Growth Mindset Wealth: AI Powered Leadership and Smart Business Strategies with Stephanie Hayes

0:00 And I say, Hey, I learned about this idea. I was having this thought, let's take a little team and go explore that. So instead of being like, oh, we're going to go follow a new direction. It's like, hey, I wonder, I wonder what could happen. And you give people the permission and the, and the ownership of exploring that piece and you respect what they come back with. That's curiosity.

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1:13 Visit grayfieldsolicitors.com today to book your free consultation. We are live. Ladies and gentlemen, you once again welcome to the Kingdom's podcast. And today I've got will meet a very, very, very special guest fighting out of British Columbia. Welcome Stephanie, the Founders founder. Hey. How are you Stephanie it? Was quite an introduction.

1:42 Thank you very much. I am doing well you're. Welcome. Wow, you know. That's the Bruce Buffer introduction, you know, in MMAUFC, you know, and that's why I was. Asking you if you know anything about UFC, but I guess you can tell. You can tell your peak boy about it, that you got a Bruce Buffer introduction today, yeah?

2:01 I'm sure he'll be very impressed. He's not impressed with much of anything these days, so. Wow, wow, wow, wow. I hope. I hope he does. You know you are a strategist, founder, innovator, mentor, and much more. Can't you share a defining moment from your journey that ship to your perspective on entrepreneurship and innovation?

2:23 And those are two things that are important to yourself and myself. Right, Yeah, You know, I think there's a a point in time that all sort of entrepreneurs go through where they finally realise they have the. I wouldn't even say it's permission, but the capability to follow any path, right. And I can remember with that moment that I made the transition from I have to do what other people are doing because that makes sense to I've got this crazy idea and I'm just going to, that's what it's going to be. If I felt it in my heart, I knew what it was going to be. And I was in Texas of all places, not somewhere that I go a lot, but I was with a client and a retreat. And we were spending the day

3:06 just kind of, you know, putting all our stuff on the wall and looking at our own businesses. And I was looking at all of this stuff that I've done, all these things that I've tried, all these skills I've created and all these projects I've worked on. And I was like, I'm not really, I don't feel like I'm building anything, right.

3:24 I'm just kind of pinballing from one thing to another. And it's all good. And I've gained a lot of experience. But I wanted to feel like there was something that was mine and that I had a real purpose that I was working towards. And that's when this whole sort of direction evolved for me around exits and strategy and building growth strategy from an exit perspective.

3:47 And assets inside our business and why are we, you know, spending all our time chasing income when we could be building something that's going to create value for us in the long term that's much bigger than, you know, the income that we're chasing today. And so this whole path sort of evolved and it felt so aligned and so completely right for me.

4:05 And then the conversations that I started having with people in my community, it just all resonated. And that was the moment that I realised that not only is this the direction I want to focus on, but it's also totally fine for me to be able to just say, this is not a conversation people are having right now. It's not a typical path.

4:24 And that's also OK. Like I can create that myself. And that was really empowering. And that was, it felt very, very aligned for me. And I think it takes like some people take a very long time and lots of people take a very long time to get to that point where they're like, this is it for me. And I love seeing those transitions with entrepreneurs.

4:44 Wow, There's a lot to unpack here. I did an episode, I think probably a few months ago, I'm not very, very sure. I think probably about three months ago with a guy from your neck of the woods. And I think the title of that episode is Beautiful Exit. So basically we're talking about building businesses for the purpose of exit strategies. And while you're doing that, the way you run the business is different from the way you run business, you know, on a regular basis because you are very, very concerned about valuation of that business because the valuation of a business is what makes it attractive for exit.

5:29 So I'd like for you to touch on valuation when it comes to viewing businesses for exit. I think that it's not quite as cut and dried as that. And I think that's what I had sort of come to this conclusion around that there. I guess there are lots of people who focus on exit strategy and then that becomes the laser focus that we just want to build the business for valuation, right.

5:53 And I think that there's a lot of value and, and this is what I will do with my clients is we'll we'll start from a valuation perspective and say what would, what would the business get you right now? Like just right now, you wanted to sell it, what would it get you? But the most important part of that conversation is the the risk adjustments, right? So when you go through risk adjustments inside evaluation, that's where you start to see all the opportunities. That's where you start to see where you can take this business to ultimately reach evaluation.

6:21 That's attractive and that is, is something that you want to put in front of a buyer. But I'll say the piece that gets missing there with, you know, a lot of these sort of a focused guys is that when you're solely when you when you shift your focus in your business to just think about valuation, you're still gonna be building a business.

6:41 You might be building a business that you don't really like. And there's a problem with that because you're not gonna put your effort in your you, you become quite burned out and quite unhappy. And my goal is to have business owners building business that they are super in love with and that, you know, our strategies are derived from what we can create in terms of valuation in the future.

7:01 So both those things have to be true. And so we have that combination like I might come up with a bunch of strategies based on your valuation that are going to increase your valuation, but you might never want to do one of those strategies because it's so out of alignment for you and it's not something that you could ever envision doing inside your business. And so the creative part of this and the creative strategic part of this is to be able to marry those two things. How can I put a business owner in their most powerful position, doing their most powerful work and creating a growth strategy that's going to get them to a place where they have a much more valuable business.

7:35 So those two things, I just would say there's a caveat to the whole build just for an exit. I think that that it's very hard as a business owner to put go day-to-day, putting your time and effort into a business that is not aligned with what you actually want to build. Absolutely. And if I were to summarise what you're talking about, you're talking about achieving a balance or an optimal mix of passion and profit, Passion and profit. Profit, right?

8:03 Yeah. Yeah, so if you, if you optimise passion and profit, definitely the value would typically go up. So the obsession should not be on the valuation, but the obsession should be on, you know, using the passion to drive profit. And yeah, if you do the right way, the valuation will actually get into a good place, especially with guidance from financial experts like Stephanie Hayes. You know, Speaking of profits, there's something I always love to say that revenue is vanity, profit the sanity, and cash is king.

8:38 And if you wish, you can say cash is reality and profit says that you're winning in business or cash flows determines how long you stay in business. And I know that's something you would agree with me. So when you talk about innovation beyond just profits, which is key to your philosophy highlighting relevance, you know, stewardship, safety, and trust, could you please elaborate on why these often overlooked aspects of innovation are critical for sustainable business growth? So innovation, this was my post grad work was in an innovation management.

9:22 So I had this sort of near and dear to my heart. But so a lot of people think like innovation is sexy, right? It's sexy for profit businesses. And then I even I work with a lot of not like public sector organisations that still want to not necessarily not-for-profit, but but public sector organisations, right. So they're not, you know, they're, they're still bringing in money, but they're doing it for the purposes of something different, right.

9:50 And so they're funding the organisation. So a lot of it becomes the sort of sexy thing. And I see a lot of organisations sort of follow a cookie cutter approach to innovation inside of an organisation and people just want to focus on the making cool things. But when innovation is actually part of your strategy and is very important to your strategy and to your growth, then you need to manage it. And that sounds really like counterintuitive and it doesn't sound sexy and fun.

10:22 But you've got to put a, a structure in place so that you are actually doing something with the results of your innovation and that you are being very conscious and very focused and intentional about why you're innovating. So I've got a public sector organisation I'm working with to design their innovation strategy.

10:43 And you know, the, the sort of the feet on the street, they're like, yeah, innovation. They try to follow all of the strategies of for profit organisation, but there's so much missing because they don't like their reason for innovating is to be good stewards of taxpayer money. They're they that so that they are for regulatory and, and, and safety concerns. So that they are, you know that they are doing the right thing for their constituents.

11:11 Those are not the same motivators that a for profit organisation like a tech product company is investing in innovation, right? And so you have very different structures and very different processes for managing innovation inside both those organisations. So there's a really good book that was written many years ago about managing innovation and why you have to actually have a process for taking the result, like being very systematic about what you discover as part of your innovation process and making decisions about what you're going to do with it.

11:43 And having sort of a container for innovation. It's not just about, yeah, blue sky. Just go out and try all these things. Well, it's not very valuable to the business if that's what you're doing, right. So I do believe that there's a whole other side of innovation, which is about the management of it and about the optimization of what you're investing in and also ethics and security and safety and all of that sort of thing that you have to consider as particularly, you know, based on the environment that you're in.

12:11 There's a lot to unpack here in terms of the motivation, right? You clearly put it that sometimes you could do the right thing out of the wrong motivation, but that is not sustainable. When you do the right thing, one out of the right motivation, that is when you're able to achieve sustainability. Is that correct?

12:36 Yes. And what you do with the results of your innovation process is super important, right. If you're just going out there and being like everybody just submit ideas, OK, what are you going to do with those ideas and, and how do you, how do you process those? How do you prioritise those? How do you how do you take those through a very rigorous process so that you are ensuring you're getting the most value out of every step of your, you know, your innovation process? And I've seen organisations just stand up an innovation team and they're like, yeah, here's some money, just go and do whatever you want.

13:09 But then they build something that's actually in conflict with the values of the organisation or in conflict with, they're just not sustainable for, you know, the business. And so I, there's a huge like value in blue sky thinking, but then you also have to be able to integrate the results of that blue sky thinking into the existing organisation.

13:31 And the decision there is do I change something? There's enough value in what we've discovered that I changed something inside the organisation or this is an incremental innovation. So I have to figure out how to integrate it with what we've got already. Or sometimes there's pressure for timelines, right?

13:49 I have to get this to market much more quickly. So that means I'm going, I can't invent something totally new for the way that we're going to sustain and deliver this. And maybe there's an incremental roll out for whatever we've discovered. So there's like, there's a lot that goes into innovation and I think a lot of people don't understand that. There's a lot of moving pieces, a lot of moving variables, you know, when it comes to innovation and especially when it's tech really related, rather the speed with which you know when I say technological advancement happens is very, very massive.

14:26 So sometimes you're even on a project to achieve a particular outcome and then there is already like an upgraded solution to that problem you're trying to solve. Innovation is quite a tricky 1, and I think that's why it needs to be properly strategized, properly planned. And we need experts like yourself, you know, to guide the process, you know, and of course, Speaking of guiding the process, you have actually successfully coached overall 10,000 individuals into becoming thriving these as owners through Fully Booked VA. What's the most common obstacle people face when transitioning from traditional jobs to entrepreneurship, and how can they overcome challenges?

15:10 There's, I would say there's sort of two things. There's the the mindset of having been an employee and having someone tell you what. To mindset, I love that you know that the subtitle of the show is Growth Mindset, Leadership and Business Insights, so I'm happy you're mentioning the mindsets. You are validating the purpose of this show.

15:33 Thank you and God bless. You 90% of the coaching we do inside fully booked Virginia is mindset coaching right, So the tactical stuff is the easy part it's. Exactly. Getting from that place, if somebody is telling me what to do to getting to the place where I have to decide what I'm doing on my own.

15:53 And that's very, very confronting for a lot of people. And there's this, you know, the other side of that is confidence and having the confidence to trust yourself to know that you are going to take some action and it may or may not result in what you're hoping it results in. But when we shift that mindset from a mindset of judgement, like everything has to be either good or bad, to a judgement mindset of curiosity where it's like, OK, this happened.

16:19 It wasn't what I expected to happen or what I wanted to happen. But now I have better information and I'm like this much further ahead. So a lot of people just stall on taking any action because they're so afraid of that judgement of themselves from other people. And they also just don't have the confidence yet in themselves to, to know and to feel strongly about the actions that they do take.

16:43 So we do a lot of coaching to get them into action. And we sort of say that there's three pillars of you being successful as a starting out as a as a freelancer or service based business owner. And I think this sort of applies to everybody. But the first one is, is your commitment to your journey, right?

17:00 Like I'm committed. I'm going to decide that this is what I'm going to do. Because if you keep 1 foot in and 1 foot out and you give yourself the option to waffle, like that's the kiss of death. The second one is stay in consistent action. So whatever that is, just keep yourself moving forward and trying things and doing things and, and even if they're little baby steps, just taking some action. And the third one is to stay supported. And so that's why we've created the community that we have. And that's why people like there's so much isolation as a business owner that that's those are the moments when people just can give up.

17:34 And when they when they see and they can validate that other people, it's normalised, right? Like other people are having the same challenges, having the same questions. Sometimes people show up to the coaching calls just to be there, right? Just to be in community with people who are doing the same thing as them, even though they don't have a question or challenge or whatever.

17:51 There's something so strong about community and something so strong about being validated that you're just like everyone else, like everyone else is also, you know, going through the same thing, have the same questions, whatever it might be. Those three things I think are the most important things for people to remember when they're going through this journey.

18:10 Wow, thank you very much for, you know, those golden Nuggets. Now last thing you talk about is actually resonating with what I have on my wall. It's not over when you lose, it's over when you quit and and a war on. Who listens to this podcast regularly knows how I talk about consistency constantly. Consistency is a secret weapon.

18:33 It's a highly, highly underestimated weapon. You know, I like to tell people I weaponize consistency. If you keep, you know, being consistent at anything in the world, you will make astronomical, you know, progress after, you know, a period of time. But people don't realise that just putting the work every day, no matter how little it is, and it will surprise you what you'll achieve in a year, in two years, or people tend to chase wholesale changes and wholesale changes do not come around very often. So he's what is, you know.

19:10 Thank you very much for the golden Nuggets that you're sharing on the show today. While we talk about your work here, emphasise creating agile operating models and managing change effectively. In your experience, what's the secret to embedding agility and resilience into a company's culture? Well, I come from the tech industry and so agility in agile is a very like, it's a very different terminology in the technology world.

19:38 But when we talk about agility and to me, agility is part of resilience. This is about, this is very much about a growth mindset and it's all about seeing, understanding and and seeing your business as something very fluid, right. And when people, one of the things that these early stage business owners do is that they, they get, they get told and sold a bill of goods that the biggest thing you have to have is a vision and a strategy and a goal.

20:04 Yes, I agree there's there's a lot of value in being able to, you know, articulate what you want, but what they do is they get really. Committed to their success is only defined by reaching a certain point. Like they're going to get to a place and then everything is going to be perfect. And that's just not what happens, right? Business is so fluid and it's, you know, by the time you get to that place, you're already focused on something else. And so when we can get out of that mindset of like, I'm not successful unless I've reached a certain point and understand that every day is a bit of a continuum. Yes, we want to be working towards something and having that something defined for

20:45 yourself makes it much more likely you're going to be successful in that regard. But trying like being uncomfortable with the fluidity of our business, like that's the joy of business is that every day can be totally different. And every day we can make different decisions and pivot in another direction and, and build something new.

21:02 I, I think that's, that's where it roots resistance and, and you know, this rigidity comes from is this, these people are not necessarily business experts and they by their own admission. And so they get really like, they, they listen to this commentary in this narrative and they think I'm a, I'm a failure if I, if I shift from this like rigid goal and they get stuck in that and they just like, they freeze and they don't know which way to move and they don't know how to get out of this.

21:33 So this recognition that we're in this very fluid, like business is very fluid. Even in a big corporation, it's still fluid. And I, I work with these public sector organisations that are so structured and so, you know, rigid in terms of their, you know, their, their HR processes and their, their internal processes.

21:51 And man, like it takes 8 times longer for anything to be achieved in that environment because there's no permission to be fluid. There's no structure like there's, there's, it's a bit of like a structure actually gives you freedom and structure is very important inside your business. But we have to understand what, what we want structure around and what we, what we need to be more fluid around. And so understanding that and, and being able to build that into the business and, and be able to give everyone permission to sort of move around these things is super important. So I'm I'm fortunate to have that experience in so many big public sector organisations because you can see exactly where this rigidity happens and

22:37 how much money gets wasted because of that rigidity. You know, I like the way you talk about structure because structure is very important to me. Looking at my background with the beak for accounting firms, I was with PWCKPMG and a very large part of our success is actually attributed to the structures that are in place.

23:02 Structures help you to be flexible, structures help you to be scalable. But when people have their own organisations, they fail to implement and institute structures. It just feels like you try to achieve a goal without strategy it's not possible. I think it's the difference between structure and culture, right? So especially in like a firm like PwC, yeah, it's super important that in a financial world that there is structure and that we work within those structures. But TWC also has to have a culture of agility that allows us to question structure, that allows us to challenge structure that allows us to innovate on that structure so that you can turn in a dime.

23:52 Otherwise you end up with a big rigid organisation that's stuck 1985 right where where we don't know. And what ends up happening then is that you can't attract like, it's a, it's a, it's a cycle, right? You can't attract innovative thinkers. You can't attract people who are going to continue to push your edges. And then you end up a dead, right? Like just a dead old dead head and piece of wood floating in the ocean, right?

24:19 Yeah, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, you know, But the old dog needs to, would I say, have a young mind. I think of being old or being young is a function of the mind. Yeah. And Speaking of PwC, like something I very, very much appreciate about PwC is the professional framework there. You know, there are five, what I say areas when it comes to the professional framework for assessing individuals. And I always tell my colleagues that they gave you guys, they gave us the cheat code to succeed. You know, in life and business, the framework starts with whole leadership, right?

24:59 You should be able to lead yourself and lead others. Work on those technical competence, a highly, highly skilled actual area called competence, right? Global acumen, be able to work with cross functional teams. Business acumen, understand the business environment, understand the business ecosystem, understand the important pieces, metrics and of course building relationships.

25:24 Very, very important. You know, when you have these five things, you know, unlock, I don't see how you're not going to be successful in business. I don't know if you would like to say something you know about that framework and what. What are your thoughts on the framework? Yeah, I mean this comes back to the conversation we had around innovation, right? So what do you weave into the the fabric of your organisation so that you can give people a really smart and understandable way to see their path through the organisation or see their path and what they're expected, expected to do and from a performance perspective, et cetera, et cetera. But you've also got to give them the ability to challenge that. And to as a small business

26:09 owner, you have to think the same way. Give yourself a path, but give yourself like the opportunities to challenge it as well. And so that, that sort of, there's friction there for sure. And the like, the, the magic is in being able to balance that friction so that you, you know, you can carry on as like in and let your machine run, but also start poking at the edges. And I find that this is a really important conversation with small business owners and their understanding, their role in their organisation, that they typically start as the doer, as the subject matter expert, as the person who's doing everything.

26:46 And then, you know, they, they hold themselves to this responsibility. But there's, they very, very rarely are innovating because they get so bogged down and in the day-to-day. So they when they start to shift their role inside their organisation and challenge their role inside the organisation, and then they can give themselves the space and the freedom to actually challenge their own structure and challenge their own, you know, match the machinations they've built inside their own business.

27:16 So how you think about yourself in your business and the role you give yourself inside your business is actually really important. I see you very much believe in a balance of structure and a culture and that actually helps with innovation and staying agile to to remain relevant and resourceful for for the future. You know, you talk about the concept of value of realisation. So how can business consistently integrate value realisation into the strategic decision making?

27:49 Well. This is about like the closing the loop, right? So I've invested in doing something. I've invested in, you know, a new strategy or I've invested in creating something inside my business. And we do this even in public sector organisations. You still have to go back and ask yourself and check in on on the value that you've created for your business in with all those investments.

28:15 Even if it's a day of my time I've invested in creating something inside my business. What value is it creating for me? When you when you dig into the product management mindset, and this is sort of a friend of mine for me right now because I'm building out a product management practise inside of a big organisation.

28:31 The product management mindset is all about value. So when I see organisations and there's a, there's a parallel here for the small business, so stay with me. But when I see organisations move from a project mindset, we're just doing more and more stuff to contribute, but we're not looking at it from a like a more holistic perspective then you. I would say that's not a value focused mindset. That's just like do another thing, do another thing, do another thing, but we're never looking at it from the perspective of what value are are we creating inside the business.

29:05 So when we shift to a product back to mine and said we are shifting to looking at all of these interrelated parts of the projects we take on and looking at it from as a roll up and the value creation inside the business. So this is what we're starting to do with all of these folks inside of this organisation where we're saying, OK, so yes, great. You, you built these five business applications. What's the value you're getting from them? Well, the value is rolled up into a product. It's a piece of value we're creating inside the organisation.

