy service that supports startups needing to optimise their processes and their performance to scale up the growth. We also help medium-sized firms and modernising their operations and Our services include sustainable strategy, analytics, and tech enablement. To find out more contact Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn