Biz Bites for Thought Leaders

Why successful women never stop learning, accessing proven business advice and growth strategies with Joanne Brooks. Joanne is an old friend. We’ve known each other for a number of years, and today’s conversation is going to challenge everything you think about how business education should be for you, particularly for women in business.

She’s had a vast amount of experience across 17 different businesses from multimillion dollar ones to smaller ones. And here’s what makes this episode really special. Joanne’s revolutionizing how women access higher education and proving you don’t need a university degree to earn an MBA. If you’ve ever felt locked out of traditional education or wondered about alternative pathways to advance your business knowledge, this conversation is going to open your eyes to possibilities you never knew existed.

A wonderful episode of Biz Bites for Thought leaders that will change the way you think and add lots of value. Particularly for women in business.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. Today’s guest she and I have been, I dunno how many years we’ve been corresponding back and forth a bunch. Quite a while. We’ve we’ve managed to, even though we’re in different cities, we’ve managed to sit down and have a meal together as well.

And it’s never quite materialized, but we think that’s gonna change in the very immediate future. So I guess I should start by welcoming you, Joanne, to the program. Thank you.

I’m so excited to be here. Finally on your point. Finally. Yay. It’s about time we made it happen. Yes. So for those that don’t know you, why don’t you give us a little bit of a, an explanation as to who you are and what you’re focusing on these days?

Yeah. Thank you. So Joanne Brooks. I’m based on the Gold Coast. I am the founder of Navigate bis which launched, gosh, nine years ago now. Can, I can’t believe it’s that long ago. I’ve been an entrepreneur for. Over 20 years. And in that time I’ve spent a lot of time in the education space. I’ve owned my own registered training organizations.

I’ve owned a ver variety of businesses. So if people ask me how many companies have I run or operated 17 in those 20 years, some of them are all at the same time. And Navigate Biz came about because I had a business that had rapid growth to 30 minute million in 24 months. That was crazy. But it took me 20 odd years to get to a point to be ready for.

It wasn’t one of those overnight successes but it also took me seven years to liquidate it, a a. A myriad of micro moments that caused a tidal wave to have us liquidate that and navigate biz popped up as a result of that. Today I work with women. I call myself the Circle Builder. It’s about bringing women together in circle to support them in their growth strategy, whether it’s, and Circle is a concept that’s.

Eons old, right? We’re very used to sitting in circle and supporting and guiding one another. And so for me, it has landed very nicely for me to have women understand that I’m bringing other women into. Their various businesses to support and guidance. I don’t know at all. One of the, yeah, you’ll be helping us and supporting us in that way as well about getting your story out and so on.

And circle Builder, business mentor, using all the things that I’ve learned all over those years to help and support women in business. That’s as short as I can do it for you. It is, it’s very short. And having known you for a little while now, I know that’s only kind of scratching the surface in some of the, in some of the things that you’ve been doing.

And I suppose I wanted to start off with that a little bit ’cause you touched on about being the registered training organization in the education field. And I think as opposed to where you are now in terms of coaching and that sort of area, this is as well, a lot of the things that you’ve been doing is more specifically in traditional education, I guess the MBA programs and other sorts of training and things.

Yes. So tell me a little bit more about this, that space and what you’ve been doing there.

So in the so I haven’t owned an RTO for that period of time, but I’ve certainly worked in them. I’ve been consulting to them. I have helped a number of organizations create their own. RTO help with audit, get ready for audit.

So that’s the place that I hang out at the moment from a consulting perspective outside of my mentoring. And for me, having been being a female and having run my own RTOs, you could also say that one of my niche areas is to help and support female led RTOs because I get what it is.

I get the compliance, I understand the complexity of it. It’s a ridiculously heavy compliant compliance heavy industry. And I rightly it’s not easy to become an RTO but I also understand that, there’s a lot of women out there who are navigating that, and it’s hard. Really hard, business is hard anyway, but the RTO space, I don’t need to be one, but I certainly help women who are in that space to be better RTOs.

Hmm.

For those, listen in and we always like to clarify the acronyms, registered training organization and post. People usually have heard of it, but I don’t think that people, most people actually really understand what it is and what the implications of it are and why on earth you would do it.

Because a lot of the time people e expect that training comes just from your traditional educational institutions, universities, TAFEs, that sort of thing. Yeah. But RTO kind of fits.

In between all of that.

Yeah, it is people will heard of will know it potentially as vocational education.

I know that’s a trade space. I know that’s a terminology that’s common overseas. To become a registered training organization is not an easy task. If we, to put context as to what it is we are the competitors to tafe. TAFE are the free. Government subsidized certificate one through to advanced diploma.

And there are over in Australia, which might surprise the audience here. There’s over 3000 private RTOs in this country. When most people, general public think, oh, I’m gonna go and do a certificate or diploma, I. I’ll go to tafe. That’s their, they feel that’s their only option if they find someone who’s dabbling in it.

Aren’t you tafe? I can’t tell many times I’ve been asked that question. So there’s the government one and then there’s private RTOs. What does it mean to become one? You have to, as I said, there’s heavy rigor in the compliance. And why is that? So we are educating people to take on an occupation.

If we put it into some to simple terms, if we’re teaching somebody on how to build a house, they are a laborer and then they’re building a house and then a three story house, and then a highrise and a shopping center. There’s, that goes from certificate one to advanced diploma. And so thinking about the complexities of what it would take to do that sort of construction.

There’s some very heavy education that needs to be passed on to that person to be authorized and to be able to apply for their license. So that’s a simple explanation that most people could probably relate to probably as most people live in a home.

I, yeah, absolutely. And I think it is a very simple and easy way to understand.

Standard. But I think there’s the next layer I suppose to that is, is yes, it makes sense that if you’re looking to become a builder and you want to build houses and you’ve gotta go and do that. Yeah. But we come to further education really, that also falls under this banner as well. And I think that’s an interesting space, particularly for women who are, maybe I’m being a bit.

Wrong here, but I seem to feel like there’s a lot that feel like they need to prove themselves and need more education. I don’t know whether that’s necessarily true. Yeah. But it feels that way at times. How is, am I right in thinking that?

Yes, I agree. I recently, which I shared with you the other day, I completed my MBA or two weeks ago.

And a lot of people went, wow, that’s such a lot, big effort and amazing, and all those sort of things, which it is like, it was I was very. Pleased to be able to complete it, but I’m someone who was never given the chance to go to university, so it was definitely a bucket list item for me. I’ve done a myriad of certificates and diplomas.

I do come across many women when I start talking to ’em about the higher education opportunity. And I guess we, again, default, just like looking at certificates, we default to TAFE when we are talking about degrees, we default to the traditional university spaces. That are out there and we’ve got the lovely thing about Australia, we have an amazing reputation of education.

The quality of the education is outstanding because we have such rigorous compliance and protocols that the government insists that we deliver under, which is a good thing because it’s good for the student. To get the depth of knowledge that they need to learn. But when I speak about the deli, the degrees that I’m bringing into Australia they’re via Deser Global Business School, which a good friend of mine has owned that business for about 17 years.

And the wonderful thing is, whilst he’s based outta the US and Aussie guy, he is, he has had these MBAs built to Australian standards. Because he understands the quality that implies. And I, what I know is, and we’ve seen it before, many people from overseas come to Australia to undertake higher education because of the quality.

And this is just a different option for women in business. What I love about it is nobody loves exams. I can’t take say anybody could put their hand up and say, yeah, give me a three hour exam, please. That would be amazing. I’d love that.

No thank you. No,

definitely not. You gotta get that stuff outta your head.

But what I absolutely love. And feel so relevant to entrepreneurs today and particularly my audience, female entrepreneurs, is that there are no exams in these particular MBAs. What you get to do is to work on your business as projects and produce projects that are based on your business. And so what has come, what has helped me to redefine my marketing message, my branding and my focus has been a direct relation to my completing my MBA Circle builder came out of my final project, rebranding came out of my marketing subject that I did.

So we all know we should work on our business, but we often don’t make the time to do that. So we’ve got a double whammy if you like. We can work on our business and build our skillset to be, to step into our C EShip is how I think of it. And that’s why I speak a lot about it for women in business.

And the awesome news is you don’t have to have a degree, which is why I was able to do it.

Yeah, I think the, these are all really important points and I think, the education system, a lot of people’s view of how it works is not actually the reality of how it works. Yes. And now’s not the time to get into it, but, certainly this pushed for the need to do the HSC is a good example.

There are ways and means around. Doing it getting the education without having to do that. Yes. There’s still ways you can get into university if you want to do that later on. Exactly. So there’s lots of opportunities as you’ve done. I guess the question as well is, I. There’s one thing in this sort of scenario that you’ve painted in terms of doing the MBA, because that scenario of course, is that there’s a bucket list of wanting to do it.

There’s the combining it with being able to work on your business, it ticks those boxes. Yeah. But there are a lot of people who’d be sitting there and going, I’ve got a university education already. Yep. I’ve been in business. We’ve got people working on the business. What’s the incentive to do an MBA does?

It does, and not just an MBA. There are other things that you can do. Of course. What’s the real incentive to do it? Is it. Is it for your own ego or is it because it’s actually going to help you get ahead in terms of achieving the next role? We’re talking about people who might be employed here.

Employed, yeah. Is it gonna, is it gonna put you ahead of the next person?

I genuinely believe so. Particularly the Deser Global Business School opportunity. And the reason is very simple. A no exams great. However, the people who’ve written these programs are entrepreneurs and traditionally our academic, our academia will write the degrees and the master’s degrees, all those sort of things in traditional university space.

So what Matt Jacobson from Deser Global Business School, who’s the owner he specifically sought. Entrepreneurs to help him write them. And the entrepreneurs that he’s got woven through in video interviews and the written content are people like our past prime ministers heads of state. The head of the CIA Goldie Horn, Desmond Tutu Julie Gillard, just to name a few of them.

And a lovely equal spread of men and women. But, if you’re gonna learn negotiation skills, who doesn’t wanna learn it from the person who’s been the head of the CIA, I think he’s got something to share. And so that, that piece was one of the main. Main reasons besides the bucket list for me, one of the main reasons why I wanted to go and do mine, because I wanted to hear what those people had to say.

I wanna hear Julia Gillard and how she navigated the tricky piece of the, the, we all remember the misogyny speech that she did and how she navigated that environment that many women face in corporate and or even in their own business. And I didn’t do it for the letters. The letters are going to be handy potentially if I’m going to go for tenders or corporate work, et cetera.

So as an entrepreneur it makes total sense. But what I see these programs are. Learn from these world leaders who are sharing their insights. And some people would say to me I can go and find them on YouTube, and absolutely you can. But I know that the interviews have been curated to meet the learning requirements of the subject.

And so they’re sharing their insights in negotiation skills. I, Goldie Horn, I always thought of her as the crazy ditsier actress. She has an amazing business mind and an amazing foundation that she has for women and children. So she’s somebody that go, wow, you, I’ve learned a bunch of things from you.

And we all learn differently. Video, audio, text. So it’s got all those through it. So for me, when I speak about it as an entrepreneur, for me, it’s the final piece to my pathway for entrepreneurs in what Navigate Office and I speak to women in business to say. We’ve worked on you. We’ve got your foundations right now, you are ready to grow and scale your business.

Let’s really step into your C EShip and let’s build your international network, your global network, learn critical thinking skills, learn problem solving, all those things that you need as a CEO of a business that you are gonna scale to whatever level. It doesn’t matter.

We hope you’re enjoying listening to the Biz Buys Podcast.

Have you ever thought about having your own podcast, one for your business where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world? Come talk to us at podcasts Done for you. That’s what we’re all about. We even offer a service where I’ll anchor the program for you, so all you have to do is show up for a conversation, but don’t worry about that.

We will do everything to design a program that suits you. From the strategy right through to publishing and of course helping you share it. So come talk to us podcast done for you.com au details in the show notes below. Now, back to Biz Bites.

We’ve worked on you. We’ve got your foundations right now, you are ready to grow and scale your business.

Let’s really step into your C EShip and let’s build your international network, your global network. Learn critical skills. Thinking skills, learn, problem solving, all those things that you need as a CEO of a business that you are gonna scale to whatever level, doesn’t matter. So I see it as a natural process, a natural endpoint, if it’s, if there’s going to be an endpoint in working with me, is that you need to do your MBA because of the, all those other elements, not so much the letters.

It’s not as important for me.

Yeah, and I think that’s, and it’s an interesting thing, isn’t it too, is it’s that we, this program is all about thought leadership. And I think to be a thought leader, you need to keep working on things you need to keep learning from other people. And you need to keep expressing your ideas.

I think that’s the important thing too, where, you can get stuck in this idea. And I think that’s the traditional educational model. Yeah. Where you do a bunch of things, you answer an exam, you’ve got something at the end of it, and it’s huh, what was the point of that? Which is exactly, sadly, what happens with a lot of degrees I.

Yeah,

indeed. Yeah.

But I think this whole concept of ongoing learning and challenging the way people think and talking and allowing them to talk to yes, that is so important, is what’s gonna help people stand out. And so the MBA and other such, courses is a culmination of where that might.

Take your mind land. Yeah,

exactly. Exactly. I remember speaking to a lady who enrolled in a an MBA with er and she was having challenges in securing a promotion in her. Particular business. And I said, I asked her, I said, have you shared with your employer? He knew. They knew she was doing the MBA, but have you shared what you are learning and how you are implementing it within your role?

And she said no, that would be a bit egotistical, wouldn’t it? I went. Absolutely not. And this is something that women struggle with a lot is I can’t go, oh, look at me. And it’s not about that. It’s about I suggest to, you should approach your manager or your boss because she’d been bypassed for a promotion when somebody with less experience, et cetera.

And I said, just think about. Think about this when you’re applying for a role, a lot of corporates, rightly or wrongly look for the letters, right? MBA and Bachelor’s and PhDs and all that sort of stuff. But do they ever look a bit deeper and go where did you get that from and what did you do to achieve it?

I said, what? What I would recommend you do is you write a paper about what projects you are working on, because some of the MBA programs through deser, you get to work on. Live global projects and I think at the time she was working on one for Disney. So how cool would it be to have on your resume that you’ve worked on a project in Disney and they’ve implemented it?

So she was an employee and it took a fair bit of convincing to have her. Step forward and share that because I, the way it is, men and women are women, men will tick three of this 10 criteria and go, yep, I’m gonna go for it. Whereas women just won’t naturally do that.

They find that pretty confronting. But when we looked at the criteria of the role and what she was learning in her MBA, I said, you are ticking boxes left and center. She said, but I haven’t finished yet. I said, doesn’t matter, you’re still you’ve, you’re passing subjects as you go. Take a big breath, have a go, and just, even if you just go and have a talk to the boss and say, these are the things that I’m learning and this is what I’m implementing in my role for you as an employee.

I never did find out how she went, but I, I don’t think that’s an unusual situation. Sad.

Yeah, it is. And I know what you mean. It’s being scared to have that conversation. ’cause you feel like you need to get to the end of it first to be able to do that. And then there’s, at the end of it, you think, oh, I need to get some runs on the board before I do.

And suddenly you’re 10 years down the track. No. And rather than having the conversation now, and I think that’s the important thing, what separates. Leaders ultimately is not being afraid to put yourself out there. You’re not always going to be right. Correct. And it’s also how you frame the conversation as well.

Yes. Having a conversation with the boss and saying, look, I am, in this particular case I’m doing an MBA, and these are some of the things I’m looking at. This is what I’ve been implementing and thinking about in the role. I’m interested in your opinion as well. Suddenly you are mixing it at an intellectual conversation Yes.

At a completely different level to what you were before. And that on its own is of value. Whether there is a position that you’re aiming for or not.

Exactly. And to take that to the next level. What does sir are always looking for. A larger organizations that have a team of executives or management, they, they would love to work with a team of management.

To work, to enroll, and then they will ask that organization, what project do you want them to work on for your business? That doesn’t cost that organization anything, but they might have outsourced that project to some of the large consultancy firms and spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars. But think how the return on investment for an employer to have a team, a cohort of staff working on a project for their business at the same time achieving their MBA game changer.

Yeah. It’s something we’ve spoken a little bit about on the program in the past, but investing in your team Yes. Is more and more important these days, I think. Exactly. Particularly in the face of AI and other things when you can invest in your team and that creativity and that ability to problem solve and think about things differently.

Which you can transfer to new things as they come along. The truth is that, the information that we’re dealing with today on how we navigate AI and where we use it in a business was not something we were thinking about really five years ago. In most businesses cases.

Certainly not 10, 20 years ago. No. For the majority of people. Now, there are some exceptions out there, by the way. Yeah. And I remember working with an organization probably 10 years ago that was already dealing with a, an ai. Yeah. Type situation. Very basic compared to what is out there today.

Yeah. But nonetheless, 10 years ago it was extremely advanced and we don’t know where we’re going to be. So being able to problem solve and understand these things is an incredibly important part. An organization and, pushing that with your team is rewarding.

Exactly. And the great news is for Deser, literally, I’m gonna say about two months ago, they launched their MBA in artificial intelligence through one of the European, university. So it went, oh my gosh, that’s something that I’m not gonna enroll straight away, but I figure I might do that next year.

Another one on the bucket list, another one

I went.

I’d love to learn more about that. Yes.

So let’s change tact a little bit because I know that the things like the MBA are the culmination of things, inspiration. It’s not necessarily where people are able to start, and I think that’s often, I. We don’t know what we don’t know as a lovely phrase.

Yeah. But it’s and I think a lot of people think that you only can learn on the job and pick things up that way. There’s often a gulf of people who. Don’t understand the value of coaching. Yes. And being enrolled in courses that are going to advance you, that are beyond the very simple technical things.

’cause I think most people think about that going, okay, I’ve gotta learn how to operate this machine so I’m therefore gonna do a course on how to operate this machine, use this piece of software, or whatever it might be. Yes. But your business or the business that you are working in is in of itself. A machine and multiple pieces of software, usually many liars.

And so how do you, how do you get people into the kind of program that you are running in the first place? In that? Do people have to put up their hand first? Do they have to know that this is something they wanted to do? Or are you spending a bit of time telling people that. This is something you should be thinking about.

Yeah.

I think as a business owner, I would be remiss in not talking it about it loud and proud. So I do that every day. And the main place I hang out is LinkedIn, but I also am very strategic that it’s, it cannot be the only place that I find clients. I. So for me, collaboration has been my biggest success factor.

So I’ve identified some networking and industry groups that align with me and my accountant who has my, cus my customer as their customer. So I am somebody who will be. More than happy to reach out to a network associate and say, can I be a member? And what I’d like to do is share my thoughts and my thought leadership to your audience.

What does that look like for you? So I do that regularly. I host a number of master classes for different industry bodies around Australia, networking groups and the u and the us. For me that’s smart strategy because they have my audience in abundance. I recognized many years ago having a one-on-one conversation whilst it’s absolutely delightful and amazing.

It’s not scalable and, you have a podcast that other people will listen to. So it makes total sense to me. As much as I like you, when we wanted to get this thing going, there’s always a strategy behind it. Why would I do that? So I do that often, and I volunteer my time. I write a post, I think it was last week, and I actually taught it up.

All the things that I do for free, I. Master classes, podcasts, all sorts of things, and I went, crikey. There’s a lot there. But I do it deliberately so people can. Be like, no one trusts me. Over time, I get it. We, look, I had this situation that I thought I was speaking to a real person on LinkedIn and it turns out clearly it was not, because I asked it the same question three times and I was questioning what they were responding to, and I got the exact same phrase back and I went clearly you are not a real person.

And the really sad part was that piece of software that they were talking about was that service. About how to respond to people on LinkedIn. And I went, oh my gosh, there’s never gonna happen in Pink Fit

That reliance on ai. And it’s quite funny you say that this has happened to me on more than one occasion.

So there’s a little tip for people that you get a question from a potential client. And so you think you’ll be clever and you’ll jump onto a an AI. Platform. And you ask it to answer that question on your behalf. Yes. Now. That’s clever to a degree, but if it does a, doesn’t know your tone of voice.

Exactly. It’s gonna be pretty obvious in a conversation. B, please read it before you post it. Oh, yes, please. I had someone post it today and it clearly said, oh, and don’t forget to ask them, you know this about their business or fill in their business name. Yeah. And things like that, that were clearly meant as a direction for you to do, to personalize it.

Yes. Not to cut and paste and they cut and past. And it was so not them. They’d literally taken my questions that I’d asked, put it into a service. Yes. Cut and pasted the responses, and it’s done them more harm than good because now I’ve gone from, I might trust them and I might utilize them to.

They’re not even interested. I in truthfully answering it, they’re answering what they think they need to answer. Yes. Yeah. And you’re just being taken for a ride. And I think that’s it’s so important to avoid that, but it’s so important. But we digress a little bit here. I wanna bring it back down to some of the people that you are actually working with.

Because I think this is where there’s such an important role in making an impact. I think we. There. There is this gulf between those that have the higher education and those that don’t. There’s those that there is a gulf between regardless of what the level of education you’ve had and when you next perceive that opportunity to learn, if at all.

Yeah. And so bringing people into an opportunity that enables. Them to learn and advance different aspects is so important, and it’s something that we have to foster in order to generate more innovation into. It’s not just about the individuals, it’s about the collective res, as well. And the benefit that we all have.

And I think this kind of idea of what you’ve got with your program is. It’s such an important one that I think there’s not enough attention being paid to these opportunities, and it’s part of the reason why I wanted to have you on the program.

Yeah. Thank you. If I, so I have four, four elements to what I offer, and the MBA is the pinnacle one at the other end.

But let’s go back to here. So I’ve had a program for a while, which is my signature program, her transformation. It’s. It’s $12,000 for six months. So I get it that there’s going to be women in business who financially not ready, mindset business, a number of reasons why it doesn’t work for them yet.

And I realized by golly, there’s a lot of women out there that have a desire for coaching. But I did do some research on that for my MBA so that I need to clarify this. We have had an abundance of coaches land on the landscape coming outta corporate with an amazing amount of skills. But I, what I want everybody to be cautious of, and it’s not to say that these people don’t have the skills that they need to be a coach, but when you are looking for a coach, and let’s say you’re looking for a financial coach, have the courage to say.

How’s your financials? If you’re looking for a sales coach, how’s your sales? Because if they’re a coach in that expertise. We have to quality check their credibility. I’m a business resilience coach. How many businesses have you had? 17. I’ve liquidated one. I’ve had trade, whole bunch of things. So I feel I can put up that shingle with pride to say that I had the experience, but I, but in my research, I realized through my MBA, that there are so many women in business who didn’t know that there’s a coach for every micro element of your business.

Every, there’s coaches across so many facets, and a life coach will not necessarily be the one you need for strategy. I’ve heard it so many times, and it hurts my heart that they go and engage these people, they pay money, and they’re not utilizing those persons brilliance at all. So that, that I have a concern about.

I have a, have therefore created a platform for easy entry into coaching for any female entrepreneur, and it’s $97 US a month. I feel I’ve made that incredibly accessible, but what I’ve loaded this platform with is the many hundreds of video conversations I’ve had with people about business. Two minutes to 10 minutes.

Numerous tools and resources and lots of mini courses, but they get me for an hour and a half every month of client led mentoring. So there’s discussion forums, all these sort of things. So I wanted to create a circle, a place that was safe for women, whether they’re brand new to business or whether they’re in the messy middle, and they’re going, oh, I need something, but I’m nervous of spending a lot of money.

But I know I need quality, so I wanted to create something that would tick all those boxes for them and they can dive in and out. It’s not a course to finish. It’s not start A to Z. You can go a KLZ, whichever direction you want. It’s there for you to dive into, what do I need today? I need to know about sales, what I need to do today.

Oh, I need to understand the financial terms of my profit and loss. I don’t understand financial literacy. I can go find that in here. So for me, it was about filling a chilly great big gap for women in business to. Maybe to reaffirm the things that they think they know and make sure it’s right, but also I think I’m gonna learn a bucket load of things from these women as well.

I don’t know at all by any means. So I wanted to create a safe circle for women to, to come together and learn and absorb and download whatever they need for their business.

I wanted to pick you up on something that you said there, which is safety. Women feeling safe. And it’s. I don’t wanna gloss over it because I think it’s an important, it’s an important term and I think it’s important that people understand what it, what that actually means because it’s easy to gloss over it and go safe.

Why wouldn’t you be safe? Yeah, you are reputable. It’s fine, but it’s not it. It’s more than that.

Yeah. It is. It’s wraps around mindset. It’s wraps around the quality of the material that you’re going to get access to, the people who are welcomed into circle. For me initially, I want to interview every single one and make sure that they are ready for that.

Particularly for her transformation. You will be invited. You can’t just come in because it’s such an intensive program. But safety isn’t a really important thing that came out of my. Search as well, which is why I landed with Circle. I’ve heard stories of people spending an awful lot of money maxing credit cards mortgages.

And what I know is we’ve got somebody, a partner, a husband, a significant other looking at you going. When is this thing gonna happen? And that creates an element of fear and scared and overwhelm and you’re going, oh my gosh, I have to show this person that I love and admire and who’s in my life that I can actually do this.

And they may not say it out loud, but there’s a lot of that going on inside. We’ve got these little people on our shoulders. And so for me the safety piece was to make myself accessible. So even for a hundred bucks, if you want 15 minutes of my time, my link is there and you can ring my phone number.

I want them to know that they can call me. No dramas. I want to, I generally want to serve and help women to get to the point that they’re ready for her transformation. To me, that means that their business is growing or maybe they move on to something else, and that’s perfectly okay as well. I just wanna help women to feel that this is a place that they can, I’ve got an idea.

What do you think? Without the fear of going, oh, that’s rubbish. Don’t do that. You’ll put some lipstick on, whatever. That’s not what I want. I want. People to go. Amazing. You gave it a good shot. How about you tweak it here or go for it Let’s, 80% is perfect. Don’t try and hit a hundred percent ’cause it just doesn’t exist.

How important is it? For it to be a space that is purely for women. I know it doesn’t mean necessarily the people who are teaching the things and ’cause you, for example, you’ve invited me to come and do some stuff with you. Yeah. But the people who are doing the course are women. How important is that?

Because I, I know that there’s, I. If you go to lower education in school system, there’s a trend these days to be making what were single-sex schools to now being co-ed.

Yes.

So how important is it to keep that separation and dealing with those separate issues? Is it still. Yes. Is it still

relevant?

It is for me, absolutely vital. I will work with men, no dramas at all. And I guess I would say to you it is for those people who identify as female because there’s gonna be men who, who identify as that, as long as, and which is why I’ve and it won’t be scalable forever, but as, ’cause I literally launched this program 15 days ago, so it’s.

Brand spanking you. It’s a brand new baby. So my intention is to interview have a quick meeting to make sure that they are the right fit for the program and if I have to make those hard decisions. When people are in, I’ll make that hard decision because it has to be, it has to be a safe place for all women to feel that they because a lot of it is confidence, A lot of it is imposter syndrome, all those things that, and I know it’s not unique to women but it’s prevalent in women.

They’re very comfortable and they’re genius. But then to actually get on a camera and talk about it. Which is why I wanted you in there because it’s so important to share your story. So important to me. I.

Yeah, the, we could go on for hours about the power of story.

We won’t do that. We won’t do that right now. We could. But I do, and hearing your story is in incredibly important and powerful as well, because I think that’s, you also hit upon something that is around. Credibility and asking people that, what their background is.

There are an awful lot of coaches and consultants out there. And many purport to be a lot of things. I’ve experienced different coaches and some where you sit back and you go, wow, they’re are amazing. And maybe not for me, but they are amazing. Yeah. Others where you just shake your head and you go I’m not really sure.

Yes. And and others which are just constantly, educating and furthering themselves. And I think there’s also an important thing to, to realize when it comes to this space is that as I’ve experienced myself, is sometimes you also need to change. Sometimes it’s. Being in one thing for a while and then recognizing that someone that there’s something else that you can get from going somewhere else.

It’s not a slap in the face necessarily to the person you’ve been with it, it just sometimes opportunities. Yeah.

Yeah. I had a very interesting situation last week. I was sharing the circle with navigate Circle with a number of people who are my Facebook group. And so one of the ladies came back to me and she said to me I’m a business coach, so it’s not relevant for me.

And it, I actually it caused me to really ponder that and I actually wrote a post on LinkedIn about it and said, so why not? Because for me, this person was an expert in marketing, not business strategy. So in her mind, she’s a different and I then reflected on my research for my MBA, that the data suggests that the influx of coaches that have arrived in the, on the landscape, most of them do not have a coach.

I find that absolutely fascinating.

I think that’s it. It’s and to me, I, you, you asked the question you should be asking them, if they’re a sales coach, how are their sales? Yeah. The second question you need to ask them is who is their sales coach? Because, or at least who their coach is, because if they don’t have a coach, then I agree with you.

I’ve worked with some some coaches who. Work on a pretty high level. I know they’re still being coached as well. Yeah. And that’s, because it is constantly learning, as we’ve alluded to, things are constantly changing and this is just a factor that that people have to incorporate into what they do.

Yeah. Is understand that learning is a constant, but making sure that you’re learning from the right people and understanding as well that a lot of this stuff is is about. I see it as being on two levels, as one is about making you aware of certain things. That you might not have a literacy spot.

And the other part is stimulating new ideas. Yeah, exactly. ’cause if you think about new things and different ways that ultimately then you can deliver for whether it’s your business or ultimately clients Yeah. Is a big factor in having. This opportunity to learn. I know, from coaching I’ve had over the years that I can see it playing out when I’ve sitting in front of a client and going what if we did this?

And I’m thinking in my, in the back of my mind I’m going, that’s how I was taught, wasn’t it? Yes. And yeah. And that, and this is my, interpretation of it, that’s the thing. That’s how it keeps advancing. Exactly.

And, you think about so many professional sports.

People out there, they have coaches until they retire and be, probably become a coach themselves. So can you think about, the professional footballers and tennis players? Oh, I’ve landed, I’m now a professional. I don’t need a coach anymore. That’s just not the case, right? So why does this happen in business?

I struggle to understand.

Yeah, it is a really interesting thing, isn’t it? When we think about our kids, right? They, by the ti, by the time they’re in their late teens and early twenties, they think they know everything. Yes. And when they get close to 30, they realize that they don’t know anything at all.

And we’ve all been there and done that ourselves, I should say. And, but it doesn’t, that same maturity doesn’t often happen in businesses. No, it’s not. People are on this. Quick path that they like to be in, in shopping and changing from one job to the next. And that’s their idea of learning, because I’ve just, oh, I’ve gone from here to here.

And suddenly they find themselves in a higher profile position. They’ve got no real additional training. Yes, indeed. They haven’t got a coach.

And and. If they’re an employee, you are running, you’d to, you’re walking on a tight, there is supporting them in having these things.

But I also know the importance as an employee to be aware of where your gaps are and to approach your employer and say, look, I would love to, learn these skills. How can we do that? Can I get a buddy out of the organization or assess some training that I can do? And, the beautiful thing about Australia is we have an amazing education.

System amazing. But there’s also an abundance of education that’s not accredited. So it’s not a certificate diploma or whatever, and coaching fits in that. But there’s so many other opportunities to learn. And a great place is a network absorb. Attend those masterclasses though. Watch those webinars.

Don’t sign up and don’t do it. Don’t sign up and not watch the replay. Take.

I think. I think it’s a pity that when we are asked to put in our resume for want of a better term even in a place like LinkedIn that it doesn’t really allow you to say I’ve been participating actively in coaching for X amount of years with this kind of ca caliber of people, whether you want to name them or not.

I think that’s one of the other interesting things too, when it comes to. Naming coaching. It’s like we’re very, we are very happy to name the institution that we have an education at. But we’re not happy to name the, the people who have been coaching us Somehow that’s kept a little bit private or, and I think it’s kept private because people do still look down think that this look down on them, oh, they need coaching.

That, that’s a negative when it should be seen as we’re talking about as a positive and celebrated. And I think, and investing in yourself. Whether it is, a $97 a month program or whether it’s a, $12,000, MBA program, it doesn’t matter. It’s, those things are important to do and you should be proud of it.

And it’s what books have we read this year? There are some, like one of my mentors is Robin Jama. I think I’ve read every one of his books, if not once, twice. I’ve signed up to his master classes. I listen to him every day and he’s just one. And he’s not for everybody, but for me, I’m happy to tell people this is the people that I listen to because.

They’ve, they’re arriving. They probably will never say they’ve arrived, but they’ve achieved some amazing things. And, the people who founded Netflix, what an amazing story. Mark Randolph amazing story of how he got that done. So why wouldn’t we put that like LinkedIn tells you about, you can put your roles I put in my products, but it definitely has no space for you to go, what am I reading this at this moment?

Who am I listening to? And you could write a post about it, but it doesn’t sit on your profile for very long. It’s buried.

It’s, so it, again, it goes back to the power of telling stories, right? When you start missing, messing around with with that and and giving those ideas to people, sharing it, whether it’s in a post or in a podcast or in a course, I think it’s so important.

We have to wrap things up. So I’ve got one final question that I like to ask all of my guests, and this is an interesting one for you because technically the program’s new, but I know you’ve been doing this for a long time. What’s the aha moment that people have once they come to work with you that you wish more people would know?

They going to have.

Yeah. I guess it’s, I had I seem to have this gift where I’m talking to people and thoughts just come to me. Have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Oh, I’ve got a tool that will help you with that. Have you read this book? I know somebody who I can connect you with.

So I have been known as a bit of a connector. So for me, my strategic brain is always on. And I feel I’m incredibly generous. I share a lot of what I know and happy to introduce you to people and will steer you in the direction. So I. For me the platform is, you’ll find an abundance of things in there and I’ll point you in the right direction.

Fantastic. Joanne, thank you so much for all of the information you’ve shared. I love the different perspectives on education and something that we haven’t explored in enough detail on the podcast before. I really appreciate the insights and particularly into women in business as well and understanding a little bit better.

And I’m so glad there is a. Platform like yours that has so much material accessible. We are going to include all the details in the show notes of how to get in contact with you. But thank you so much for being a part of the program.

Thank you so much. It was awesome.

And thank you everyone for listening in.

Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you’re listening to us. And stay tuned for the next episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders. Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance.

To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time on biz.

Thought leaders, are you ready to learn how successful brands are really built? So in today’s episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders, we dive deep into the world of product development and market success with beverage industry expert Debbie Wildrick. From their experience at running seven 11 and North America to helping startups achieve multimillion dollar exit, Debbie reveals why 80% of new products fail in their first year, and what separates the winners.

From the losers. Discover the 10 critical pillars every business needs for success. Whether you are launching a beverage brand or building any consumer focused business, stay tuned because this is a game changing set of insights that could transform your approach to business growth. Get ready for this very special episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders and I think we have someone extraordinary with us today because Debbie and I got chatting a little bit and she’s got a lot of really interesting stories that I know is gonna benefit everyone in our audience listening in today.

Debbie, firstly, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

And guess let’s start, let’s kick things off with, just give everyone a little bit of an introduction as to who you are.

Okay. I’m Debbie Wildrick and I’ve been in the industry, in the US for all of my career. Mostly many a lot of my experience has been in the beverage business.

I actually ran all of beverages for seven 11 North America for a. Quite a bit of time in the two thousands, and that led me to really understand a lot about what it takes to put a product on the shelf and have that shelf leave the shelf and into the consumer’s hands and then into their mouths, of course, over and over again.

And that really. Is what it takes to successfully develop a product. So I’ve been working with startups either directly for in executive positions, running every aspect of a business, all verticals, everything from product development to sales and distribution to certainly the financials and the viable business model and whether or not we.

Whether or not we have a chance to really be successful, and my whole goal is helping entrepreneurs really mitigate risk and help them to be successful with their with their product launches. A and it is a a really interesting space, and I know a little bit about the the beverage industry, but it’s it, I think the one thing to keep it for people to keep in mind as well is that it’s not always direct to consumer.

You’re selling either, is that you’re selling a lot to retailers as well, aren’t you?

I spoke with somebody else the other day about this. It really is a B2B. Because you are selling to the retailer and you. Are E except with e-commerce. Obviously you are B2C, but most of this industry will remain.

The shopper still spends a lot of time shopping at retail in person and. That’s what it really means you’re selling to the retailers, to the distributors who get the products to the retailers. And where the real consumer aspect comes in is that the retailer agrees to put your product on the shelf.

And so you’re selling to them and they’re selling to the consumer and the consumer makes those decisions. And if they don’t make the decisions, obviously. You’ve got your challenges on your hand.

It is quite a complicated industry in many respects because you’ve got a lot of suppliers, generally speaking in the first instance and leading you into a, what can be a large production set up that one needs, and then you’re going into, as you’re saying, there.

Understanding multiple audiences because you, you have to really understand what your distributors want. You have to understand then what your retailers want, and you have to understand ultimately what the consumers want. That is a lot of a lot of different moving parts to think about.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. So you’re absolutely right. The distributor has to be convinced that. That they will put a product on their trucks that the retailer will actually support and purchase. And in, in our business, a lot of times we say This is a chicken and the egg business, because the distributor going out as an, as a new brand.

The distributor expects you to already have the acceptance of the retailer and the retailer of course. Really would like for you to have the acceptance of the consumer, but you don’t always know that and when you’re first moving forward. I have just written a white paper and overview of what I call my pillar number one, to having a successful company, and it is about market opportunity.

And consumer need and figuring that out before you ever even enter into a product launch so that you have a better understanding that it will actually move off the shelf. And that’s really the end result. But the, all the steps in the way of the supply chain. Everything from production to distribution to the retailer are just getting you to the consumer and the consumer has to respond.

I. It’s not an industry for the faint-hearted really, is it? You can’t it’s not something that you dabble in. Although what’s interesting is there’s been a lot of I guess pop-up small, particularly particularly in the alcohol related beverage side of things. A lot of small players in the market who more or less start from their home or a small facility building and then go and go from there.

But it is a it’s a very difficult space to. Make money in and to be competitive in.

Yes, it is. There’s a very famous brand, and I talk about, I tell this story quite a bit. It’s called Vitamin Water, and I’m not sure if how far they spread across the world, but they actually sold to Coca-Cola.

For $4.1 billion when they were at 600 million in revenue in trailing revenues for the last 12 months, and they were in year number nine and had not shown profitability until year number eight and had raised a lot of money before that their, the sale of the company of 4.1 billion. So it’s an industry that is.

It’s got great stories great stories if you’re able to do that. But it is really hard work and it is very hard to make money. Eight outta 10, eight out of 10 new companies fail every year.

It’s a very high percentage because a lot of people come in with a great idea and it’s easy, isn’t it, in that sense to have the idea, because we all go and buy a drink from a local store, and we think, oh, if it only had a touch of this, or what if we did it this way instead?

So it’s easy to have those ideas, but the reality of it is quite a difficult one. And talk to me about that. You’ve worked with startups as well. How does that. Come about for people, what’s the, what is the step to actually get them out of that 80% that are going to fail and to get them on the right path from the beginning?

I would say that it’s really ticking on all levels of the industry, and I’ve been working on writing the 10 pillars. I’ve had the 10 pillars for a long time. As to what you need to have in order to be successful. But, having four or five of those, that’s one of the biggest issues.

Um, and like I said, the starting point. Most entrepreneurs, many new products come to fruition because I have a need. I want to I’m lactose intolerant and the people that created the brand called Oatley, which is an oat drink as a, as an example, were I. Looking for something that lacto was lactose intolerant and or for people that are lactose intolerant.

And so they, they said there’s nothing on the market like this. And so they created a product and Oatley, as an example, was very successful, but. There’s so much more than that. So the first, the very first step is you have to have a consumer need, even if you’re trying to create it to some degree on your own.

But you also really have to begin to understand all aspects of the business. And so the second factor that is critical is that we go into this. Without really understanding our viable business model, which is real simple. We look at what can we command as a price point at retail to the consumer.

And we back in all the supply chain aspects of it, the distribution, the retailer’s profitability, but and all the way down, of course to the cost of goods. And if we’re not making. The right levels of product on a piece of paper, on a back of a napkin. You can do this. You really are setting yourself up for failure because you get into production or you you get to retail and you’re shipping costs are outta line.

Any number of things can happen if you haven’t really, you haven’t really done this simple model and then. One of the areas that I think is critical, I said that eight out of 10 fail in the first year. In the second year, eight out of 10 of those, if you will, or 80% of those will fail because they’ve run outta money or they didn’t have enough money to begin with.

We hope you’re enjoying listening to the Biz Buys Podcast. Have you ever thought about having your own podcast, one for your business where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world? Come talk to us at podcast Done for You. That’s what we’re all about. We even offer a service where I’ll anchor the program for you.

So all you have to do is show up for a conversation, but don’t worry about that. We will do everything to design a program that suits you. From the strategy right through to publishing and of course helping you share it. So come talk to us podcast done for you.com au details in the show notes below. Now, back to Biz Bites.

Eight out of 10 of those, if you will, are 80% of those will fail because they’ve run outta money or they didn’t have enough money to begin with.

It’s a very expensive. Place to be. It’s not unlike a lot of industries where you can come in on the back of a computer and you can design something and start offering your services.

There’s a lot of things to consider because production is a huge thing. And I think the other thing too, of course, is there’s. A fair amount of time that’s needed before you can actually get up and running and selling products. It’s not, again, not a lot of service-based businesses that can open their doors today and start serving clients that afternoon.

It’s, there’s a lot involved. So what’s the actual lead time before you actually get you, you start from the idea and actually getting out and selling something.

Six to nine months. Six to nine months, absolutely. I’ve done a, I first started creating products when I was with seven 11. And of course our executive management team, it had expectations that were unbelievable.

And so I did a critical path document way back then that that actually puts all the steps in the timing in one. One model so that you can really look at making sure that you are getting those steps ahead of time completed, and then. You’ve got a launch date at the end and if you’re following your critical path, then you’ve got six to nine months If you’re not following your critical path very well or things, if there’s hiccups along the way, then, it could be a year to two years.

I’ve seen new brands not launch for two years. Wow.

It’s, and I think the interesting thing about this space as well is that generally I would gather that a lot of the majority of people that come into this space have no experience. Absolutely. So following a critical path and having someone like yourself to Abbott to guide them is going to be so critical because of the amount of moving parts that are involved, as we’ve said.

Yes, absolutely. And. One of the things that, that happens for me quite often, and it’s especially been happening in the last 10 years, but a lot of a lot of famous brands even even 20 years ago, right outta college people, I wanna be an entrepreneur. I wanna start. My own company. I wanna build a brand.

I have a need I believe that there’s nothing like it on the market. I can make it happen. Zero experience. Zero experience, even running any kind of business, much less running in the food and beverage business.

Yeah. And I think there’s a lot of lessons for people in this that. A lot of people wait for a while before they get some kind of coach or consultant in, but often, particularly in the startup phase like this, having someone that can mentor you, guide you, coach you, consult you for you is just super critical, isn’t it?

It is. And I like to say that the best coaching that you can have is. Is to have somebody like myself who has actually started out in the industry when I was in my mid twenties, working at retail and moving up along the industry. And so it’s important when I start a consulting agreement that is for a new entrepreneur, we will actually do the critical path that I referenced.

And we’ll lay that out. And then each week we’ll meet and I will guide them through exactly what they need to do to meet the next objective.

And I can imagine in this kind of space that it’s really passion driven, that the people who start this up have a real passion for what they want.

This is not just a kind of a side hustle ’cause they just said, oh, this might be a nice place to make money. You, because of the lead time, because of the amount involved. It’s a passion project, isn’t it?

It’s a passion pro project. Speaking of that lack of experience, there’s so many times I’ve had conversations and even after I explained to them some of the aspects of what it really takes to get.

The product to market you, you will have that entrepreneur that says, but I can do it. I can do it. I’ve got a great idea. I’ve got a great idea, and I can do it. And, she’s making it seem so hard, but it, I’m so passionate about it that I can do it and it it really gets in the way sometimes of being successful.

I I want to explore that because that is such a common thing in so many businesses that it, the passion that people have is fantastic, but it needs to be curtailed and it needs to also be, I. Pigeonholed in the sense that you need to be can thinking of your audiences, and in this case, multiple audiences because what you want doesn’t necessarily match ultimately with all those different audiences either.

So you have to you might have started off with passionately about a good idea, but you have to listen to what everyone else wants. I, I guess using it, it’s, we had this debate in my family just the other day where. Do we have ginger in the drink or not have ginger in the drink?

I love ginger, so I’m quite happy to have it in the rest of the family. Not so much. And but that’s the little thing where you have to understand those little decisions can have huge implications. And it’s not just about ingredients, it’s about all of the things that make up what ultimately is the product that you’re selling.

Yes, that’s true. I actually had a client who was developed a ginger beverage. And do you know that it took about six months for them to get the formulation? Not only because they had all the family members involved, and it was two sisters and the one sister had created it for the other sister who was always getting sick while she was pregnant.

And so that was the start of it. But it, it’s not, it’s certainly not just listening to your family members either. The ultimate guide is being able to try your product with multiple consumers before you ever even think about formulating. And that’s where we also miss it.

We, it’s our idea. We think we’ve got it the way that we want it and we haven’t really spoke outside our internal network. I.

It is surprising how often that simple idea translates across to multiple businesses that people start off with an idea because they believe there’s a gap there without actually ever testing it to see whether other people think exactly the same thing.

And it’s such a simple idea. Yet, it’s often often lost and it has to happen all the way throughout the process, right? We’re talking about the basics of the makeup of the product itself. But it goes into, certainly from a marketing point of view into the branding, I’ve often seen that go go astray because, oh, I like this color.

I. You like that color and that font, but that’s got nothing to do with whether your audience likes that and it doesn’t. And whether that stacks against your competitors and what the message is that it sends, there are so many different things to think about that go well beyond what your personal preference is.

And that’s where the difference isn’t it? Between creating what is a brand that’s just for you and your family to, to consume and maybe a few other people, if you’re lucky, and something that you’re actually turning into a decent sized business.

Y Yes and you know what? It’s not just at the beginning either.

The ginger beverage that I was talking about, they ended up launching and changing formulations and changing labels and branding two or three times. In the first two years without really ever getting to market, and brand in the first five years could change as, as much as two to five times, and that’s not unusual because you don’t always.

Know that you got it right in the beginning. Even if you did all this work in the beginning you’re still tweaking with the consumer. You’re changing your messaging, you’re changing your packaging because the consumer hasn’t responded as you expected them to. But it can be fixed. Many brands go through this, but it.

So it’s not out of the question to, to have that happen too, which again, expensive way of doing business. But successful brands have to tweak and tweak because they continue to listen to the consumer and and the consumer really tells ’em what they want.

Yeah, and a brand’s such an important thing because you start to identify with it and people make so many subconscious decisions before they even pick something up.

And then you, once it’s embedded as well, it’s hard to change as even big companies like Coca-Cola will tell you, try and add a new variation in the label. Add something different in add a new, flavor. All of those things can actually be incredibly difficult at times.

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. It’s I think Coke has been through that a few times where they’ve had to backtrack, haven’t they? They’ve they’ve introduced something and then they’ve turned around and gone. The public didn’t like it. And so even the big brands get it wrong.

Yes, absolutely.

And the big brands sometimes go through it more than the startup brands go through it because. They’ve got all kinds of objectives from return on investment. They’re their branding people and their new product people have to prove the viability of it. And if it’s not successful on the sales side, then they’re constantly re revamping the brands and trying to.

Increase and build their sales and profitability. And so sometimes they’re doing they’re doing more work with that, thank goodness they have more money to do that. But they’re doing it even more than we think. That they are, and then they make misses, zero coke, zero years and years ago or any number of things.

And I don’t know what they’re doing today with their packaging. They’re putting names of people on their packaging.

Yeah. And I think that’s interesting thing, isn’t it? It’s it’s an industry that is so super competitive, but it is an industry where that therefore where that desire and the need to stand out.

Is. Prevalent all the time, isn’t it? Because there are so many new things that are coming onto the market, and how do you actually stand out and be different is, if it’s one magic ingredient, how do you actually highlight that? Or is it something more, or is it not actually even a matter of being different?

It’s just a matter of producing something that looks different, even though it might be the same as something else. Like it’s a. A very interesting industry in that respect.

It is. It is. And you’re constantly tweaking and, the US market is a little bit, is a little bit. Different. I like to say sometimes we’ve been this way for years and years on steroids and especially because, the big companies are public companies and you’re always managing based on the stock market.

But we, unlike any other country in the world. Our maniacs with regard to introducing and launching product extensions, new brands new, um, new and different categories. And the big companies are, they work really hard at doing that. And that’s why they end up the other big thing about being an entrepreneur and developing a product and building a product and being eventually successful about with it, like I talked about Vitamin Water, is that the big companies end up buying up these brands that the entrepreneur has been able to build and build to a successful point because.

They’re, they have a hard time really getting it done in their systems.

And is that the ultimate goal for a lot of these businesses to that, that they’re trying to build something that will get on the radar of the big companies who, who will then buy them out? Is that what the goal is?

Absolutely.

This industry, I don’t when I interview. Entrepreneurs in the beginning and ask them about their goals. I always ask, are you building this to keep it or are you building it to sell it? And if entrepreneurs are almost always, I would say 90% of them are building it to sell it. They’re not building it to have a nice.

Family business. And I think that is because there, this industry has been like that for 20 years. That the brands, the buying and selling of brands and the people that have really been successful at it are. I have seen all this happen over the years, and so they they want the big gold at the end of the rainbow.

And is that the starting point as well, that you have to be prepared to scale and scale fast? Is that the is that how you have to be thinking when you start something like this?

Yes. Now. It does take a while so by the time I, and I’ve also had a lot of entrepreneurs ask me I wanna get in front of Coca-Cola, I wanna get in front of General Mills, or I wanna get in front of any number of companies.

And Coca-Cola always had a venture capital group, but you can’t even speak to Coca-Cola until you’re $10 million in revenue. And it can take a long time to get to $10 million in revenue. And so, and $10 million in revenue is also. Most likely national distribution with several retailer channels.

And so you’re pretty equipped to, to have a company that is moving in the right direction, but they, the big companies don’t even wanna talk to you before $10 million in revenue. And they’re buying distribution. They’re not buying. They are not buying a brand or an idea because they think that, oh, it’s differentiated and we could take and build it from here because we’re gonna be better at it than the entrepreneur.

No, they, they wanna buy distribution, they wanna buy velocity, and they wanna buy consumer demand. And that has to be proven in order for them to begin to look at it. And a lot of times they’ll buy into it. A portion of it and take a portion of the company before they actually buy the brand.

And that goes on for anywhere from two to five years where they may buy into the brand, but then then eventually they’ll buy the entire brand.

And I, is that, I, is it realistic that most businesses that are going into this. That’s where they’re trying to head. Is that a realistic goal for pe for businesses?

How many of these kinds of companies can a Coca-Cola and the various others want to buy?

How many businesses

I. How, yeah. How do they want to keep buying businesses like this all the time? Are they buying them for the innovation or are they buying them to, to shut them out?

They’re buying the, they are buying them for the innovation because they have not been able to innovate within their own systems. The way that, that the smaller companies have. I’m, all of a sudden what just popped into my mind was Crave. And Crave is a natural beef jerky company that was bought by General Mills, I believe several years ago.

And. And what was happening during the time when General Mills was also doing, they had a big venture group that they still have, but they’re not buying as much in recent years. They actually would general Mills was looking in the natural foods business quite a bit and so they were looking to get into.

Each category, snack foods, you name it that they could actually add a natural product because natural foods and health and wellness and the consumers ta taste as well as what they want in their ingredients and has changed so much over the years and the bigger companies.

Are just continuing to want to add that to their portfolio. I think PepsiCo just bought Poppy, which is a probiotic beverage as an example. I.

Yeah, I think people forget the simple fact that you mentioned earlier on is that smaller companies have the ability to maneuver and make changes fast.

Bigger companies don’t have that luxury. There are too many moving parts. There are too many things to consider. So often that’s the reason why they can look to some of these smaller companies because the ability to be more flexible in the market and to make change is much easier.

Yes, it. It is it’s much easier to be able to make change and have flexibility in the marketplace when you actually don’t have to, you don’t have to go through the product development as much in your own system.

If you’ve got the ability to evaluate those brands that have been successful and are really moving the needle,

talk to me about you personally though. Do you get, do you still get the thrill out of every ti of new brands all the time and new businesses and doing that because you’ve been there and done that a few times.

I do. I do. I’m fascinated. It’s really tough to walk around. The largest trade show in the World is the Natural Products Expo that is out in Anaheim every march. And, every year you go there and you look at all the brands and you look for innovation. And when I get most passionate when somebody comes to me that really does have a strong idea, and then I can take, I, I can really help them run with it.

And I loved I loved to be able to help them with the consumer messaging, to be able to dig into what ingredients they might, they might want to switch around and to really help them. I find myself much more challenged than somebody coming to me with another energy drink. That, that, that is true, that if you’re just coming to me with another.

Something that really doesn’t have the innovation or the differentiation, then I’m certainly not as excited and I may not even, I may not even take you on as a client.

And it’s interesting when you say the innovation in the industry because it’s tough, isn’t it? It’s not I don’t know how many years ago that someone first came up with the idea of going there’s this thing that we can, everyone can get for free by turning on the tap, but we’re gonna put it in a bottle and sell it to you called water.

That was, that was, an innovative first step. But it’s, how innovative is it really these days? Is there actually stuff that hasn’t been done yet because it, it feels like there’s always something new, but how have we not ran out of ideas in this industry?

That’s I don’t I don’t mean to snicker about that, but you’re absolutely right.

You walk this trade show with thousands upon thousands of new entries and you come back from it and you say what’s the most innovative thing that you saw? And sometimes you take a stretch, but there’s there, there are ways of innovating and. It’s not just about ingredients, it’s not just about functionality.

It’s, it can be packaging. There’s a lot of innovations that are coming to fruition from packaging and the way that we consume are. Our products, functional beverages as an example of, they’re convenient. I can, in, instead of taking a pill, I can take I have to drink water anyway and I can put collagen in it and I can put it on the market and.

And so we’ve got the opportunity still to do things if we really dig in. And, but it, it’s a challenge. And that’s probably one of the other challenges about building a new product these days, is that I’ve gotta figure out how to differentiate it.

It is such an important thing, isn’t it?

It’s those little things that can make a huge difference in the way something, is marketed. And the way it captures the audience and knowing who your audience is. It goes back to where we started the conversation really, isn’t it? It’s that whole idea of understanding your different audiences and being able to be seen as innovative to them.

Is what counts. And it could be, as you say, it could be the packaging or it could be the actual in this case, the actual drink itself.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It I a story that goes back quite a bit, but when I was at seven 11, I just had this gentleman reach out to me. He said, thank you so much.

I my nickname is Queen of Beverages, and he, I had sent him an email and he said, I remember when you helped me get Fiji water on the shelves at seven 11. And, I evaluated this, I had a category where the pre there’s three segments of water and it was premium. It was mainstream and it was, um, value and I had one one premium water on the shelf and based on volume in turns, I really could only afford to have one, one premium water on the shelf.

And Fiji comes to me. Fiji had a square bottle. They had a picture of. Fiji waterfalls in the back that showed through the front and I said, you know what? You’ve got something that is totally differentiated that the consumer’s never seen. Nothing different about the water, you know? Really I have been in the water business in other areas too, so I know a lot about water and what can differentiate you.

But it was all about the packaging and. And sure enough, PG became, it was about a $10 million brand when they came to me and they grew to over 200 million.

Amazing. It’s and it is. So it does bamboozle people at times where you go, it’s. It’s water. In most countries, you can just turn on the tap and get the water for free.

And it’s, and yet people are buying the bottled water on a consistent basis. And I find it fascinating as well, when you go to whether it’s a seven 11 or some equivalent thereof. And particularly I fascinated by it, particularly when you’re on the road, you’re driving on the road, you make a stop and you.

I wanna get some water to take in the car. Fine. That makes sense. But looking at it and trying to go, why would you pay extra for a premium brand in water when you can get the generic brand, whatever it might be, that is so much less. It just. It astonishes me, because there isn’t really a difference.

Is there, when you, when it comes down to it, it’s still water.

It’s still water. There’s a lot of factors to it. Certainly. And we I was actually involved still am a little bit with a source water out of Brazil, which is. The marketed as the purest water ever discovered. But what does the purest water ever discovered mean?

What it means is that it’s really low on minerals or anything. It has less than 10 total dissolved solids in it. But how do you communicate that to the consumer? And we would put these test things in bottles of premium, other premium waters that were higher and just a regular spring water to a Aquafina or Dasani as an example, which are Coke and Pepsi brands that, that are reverse osmosis.

So they don’t have a lot of TDS in them either, but, you know what, what makes me want to consume one versus the other? Now the tools that we were using to put in the other premium waters that were really high on minerals would turn the premium water into what looks like palms gun, a scum.

And I kept on telling my business partner, I said, I don’t really think we can market that to the consumer. It’s. Great. I know that you raised the money based on the fact that the investor would not drink those other waters, but, and so you have to, um. With premium waters and there’s a ton of ’em, and they’re all, they come from all over the world.

You have to really figure out the marketing aspect and the emotional connection and the, like the example with Fiji, your marketing it through the packaging and that’s what’s really selling it.

We could talk for a long time about a lot of these a lot of these drinks. It’s been fascinating.

Just two final things I wanted to ask you about, and one is just something you alluded to earlier in the conversation. I know you’re working on putting these 10 pillars into a book, but tell me just in a broad sense, what are the 10 pillars really about?

The 10 pillars. I like to also say that without all the spokes of a wheel, you can’t really move it forward.

The 10 pillars are all the pillars that I believe are critical to having in place in order to have a successful company, and they range from. The first one, which I’m actually in, in the link that I’ve given you. I’ve written an overview of market opportunity and consumer need, which we talked about a lot during this meeting.

But it goes all the way from the viable business model, which I talked about, and that’s one of the pillars, making sure that you have the viable business model product differentiation. Then sales and distribution marketing, both consumer messaging as well as how you promote with your customer base and financing, the critical areas that you really need to have in place to make sure that you’re funded well, so that you can be successful year over year.

And so that’s what the 10 Pillars are all about. They’re putting team and infrastructure that’s it, it covers every vertical, every aspect of what it takes to be successful.

Fantastic. And then there’s something we’ll talk about more into the future, I’m sure. Just tell us just on the back of that, the the link that we’re gonna put in the show notes to people, what are people gonna find in that?

What’s the value for them?

The, they’re going to find an overview of pillar number one, which is the market opportunity and, um, the market opportunity and the consumer need. And I. I have basically written a, pretty much a white paper on. What it takes to, what you need to know about that first pillar.

And and so it’s it’s a a teaser if you will to help the the client understand. Anybody who’s interested in really. Looking into it further. And of course my website as well actually has all 10 of the pillars and what you’ll eventually learn from the program that I’m putting together.

But, and the website has a recap of each one of the 10 pillars. And

I think what’s important for people to understand as well is that these learnings from, that you’ve had extensively in this industry apply to other industries as well. So it’s not something that is just restricted to people who are thinking, oh, I’ve got it.

I want to get into the food and beverage industry. There is the implications for this and the learnings from this are extended to many businesses.

Absolutely. And I like to think that way with regard to the 10 pillars. And a lot of times, somebody came to me the other day and said, do you have experience in the beauty world?

Even though it’s not food and beverage, it is still B2B, then B and B2C, and. The all companies, to some degree, are working the same way, whether it’s technology or building. A another type of product that is, is to be sold primarily to the consumer. But it the things that you need to have in place do crossover.

Other industries, almost every industry.

I’m gonna encourage everyone to check the links out in the show notes to get access to that. Just one final question that I like to ask all my guests is, what is the aha moment that people have when they come to work with you that you wish more people knew they were going to have?

Have to go back to the lack of industry experience and the. Their passion is so strong, but their frustrations around everything. I had somebody a lot of times they’ll, the aha moment though for them will be we’ll talk through all of this. And I had somebody call me about a product that, that was to be added to coffee that you bought.

That was. Ready to drink. And I said, you really need to know you, you really need to be going to the coffee buyer, not the beverage buy, not the package beverage buyer. And the gentleman said to me, are you kidding me? That’s amazing. And so it’s just those little nuggets that when we have the conversations and I don’t.

Like to give out a whole lot of information necessarily, but as we talk through their idea and I share with them answer their questions and it’s a nugget like that will be an aha. It’s not just one area or one thing. It’s just that all of a sudden I say something and they’re like, wow, I never thought about that, but that’s amazing.

That’s. That’s great feedback.

I love that. I love that. And look, thank you so much for, in incredible insights fascinating industry and lots of things that I think all business leaders can learn from in this. And as I said to everyone, I encourage people to go and check out the links in the show notes to find out more.

But Demi, thank you so much for being part of the program.

Alright, thank you. Thank you for having me.

And to everyone listening in, don’t forget. As I said, check out the show notes. And also don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Until next time, don’t forget to tune in to Biz Bites for thought leaders.

Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance. To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes.

We look forward to your company next time on biz.

Sustainable leadership and ai, a panel discussion with two people who haven’t met before this particular podcast, which makes it all the more exciting and it made for an absolutely amazing discussion. You do not wanna miss this episode. We have Johann, who has a background in sales coaching, and he brings decades of real world experience helping business owners scale through authentic, I should say, sales leadership.

But what we really love about his approach is he is so much purpose driven that he has also established a publishing company where proceeds a hundred percent of the proceeds, I should say, are going back to a charity in Africa. I. So we are talking to someone who truly understands purpose driven business, matching that with Brigitte Johnson, who is a master coach and strategist who spent 20 years helping leaders, particularly female lead leaders, I should say, navigate the challenges of sustainable success.

Sustainable is something that we are really gonna press home in this discussion. Mixed in with purpose driven and mixed in with the impact of ai. It makes for a really an amazing discussion from two people with incredible varying expertise who come together and really do agree on the way forward. So you don’t wanna miss this episode.

Sit back, relax, enjoy it, whatever you are doing, and make sure you listen to this full episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Hello everyone, and welcome to a very special episode of Biz Bites. I have two guests with me today. They haven’t met each other until a couple of moments ago, and this is gonna make it for an even more interesting discussion. So welcome both Johann and Brigitte.

Thank you. Thank you for the introduction and lovely to meet you too, Brigitte, on a short notice.

It’s been it’s always good to connect with new people.

Fantastic. Lovely to meet you Johann. Thanks for having us, Anthony.

Absolute pleasure. So as we like to do at the start of the program, it’ll allow each of you to introduce yourself. Johann, why don’t you kick things off and tell everyone a little bit about you.

Cool. So I’m very transparent. So Anthony, you can even ask any question throughout the show as well, both personal and professional. But on a professional level, I’ve got two business to. I basically help business owners make more money through sales. I do a lot of sales training, sales coaching, one-on-one coaching sales workshops with large and small medium organizations.

But the reason why I love it is I’ve been in sales since I was 14 and I’m now 40. So whatever I teach and preach for businesses are things that I’ve actually done in my own world. So that’s my big point of difference there. And then I’ve also got a second business. It’s a publishing company.

So I’ve created actually my first children’s book only about eight months ago, and I created a publishing company called Blueprint Publishing. And a hundred percent of the net proceeds of this children’s book that I created go to a charity in Africa. So on a personal level, that’s my purpose is is helping others and that’s part of function that.

So that’s a bit about me for now.

Fantastic. I love it. We have plenty to come back to. Brigitte, what about you? Introduce yourself a little bit.

Sensational Johann, that’s I could have done with that when my three kids were little. I am a bit of a rebel thinker. I’m a master coach and a strategist and pretty much a thinking partner for my clients, which range from leaders in education to across.

Probably quite a number of different sectors. I cannot think of many sectors that I haven’t worked in my 40 years of coaching and leading. So yeah so basically my core strength is curiosity. And I didn’t even know what coaching was. When I was leading a team of 50 back in the early, earlier part of this century.

And then. Discovered through McKinsey that this thing called coaching exists. And sure enough, I unleashed myself and set up my practice pretty much, within weeks. And so it’s been a journey of 20 years of my practice, which is really cool because I’ve got my three teenagers and my dog.

I love to travel and and help purpose centered humans to, to lead sustainably really is my core value.

I love that. It’s a it’s a lot of really important ideas that you’ve both hit upon there. And this is where I want to start this. Discussion. If I can talk to me a little bit, firstly, Brigitte, about that whole idea at the end, sustainability and purpose driven, because I think that’s such an important aspect and I know I can see Johann nodding his head.

And I know from reading a little bit about your background, Johann as well. I know this is something that’s important to you. So how do you define that? What actually is it?

Yeah. So for me a lot of the client community that I’m, I work with successful on the outside and hopefully on the inside. Female leaders struggle with common themes of burnout imposter syndrome just feeling like they’re just spread too thin and there’s not enough time.

Really. What we do is we look at, okay, what is sustainable success? How can we get to where we want to go and stay there and hang in because the world needs. More female leaders. We know that organizations that are, that have a good representative of females on the board and on in the C-suite do better.

Yeah. From an ROI perspective, they perform better. But our systems aren’t designed, haven’t been designed. For women historically. So what we’re looking at is, okay, how do we elevate the leader to have not just authentic leadership, but sustainable? So these are micro habits. These are evidence-based practices that you probably have heard of, but with coaching.

It creates that safe place for someone to sit and go, ah, you know what? I really marked that bit up. I’ve done it again. I’ve over committed or I’ve tipped the balance too far in, in the favor of work, and now I’m feeling, totally disconnected from my partner or my kids, or whatever it is.

So these are the sorts of issues that we help to address in coaching.

Yeah it’s such an important. Aspect, I think to be able to look at that whole notion of something that is sustainable. Because when you start with trying to elevate people, unless you’ve got longevity to it, it’s a hit and miss kind of scenario, isn’t it?

Correct.

And I guess that’s the element as well where coaching comes into it, doesn’t it? Because it’s about trying to find ways to keep maintain that.

Yeah, absolutely. We’re obviously in a very interesting time in history globally. There’s a lot of disruption regardless of what gender we are, for across the board for all of us politically economically there, there is enormous.

Disruption happening. And what we’re finding is that, and that, and I haven’t even got to the sort of, the main one, which is obviously the technology. And when we think about this, we’re looking at, okay, how can we be more human in our leader our approach to leadership agreed. How can we bring more empathy, more compassion, more resilience?

How can we navigate transitions because. Humans aren’t going to be replaced by machines in the most important aspects, which is connection, right? Um, sustainable leadership is also about riding that wave of technological disruption as well.

I think that’s something we need to come back to.

But Joanna, I wanna bring you in here because I think it’s really important to understand as well that sustainability. In terms of sales and sales leadership is incredibly important, isn’t it? Because there is a quick burn and a churn and burn theory that’s existed in the past as well. And if you want to survive, you have to find a way to make it sustainable.

Yeah, I think Brigitte, hit something ahead on the nail like I think my coaching aspects and philosophies are very aligned, and it might be for a different market, but. It’s for the same outcome. And usually when I work with business owners they have this expectation on maybe what they wanna achieve within their business, but it’s not necessarily aligned to what their staff think that achievement is.

So always this alignment. So sometimes what I need to actually do is integrate and alignment theory where both the owner has a target and the capacity of a salesperson as well. Because Brigitte mentioned, burnout is such a big thing. And I’m a big believer that compounding on small steps is such a greater thing than trying to do things on a massive scale than then burning out and ruin, ruining your whole ecosystem as well.

But the other thing that I like to personally do with sustainability is that when I’m associating or talking to a business owner, that’s what I primarily do is I don’t look at how business is performing, how internal. Perform. Are they in isolation mode? Are they neglecting, are they angry, are they frustrated?

And that usually will paint me a picture on what’s happening in the business, not vice versa. So I don’t look at the business. I actually look at the owner first and seeing how they’re reacting, trying to find out exactly what is happening within them. So that is my sustainability. Sustainability means long.

I’m a marathon. I run. And it’s all about steps. It’s all about doing things in slow patterns. So I’m a big believer in that too.

Yeah, sustainability is. Important and I think misunderstood word. You know, Brigitte, if I can bring you back in there, that I think people, think about it in terms of the environment.

They think about it this kind of eerie fairy sort of term, but it has more meaning and depth to it, doesn’t it? And is that getting through to people? Are people understanding what it really means?

Yeah, absolutely. I’m talking as practically and fundamentally as 70% of adults are not getting enough sleep.

We’re going about our day with our, executive functioning, nowhere near full throttle. So leaders making critical decisions, under enormous pressure. Sleep deprived, or, I love hearing Johann’s running. Just having that outlet. ’cause we know that kind of energy is important for sustainable leadership.

Yeah.

We know that’s what gets our, the blood flying to the brain and so those sort of fundamentals. But then there’s also. Sustainability I think about with purpose, right? Are we tapped into the purpose, the why of what we’re doing every day? How do we get that practice happening so that we’re actually not just clear on our own purpose, but also that our teams are really clear on why.

They’re doing what they’re doing and the difference that they’re making and the impact that they’re having. And I think that younger obviously the younger generations are really wanting to go to those purpose-led purpose-driven organizations. So you’re gonna win the war for talent when you have that.

Level of sustainability.

We hope you’re enjoying listening to the Biz Buys podcast. Have you ever thought about having your own podcast, one for your business where your brilliance is exposed to the rest of the world? Come talk to us at podcast Done for You. That’s what we’re all about. We even offer a service where I’ll anchor the program for you.

So all you have to do is show up for a conversation, but don’t worry about that. We will do everything to design a program that suits you. From the strategy right through to publishing and of course helping you share it. So come talk to us podcast done for you.com au details in the show notes below. Now back to Biz Bites.

You’re gonna win the War for Talent when you have that. Level of sustainability. And then there’s like that, there’s, look, I’ve got eight huge pillars of, of all of these micro habits that you can pull into your day. But we look at each leader individually and figure out where are your strengths?

Where are you energized? Where are you playing to those strengths? But where are also the blind spots or the weaknesses or the areas that you, you’re gonna. They’re gonna become big traps if we don’t address them quickly.

Yeah. It is important isn’t it, to try and understand that because there’s one thing zeroing in on your purpose, but it’s another thing as you say, trying to find those blind spots and yeah, and I think that’s an area that is.

Particularly interesting when you talk about the marathon and running step by step, like it gives you a lot of time to go, okay, you can focus on what’s in front of you, but what is on either side? What are those areas that you might be a little bit weaker on?

Yeah it is actually interesting.

A lot of people say to me, or how do you become such a great marathon runner? Or you don’t like to run, and it’s a natural gift, if I’m being honest with you. So I’ve always had that bit of advantage that. We’ve got like what Brigitte said, or strengths, and I’ve probably realized what those were.

Quite a young age, which is naturally sales, natural running, and I’ve influence. I succeed when I step out, not outta my comfort zone, but something that I’m not a specialist at, that’s when I really get fatigued. I really get burnt out and I actually really crash. And I’ve got a big faith background and I believe that we all have a special gift or two.

And I think sometimes we need to understand that we may have four or five different talents within us. And then how do we use us? Use it. So it’s not just happening for us, but through us to empower leaders, staff members, and everyone within our circle, both on a professional and personal level as well.

And that’s something that I really love to, to harness in. I believe that everyone’s got some, unique talent within them and had we extract it out so they can use it within the marketplace to benefit them. And I’m a big believer in that too, to be honest with you. You probably see me smile because I’m very passionate about that.

And it’s interesting I think all three of us have a very clear idea of what we. Great at and what our, superpowers for want of a better term are, but Brigitte, how easy is that to make sure that when you’re dealing with teams and people that in, in, whether it’s across an organization or just individuals coming to you, that their purpose has actually been realized That they’re not just going through the motions and fallen into something.

Because I think we’ve probably all done the same thing at various times in our career, right? Where we’ve fallen into something and we can do it. But it’s not our purpose. It’s not what we love.

Such a great question, Anthony. It’s that kind of golden, that zone of deep fulfillment when one’s strengths are aligned with the purpose of the team and the overall mission of the organization.

That is a sweet spot that I think, every young person or EE, every person, emerging leaders, established leaders. Everyone in an organization should have the opportunity to at least have that conversation with their manager of how do I align and bring more of my strengths to this role, and how do we evolve the role to suit me?

Because that’s when a team of individuals is more than the collection of the individuals. It’s a real kind of. It’s a force to be reckoned with. And the organizations, you can see them that get that that really actually tap into what’s the, what are the gifts that these people are bringing every day?

How do we dial that up? How do we get them more in flow, more energized with what they’re doing? More intel. We know that when you’re playing to your strengths and when you’re bringing your strengths to work and you’re acknowledged for that, and and there’s an outlet for that. The performance improvement is more than 40% sustainably, right?

So you are, people are feeling like they belong. They’re aligned with the purpose. And it’s extraordinary. It’s it’s so wonderful to see those benefits and this is where sometimes working with the leader to see that maybe they’ve got this candidate in this role that is not gonna, is not a good fit.

But it’s a great person for this activity over here. Let’s just change things up a bit. Let’s not be too fixed in our mindset of who we want in each role. So it’s a bit of bit like a jigsaw puzzle really.

Yeah it’s an interesting point. It’s something that sort of crosses over to the topic that I was discussing recently on another episode.

It’s that definition or that differentiation I should say, between management and leadership because they’re not the same thing. And trying to find people that might be a leader in a certain area doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be a manager. The people who are the best at their particular area of expertise doesn’t necessarily make them a manager or, they might be a leader, but they might not be a manager.

And we very often.

Very different. I think it’s a very different d different aspects, isn’t it? And the reason why I just jumped in there was I was talking to an individual after a workshop and lovely lady said to me, I wanna become a leader within my organization, but I haven’t got that management title.

And I actually said that there are many functions you can do internally without that title. You don’t need that title to become an actual leader. Leader leadership actually starts within yourself and what you do without people recognizing it. So we went through some structural behaviors for who to implement within the workplace, but I said actually for experience, what you can actually do, if you want real hard core evidence, is go out to a local community group that needs volunteers.

Use those leadership examples or skills that you’re learning in that environment. See how it’s actually portrayed, and then use it within your workplace. And the feedback was that, hey, in this volunteering place, I’ve got the experience of real leadership. This is what I don’t like about it. This is what I love about it.

And within her workplace, she had the confidence to then talk to her manager and saying, look, I wanna become a leader. But even without the title, but what can I do with you to, blow up my leadership skills? And it was such an amazing thing to, to see. So I think with leadership you don’t need to be a manager or a title or a director.

In fact anyone, everyone’s a leader in some sort of capacity where it might be at home anyway or in, in any environment. So I think it’s about having the confidence to know that. We all have leadership qualities, but then how do we utilize it in different environments as well? I think that’s very important as well.

Yeah. Brigittete, I’m interested in how you respond to that. I.

Johannn, that’s Kenny, because I’ve got a client that I’m working with at the moment who is definitely CEO material, but she has four kids and the realization and they’re at a certain age that, there’s just this small window, and she’s totally leadership material. But we’ve got to the point of do I want it now? Yeah. And the answer is not yet. That there’s times. To, and seasons in one’s life. And it’s fantastic problem to have that she’s, leadership material. She’s been tapped on the shoulder as well, so recognized, but to have that self-awareness and that ability or that maturity to go you know what?

I don’t think this is right for me right now. I’ll I’ll go this other path and then I’ll find my way there. There’s so many pathways but you’re spot on with that leadership influencing without authority, that self-leadership is absolutely where it all starts in my book as well. It’s, a hundred percent is, and then, the leadership journey unfolds, I believe as people are ready for it.

Yeah. So true. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because you often hear it in sports analogies lead by example. I. And that’s, that, that’s probably the one that, that most people relate to.

You watch a team, whatever team it might be, in whatever sport, and often the leader is that person that is digging in deep and when things are looking a little bit vulnerable in the game that’s when them, going and putting a little bit of extra effort in to try and rally the troops as it were.

And that’s really what leadership is about, isn’t it? It’s not, it doesn’t have to have the title.

Yeah, totally correct.

Yeah. And I think that’s something that isn’t recognized as well, but that’s, but there is that difficulty. Brigitte, bringing back to you. That’s one of the hard things about, you talk about women in business and particularly giving them recognition for where they’re at.

And that’s one of the hard things that they can be leaders within a business as part, the client that you’re referring to would be a leader within the business, but may not have the title of CEO or whatever the. The leadership is, the top management position might be, and that’s a hard thing too, isn’t it?

Because sometimes that title does carry weight. That is important.

Absolutely. It carries weight. There’s a reason that, you’re being paid the big bucks, the responsibility is on those shoulders to make. Really tough decisions. It’s not a popularity contest. We want our leaders, to, as I said, coming back full circle sus to, to sustain their level of.

The quality of thinking, the quality of leadership, and to sustain their energy because we know that organizations, are gonna everyone’s learning and following what the leader is role modeling. So it sets the cultural tone for the organization. And the flip side of that is what we’re seeing is, you get leaders making.

Poor judgment, poor ethical decisions, mucking up. They’re out, that’s it. They’ve self-sabotage, whatever. It has been gone and more and more we have less tolerance and less forgiveness for leaders making. Really bad mistakes because everything’s so transparent now.

Yeah. Agree.

And whether you like it or not that’s just the way it is. That’s another thing that I think that leaders of today are really exposed to, not just the rapid rate of change, pace of change. But this transparency.

Yeah. Yeah. It is it’s there is, and we wanna come into this rapid change in a moment, but yeah.

Johann, I just wanna bring you in as well as is that the. We’ve talked about CEO kind of level, but when you talk about sales management level, is there a discrepancy between the people who are the lead, who are the leaders, and who are the managers and who they have the title and who don’t in the sales area that you are seeing?

Yeah, look, sales is a very unfair part of a body of a business, unfortunately, because I think generally if you’ve got that management position and you’re not a leader, but you’re bringing a lot of revenue. Sometimes your optical lens will be focused on revenue rather than leadership qualities from a high management point of view.

And that’s probably the biggest thing that I see when I speak to owners. But they’re like, this guy might not be the best leader, but he’s a state manager or a manager because he brings in the most, revenue in. And then sometimes my argument is that I can guarantee if that person wasn’t in your business.

Your other people would fire up more to a level where that revenue will exceed. Because again, going to what Brigitte said, you’re gonna be more sustainable, more happy. You’re not gonna have that churn rate of salespeople leaving in and out, which is probably costing you more than what you realize. So I think when you’re coming from a coaching point of view, where’re a different set of lands that we’re not working in the business it’s an overview.

So the advantages that you get is we get to see things that. Maybe, a biased owner won’t be able to see. And I’m very transparent in those conversations that just because someone’s making the most numbers doesn’t mean they’re the best manager is a or a best leader. It’s two different functions.

Yeah. And yeah.

And sometimes right that taking people away from what they do best. In this case, they’re a leading sales person, means that they’re spending more time on the management side of things and not doing the thing that they’re probably a best at. And B, most importantly, love.

Yeah, correct. And I think just on that point, sometimes what I actually do is if you’ve got. A person who’s a manager and you’re expecting ’em to do a lot of sales, I tend to find out burnout really occurs, or again, a churn will occur ’cause there’s too much responsibilities. So sometimes it’s having that conversation that your sales managers are not there just to bring revenue, but it’s really to lead, inspire your team.

It’s all about, that’s how you scale. Sustainability, not just everyone’s trying to do everything. That’s where problems occur. And especially in sales, when people get desperate, when their revenue’s low, they do crazy things. They self-sabotage or a lot of bad things can occur in that place as well.

So it’s so important to be number one, transparent. But number two, just to, just to be flexible as well, and move people around. It’s very important.

Before we just come into the technology thing, there is one question I wanted to ask you, Johann, because it’s something that I’ve seen over the years and I’m wondering where you stand with this.

There’s an often sales sits. I wouldn’t say independent of the organization, but they seem to be a law unto themselves and often there’s a lot of friction between the operation side of the business and and sales. I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it firsthand very early on in my career where sales and operations were literally at 50 cuffs at this particular organization.

But is that something that still exists or is that, that those tensions seem to have watered down or what are you seeing?

I would say 95% of organizations still have it. I wish it wasn’t the case. And a framework that I actually will share with everyone, and this is just like free value is I always get both teams to be together.

And what I’ll do is I’ll ask the sales team, what are three things you’d like from your operations team? And I’ll ask the operations team, what are three things you’d love? From your sales team, and it’s not about cleaning a fresh start or a clean slate, but it’s about building trust slowly and over time as well.

And I’d be, I’m a big believer, my philosophy in sales is that when I do well, I’m helping people. I’m employing people. People are growing. I wanna support my operations team. And I always encourage the salespeople that your operations team are the backbone to what you do.

Yeah it’s really hard isn’t it?

Often to understand. I think part of it is the commission based, right? That’s a source of tension within a business because you’ve got operations who are paid a fixed wage, generally speaking, and then sales who are often on some sort of commission based, and so that. Breeds friction

inness.

Yeah, for sure.

Now I don’t suppose that there’s not really an answer to that one, so we’re gonna move on to something that I, that we’ve, you’ve all touched on, which is around technology and the, and there’s a lot of tension as well with technology at the moment, and it’s moving at such a rapid pace, particularly in the past couple of years with ai.

And there’s people who are, feel threatened by their job. There’s, there’s peoples whose business feels like they’re under threat because they need to move faster with technology than they can actually handle. Where does that sit firstly, in terms of leadership? Brigitte? Where is it that people should be positioning themselves in relation to technology?

How do they harness it?

Yeah, I think ignore it at your peril. Really. I’m there is no conversation that I’m having in any client boardroom where, it’s a good idea to I. Downplay the impact of ai. What we are seeing is, and you might have heard a lot of people talking about, be the thinking partner.

Use it, leverage it as a a thinking partner collaborate. I think it’s a, you are the master and it is the servant. It’s a very poor master. It, there is not an ethical kind of dimension there. There’s not a human dimension. These are not human beings, right? These are machines, right?

And we need to feed, but the opportunities. And what the applications that we’re seeing in organizations that have got this alignment with their purpose and their people, and they’re using and harnessing ai. To actually boost the roles, boost the performance of of their teams. It’s extraordinary, really inspiring.

One of the things that I was I was looking at was, how do you. Can you create an AI coach? Now, of course you can. I’ve actually created one, but with this little app replica, and Richard, my coach, he’s onto me, right? He’s holding me accountable, but I can ignore him. You can’t ignore me.

I’m actually right. I’m holding you accountable. So there’s and there’s also conversations and emotional intelligence and nuances and all the soft skills they can emulate, but it’s not there yet. But I love seeing, I love playing around with it. Because, it’s important to know where you sit in the world and not to be kidding yourself, that you are irreplaceable. My key strength is the relationship that I have with my clients that is. If that’s strong, then, and that’s what I train other coaches in too is be confident in that and really own that and own your presence as a human being and as a coach in terms of, having these authentic, real relationships.

The other thing I was just gonna say quickly, and we’ll come back to this hopefully later, but is in this area of mental health and. Looking at how can we leverage all of the apps, which we do. We teach, I’m a mental health first aid trainer, but we also look at how do we help people leverage apps and technology for E-Health because they can now get access to affordable mental health that was not previously available.

And there’s still unfortunately such a stigma in Australia. Around mental health conversations inside organizations. You think about sales teams and it’s warfare sometimes, right? And you’re looking at. Performance is key, right? The, and the the metrics are really king. Is it safe to to talk about, my vulnerabilities as an employee, maybe not.

So this and not anonymity that technology provides in the mental health space. Amazing.

Yeah, it’s, and it is, you’re right about harnessing the technology. It’s using it for good is certainly important. But I do wanna pick up on a point that you mentioned earlier in that, with the having a coach sitting as alongside of you, that’s a, that’s an AI.

Like any of any tools that you can switch on and off, you can switch them off. Which is, that’s the point about the human being. You can’t switch them off. Not to the same extent. There’s the unpredictability of that, that they call you at a, at an opportune time that you get messages in lots of different ways.

And the way those messages are said is very different to what an AI might do, that you can literally just turn off if you want to. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Johann, how are you seeing AI in the sales space and impacting that because that’s an area where there is a big increase in the use of it and the use of it potentially to replace people.

Yeah. Look, I’m a big futurist on ai. I love to always think for the future, and it’s a bit of a frequency that I have, but I actually getting a lot of salespeople and managers and owners of businesses, especially that SME space, to really embrace it because it’s gonna give SME opportunities where they can cut costs, not in terms of human capacity, but on tasks that rather than that sales person doing admin.

They can go out there and actually communicate with customers more because, like Brigitte pointed out, the best thing about ai, you can allow it to take off mundane tasks. But when it comes to creativity or human connection, you need that in sales, but you also need it in life. And I believe that if we encourage businesses to use it correctly and ethically, you are gonna have more opportunity.

Rather than having 20 meetings about, something that’s not productive, let AI do that. But then you and I, Anthony, or you and I, Brigitte, we can connect up in person and actually discuss real problems. But the other thing as well on the human side is that humans love other humans. And empathy, human connection, like love, energy.

We never be. Hopefully we’ll never be taken by ai. But AI will be able to take on jobs that don’t fulfill us. And I think coming back to what Brigitte probably said at the start, is, that’s gonna allow us more time for our purpose. When you think about it within the workplace, what tasks can be taken from AI and where can we sit within that business to use our time and value efficiently?

So I don’t think it’s about replacing staff. I think it’s about how do we change our skill sets within that marketplace, if that makes any sense.

It absolutely does. I think it’s a really important differentiation. I know a couple of instances in small businesses where AI have taken control of booking appointments, that they’ll answer a call and they’ll be able to have a conversation and book you in.

To have an appointment with the main person. So that’s more, as you say, more the administrative mechanics. Whereas if you’re trying to have a more creative conversation about, I. Buying a tool and you want some different kinds of ideas of it and other things that might happen as a result of it.

That involves a, booking an appointment and having a conversation with a human being. Yeah. And if you can make those more direct and channeled that’s definitely going to work. And it’s how. People learn to interact with the ais as well? I think at the moment, from various things that I’ve read and people that I’ve spoken to, it seems to be the rough percentage seems to be that 90% of people don’t even identify that it is an AI at the other end.

And those that don’t seem to care that it is because of the nature of the functionality of what they’re being involved with. And I think that’s going be the hard part is. Where do we start to draw some lines in the sand about saying, no, I don’t wanna deal with an ai, or, yes, I am happy to deal with an ai.

Will all the people be ethical in, in making it certain that everyone knows that you are dealing with an ai? Certainly those that I’ve talked to have make a point of saying if someone asks the question is, are you an ai? They will answer. Yes, I’m,

yep. And it’s, sorry to just jump in again, guys. Something that I actually practice with.

Of clients is when you’re communicating with a client, actually ask ’em how they wanna be communicated with and some will say, I don’t mind what it is. It could be an AI robot, or it could be just an email or a call, but you can have your people that says, I still want that human connection, and I’m still really big on that.

And I’m just looking forward for AI taking tasks away from us that don’t fulfill us, so we can have more time in the bank to do the things that make us more productive and mental health. We’re gonna have more tools. My, my wife has a Tony Robbins up on the phone that she can communicate with every day, and it’s great for those crisis points.

But then when you’re a deep conversation, you still need to reach out to a Brigitte or yourself, really meaning conversations where. It’s other problems, not just one or two problems as well.

It’s gonna be fun times.

Yeah. Fantastic. I I was going to say that I, it’s in the contracting. So you’ve raised a couple of really cool themes there.

One is the contracting with clients, certainly. So with each client engagement these are the options. We have client dashboards where we’ve got lots of resources that can be tailored for clients using ai. But really important with confidentiality and what is documented and how long we keeping, records.

So there’s the, this space, which is very much in this transparency and ethics, and it comes down to contracting, not just for making life convenient for me, but really how are we adding value. To the client relationship here, how are we adding value to the mission? How are we using, AI to, to really as you say, take these resources, offer, the this sort of grunt work.

Away from us, so that we are actually the quality of thinking, the caliber of our collaboration together, the thinking partnership with the areas that we can start getting into, which is creative thinking, which is problem solving, which is really exploring certainly relationship building and taking, making big decisions.

Those are, there’s more space to, to do those things. But again, it has to be negotiated without wanting to sound like a broken record. Yeah, it is. But because it’s, you can have a conversation one week and then the next week, this is the rate of changes. Suddenly there’s a new opportunity that’s opened up for a client.

What do they want to hear about it? Probably. But do we need to negotiate how we bring that on, into the, to the program of work or to the relationship? Yes. It requires a lot more collaboration.

Yeah. It’s it’s important isn’t it? That establishing that, that small point, but in a very important point, establishing that means of communication for people.

And the interesting thing is. Where people might say, oh, I don’t really care. But I think the truth is all people do care. They just don’t know which one they like the most or they want to understand where different ones are appropriate at different times. I think that’s the hard part, isn’t it?

It’s establishing, yes. Book an appointment. That’s a simple thing where an AI could do that functionality because it’s not, it’s a very straightforward task, but have a conversation about what’s going on in my business at the moment. Definitely a human conversation, right? Understanding mental health issues.

I imagine, there’s only a limit as to what AI can do, isn’t there?

Yeah, absolutely. This is a really interesting question or point that you’re making because what we know with high performing teams is when you have an organization and a team culture where there’s psychological safety, meaning it’s okay to not be okay.

This is and there’s a, and there’s a great deal of trust. This is great, but how psychologically safe do people feel if they’re worried about their jobs being, consumed by a computer? So what you want to gain is transparency, is, clarity from leaders on this is how we’re using technology.

This is how we want you to evolve. And are we upskilling? That’s

the,

our. People, to think, think differently and and see this as an opportunity. Do they feel supported in their roles to evolve? Because change is tricky. Do they feel valued? Do they feel like there’s a, a sort of a.

A conversational channel where they can grapple with some of the issues that they’re facing. So those organizations that have got that actually understand this is where we need to be to support our people with this change, then, you’re gonna see some fantastic results and, and it’s exciting, it’s really exciting. Hopefully it gives you more time to write children’s books, Johannn.

You know, it’s actually my first one and, I’m so passionate. I’ve got another book that I’m gonna be writing an adults book actually in August. Sure. About mental frameworks fantastic.

I can’t wait. So yeah, may, maybe it’ll give me more time, but we’ll see what happens.

I think that’s the interesting thing about change. And just to wrap up the the conversation and is that. It does give you more time to do different things. The question is what are you filling that up with, isn’t it?

It’s the rate of change is such that there’s an expectation that you will respond quicker. I had a exchange some messages last night with a with a client who was like how can we speed things up a little bit further? Can we instead of move away from email and can we use Telegram?

Can we use WhatsApp? The implication with some of those things are that you get in contact with people out of hours as well and trying to. And so it is, technology is pushing those boundaries and the speed of change and the availability, and it’s how you actually blend somewhere to find the time to what you should be doing.

And I think that’s the important thing is what you should be doing is important as creating that creativity in the workplace in order to be able to, promote some innovations and things that moving forward. So perhaps just get your thoughts on both of, on, on that. Just to wrap things up.

Johann what’s

So look, humans are very intelligent creatures. We’ll always survive different errors, I think those who are scared, if you’re watching this about ai, embrace it. If you look at history, always look at history. We’ve went through massive changes in different kind of times, and those times would make people scared that things are gonna change, their jobs are gonna be replaced, but we’re evolving human beings.

And I believe if we’ve made ai we’re intelligent enough to evolve above that too. So we just gotta believe that we can. And. Not be disrupted by those things and focus on what we can control and not what we can’t control as well, I think is a big thing.

Brigitte, how do you respond?

Just to wrap things up here.

Yeah. I think it’s a, it’s exciting times. Staying curious is really, I think, my key message for organizations and those that are seeking to, to have, as I said, this sustainable leadership. How do I stay in for the long term while, partnering with ai.

Upskilling learning as much as you can. But remembering that it’s the quality of your thinking, which you know, is gonna make a big difference to and make you irreplaceable when it comes to high performing teams. And. Organizations that, that you wanna be a part of, moving forward. So yeah I think it’s exciting times.

I think I just wanted to say thank you for the conversation because, looking at it from the different perspectives, certainly of sales and organizational leadership it there, there are extraordinary opportunities.

Yeah. And thank you again as well. Yeah, appreciate it.

No, thank you both.

It’s been a really fascinating discussion and I really appreciate it and certainly two very different perspectives and some in some regards, but I think there’s very much a common ground here and I think that’s what’s important and hopefully everyone listening in has got lots out of that. And of course, we will include in the show notes how to get in contact with both Joanne and Brigitte as well.

So thank you both again for being part of the program and, we look forward to everyone, to your company on the next episode of Biz Bites for Thought Leaders.

Thank you very much.

Hey, thanks for listening to Biz Bites. We hope you enjoyed the program. Don’t forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Biz Bites is proudly brought to you by podcast done for you, the service where we will deliver a podcast for you and expose your brilliance. To the world. Contact us today for more information, details in the show notes. We look forward to your company next time on Biz Bites.