29:39 What is that value? What's it contributing when you start to ask those questions? It's really confronting to an organisation that's been used to just, you know, doing stuff for a long time because that in this particular moment they can justify it. But nobody's looking at the long term and saying we've invested $20 million into this portfolio of projects. What are we getting for that in a for profit organisation? That's a real really important question because it affects, you know, profitability and it affects, we're always trying to maximise what we get from our investments in a, in a public sector organisation.

30:18 That's still a really important conversation because you are accountable to taxpayers, you're accountable to stakeholders, and being able to be accountable is super important and to be safe and to be, you know, compliant. So that shift in mindset is also still relevant even in a small business where you ask yourself on an ongoing basis, what value did I create from this investment? You know, what value did I create from, you know, the time I put into something or, you know, going on this business trip or whatever it might be.

30:53 So, So what do you say from the private sector perspective, the evaluation is more on the quantitative side, while from the public sector perspective, the evaluation is more from the qualitative perspective? Necessarily like we do all of the economics, like the economic conversations. And I think in the public sector they're just not used to doing that. But it's no different than in a private sector organisation where you there's a number attached to the value you create around anything, right?

31:25 Your number just happens. You just happen to have a sales number and a revenue number. Public sector organisations are still bringing in money, they're still bringing in funds. It's just for a different purpose, right? So that those funds still have to be managed, they still have to do something. So if we are not, you know, funding our organisation, we're not creating value inside the organisation because the more we fund the organisation, the better we can serve their constituents, right?

31:55 So there's still a value realisation, economic conversation to be had even in a public sector organisation. And this is a new way of thinking for a lot of public sector organisations, right? And frankly, I think it's one that taxpayers should be demanding, right? They should be. Absolutely. Asking for because when you're inside these organisations you can really see how much we're wasting.

32:19 Inefficiency. Let's put it in a nice way. How much inefficiency exists in the public sector? But it's not coming from a bad place, like it's not coming from, you know, just lazy people or whatever. It's coming from a lack of agility and a lack of flexibility inside these organisations and too much commitment to rigidity and too much commitment to to these structures that have kept them safe for a long time.

32:47 Yeah, yeah. Well, there's, I mean, yeah, there's a huge conversation to be had about, it's not black and white, but I think introducing the concept of value and economic impacts of capabilities inside of public sector organisation is really interesting because it's, it's not some, it's not a way that they've, they've built their organisations in the past, but it still is relevant.

33:09 Absolutely relevant. You know, you talk about understanding the economics of business capabilities, so are you able to give a practical example of how small businesses can apply these insights to accelerate their growth? Yeah, I'm glad that you asked. We are just starting up a new a new startup which is based on a like a body of knowledge and then a piece of IP that we've created.

33:34 My partner and I both come from an organisational design perspective and we see, we see a lot of how a misunderstanding or mismanagement of the human side of a business can totally impact value inside of a small business, right? So especially these high growth companies that are going through there like 50 to 500 people growth, right?

33:55 So I think when we, when we look at the human side of a business, this isn't motherhood and apple pie, this isn't HR practises. This is like what actually happens and where what are the capabilities we've built inside of the organisation that are actually affecting how profitable that we can be. For example, high growth companies, they have a lot of turnover. They have a lot of like not even turnover, but velocity inside of their people.

34:24 Like their people will come on board and they'll start here and they'll very quickly go over here and there's all this institutional knowledge that gets lost. And so you have a lot of waste in like onboarding new people and, you know, not knowing where to get the knowledge that they need. And, and this like the the non codified knowledge. There's this whole concept of natural networks inside of an organisation that we don't think about. Well, it's called organisational network analysis, right? And it's actually really real and, you know, moving to organisation organising teams around those those natural networks and capabilities as opposed to organisation organising teams around function

35:08 new concept, right? So that concept of capabilities and how those capabilities affect the profitability of that organisation is actually really real. And so we're trying to help these small high growth companies understand how focusing on those capabilities can actually make them a lot more agile and make them grow faster without all of these trip UPS that they get into when they have high growth and with people, right?

35:33 So would you say that is more inclined towards a project management perspective in terms of the the organisational structure instead of being structured based on function? But structured based aren't teams and achieving specific goals. I don't think it has anything to do with project management. I think this is, you know, a great example would be most organisations try to build their teams around. They need a I need a salesperson and I need a like a project manager and I need AI, don't know a software developer and I need a whatever.

36:13 But those people are still people and they they integrate and they interact in really different ways. And there might be a lot of friction there because you're not thinking about the people. So when we actually build teams around strengths and around capabilities, instead, we would say I need a team who has a commander, who has a connector, who has a diplomat, who has a like.

36:37 This is how we structure our teams. Instead. That can be a lot more effective, especially in high growth than, you know, trying to together these more functional teams. So that's the hypothesis right now that we're sort of playing with and building a body of knowledge around that. Well, and how's that going currently?

36:58 It's in its infancy, right? But there are there are tools out there and there are methodologies out there that are already starting to dig into this. We're trying to build something that's in the intersection of all of those. So if you look at organisational network analysis and that's the start, that's like observing and mapping natural networks inside of an organisation, like who goes to who for knowledge all the time?

37:19 And where do those, it's almost like deer trails in a forest, right? Where the where's the path of least resistance? So that organisational network analysis is the start of that kind of inquiry, right? Like let's not force people into a structure that isn't natural. Let's actually look at what people are naturally doing already in terms of their internal natural networks and let's start to build around those and see how much that effects and improves the. It could be productivity you're trying to improve, it could be retention, it could be knowledge management, it could be lots of different reasons that you might look at that. But those hypotheses are are enabled by understanding all of this kind of stuff, right?

38:02 So this is in its infancy, but it's an example of how we have to look at capabilities differently and understand that how those capabilities have a direct correlation to the profitability and the health of the organisation. Speaking of the health of the organisation, when it comes to small businesses, curiosity plays a role for founders, right? So what role do you think curiosity plays in terms of helping founders become successful entrepreneurs? And how can leaders foster a culture of curiosity and a growth mindset within the organisations? Well, it comes back to what we talked about earlier, which is that dichotomy between curiosity and judgement, right? So when we create a real

38:50 judgement focused culture, like things have to be good or bad or we we won or we lost, that's where people start to try and fit into those really sort of boolean and then you get false positivity, right? You get people always trying to be rewarded for something that was good and having a lot of fear around something that's bad.

39:10 And so they don't take chances and they don't take risks and they don't that creativity doesn't get flourished, right. This book that I, if anybody's really interested in reading more about this, there's a book called Wellsprings of knowledge. And it's from, you know, it's, it's older, but it was, you know, really interesting to think about how we, you know, we build these very human sides of curiosity and creativity and innovation. So a leader who leads with a, with judgement, everything has to be good or bad is, is quelling curiosity, right? And so if you ask yourself that question, how am I leading with curiosity and encouraging curiosity? We still need the structure, we still need the goals, we still need to know.

39:53 Everybody feels we're much more comfortable when they know where they're going and their expectations. But you leave the edges open and you, you can demonstrate how your own curiosity can help us. So it's the difference between have AI, have an instinct that maybe you know, we can follow. This we can try this path for product development and and like there's a new opportunity in the market.

40:15 The difference is a leader who shows up and says, we have to do this thing. We're driven by competitive, you know, forces and like we're going. I worked in the.com days and I this was rampant, right? Oh my gosh, we have to like every day you were shifting and that gets really chaotic and and hard for for the team.

40:33 And instead of I show up and I say, hey, I learned about this idea. I was having this thought, let's take a little team and go explore that. So instead of being like, oh, we're going to go follow a new direction. It's like, hey, I wonder, I wonder what could happen. And you give people the permission and the, and the ownership of exploring that piece and you respect what they come back with.

40:58 That's curiosity. You know, sending everybody off on a wild duck chase is not curiosity. So a lot of like founders will get into that space of thinking that they have to be the ones that are driving innovation and always creative and always, you know, the next big tech bro, right? In reality, in reality, the respect that you have for your people to come back and say how we, we, we, we went and we investigated this thought or this idea and here's what we came back with, right?

41:31 That's curiosity. Curiosity to say killed the cut, but satisfaction brought it back. So it's almost the end of the show. I've got 6 minutes left on the clock. What's your last piece of advice to young entrepreneurs looking to make it big and become the next big tech bro called the next, You know, hotshot, you know, in the beat of space.

41:57 My advice to you is don't try to be that first of all. Right. Because, you know, smart companies are the ones that that grow in balance, right? They grow in an intelligent way and it's throttled, right? So when you're motivated to try and just get the highest growth possible, you will end up in a trap.

42:20 So that's the I mean, and that's that's what most people hear about in these big Silicon Valley stories and hyper growth. I think we're really moving away from that in the small business space and in the entrepreneurial space, you know, there's and it's becoming quite divided. I think there are very smart and effective ways to approach growth, but always put it in balance like we want to invest a certain amount of our, our, our investment in our business into what's working and be clear on what's working while constantly challenging that and looking for new opportunities and being curious about those new opportunities. So always try and strike that balance because that's what helps you with the long run

43:01 rather than trying to be the the next superstar tech pro because those those stories are are actually quite few and far between. It's much. It's much more common. It's not words I. Had on my mind. If you're far between. It's much more common for people to burn out and to fizzle out and to fail. So like, just be smart, right?

43:24 Don't let ego. Don't let ego drive your growth strategy. Absolutely 60% plus of businesses feel in the first five years and that's that's a very, very weak it's statistic. We've come to the end of the questions from me to you, but you know we have to take you through the Pacific Ring of Fire that is the quick fire round five questions quick answers 4 minutes left on the clock to say it takes 4 minutes to save a life.

43:58 So Are you ready to rock'n'roll? Let's. Do it. OK, tea or coffee? Yes. Which would you pick, tea or coffee? What would you pick? Tea, I'm gonna go. With tea because I'm getting I'm becoming an old grandma lady. It means that they need you in London. The the tea culture is strong here. 2. Of your favourite innovation of all time. Line banking.

44:22 Wow, that's that's a good one. That's a good peak. I love that one. Book that every entrepreneur should read. Must read except from your book. Right now, I would say X is easier than X, and I will caveat that with it's not because it's a piece of like outstanding literature, but once you get the concept and the idea, it makes you think really differently about the work that you're doing. Fantastic.

44:48 I think should get that one and maybe we have at that in the show notes, the link in the show notes, early mornings or late nights. Early mornings. Early morning that then we should run a business together. I'm a night owl. I'll do the night shift, you take the day shift and everybody's happy. And of course, a number 51 word to describe your entrepreneurial journey so far. Wonder.

45:13 Wonder my own word would be adventurous. Well, for me to you, it's a very, very big thank you. I always say these on the show. Gratitude is good attitude and when a person shares their time with you to share their life with you. So for me to you, Stephanie Hayes, it's love and respect to you and of course to our audience. Please do the needful encourage me by supporting with sharing this with your network.

45:37 And of course, I keep working tirelessly to bring in fantastic. Great, resourceful individuals like Stephanie, the Founders founder, Hayes, tell, tell, tell your big boy that you have a new nickname, you have a new moniker, and of course, Stephanie. Do you want to give a shout out to anyone before you leave?

45:55 And please encourage our audience to to to the needful. The most important people to me have been my clients, right? They have taught me everything that I've needed to know and they have, you know, helped me evolve as who I am. And so I would just say thank you to all of them. Wow, a very, very big thank you to the clients.

46:15 You know, we, we, we. There's no business without the clients, you know. That's. Right. Well, and of course, there's no podcast without the audience, guys. Till I come away soon. Please stay out of trouble, keep believing in yourselves. Impossible is nothing. And of course, always, always go for something.

46:35 Always have a drive to succeed. And of course, if you've got any questions, please put them in the comment section. Don't ask me the questions. Please direct them to Stephanie. She's the pro, she's the pro and I'm the Joe. Love and respect to you guys. See you soon. Thank. You.