Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Biz Your Work Life Sorted. I'm
Speaker 2: m Burnham and today we're diving into something that both
Speaker 2: our career coaches, Michelle Batisby and Sophurst, are unpacking the real,
Speaker 2: unfiltered truth about what it's actually like to build something
Speaker 2: from scratch. So you know those moments when you're scrolling
Speaker 2: through Instagram and you see all of these founders living
Speaker 2: their best lives making it look super easy. Well, today
Speaker 2: we're pulling back the curtain on all of that. Michelle
Speaker 2: sharing her business mantras that she's learned the hard way,
Speaker 2: and when I say the hard way, I mean dealing
Speaker 2: with everything from employees stealing your money to having to
Speaker 2: completely rebuild products from scratch. Meanwhile, Soph's bringing her experience
Speaker 2: from Google to help us understand what these lessons look
Speaker 2: like in both a startup and corporate environment. Plus, if
Speaker 2: you've ever thought about starting your own, they're both going
Speaker 2: to break down exactly how to know if an idea
Speaker 2: is worth pursuing, and more importantly, how to avoid the
Speaker 2: mistakes that they wish someone had worn them about.
Speaker 1: I launched my business with twenty thousand dollars and I
Speaker 1: made nothing.
Speaker 3: I feel like everyone's tiktoks every article. It's all like,
Speaker 3: launched this business with fifteen grand.
Speaker 1: And now look at me being a millionaire, and it's
Speaker 1: just fucking bullshit.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to sit here and be so open
Speaker 3: and honest.
Speaker 1: I thought I would be in a much better position
Speaker 1: than I am this year.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: I love the transparency of founders on socials, specifically when
Speaker 1: people are really open and vulnerable about the mistakes that
Speaker 1: they've made, because I think often we see the shiny
Speaker 1: and there definitely has been that history of romanticizing entrepreneurship
Speaker 1: and really glorifying what it's like, but in my experience,
Speaker 1: it has been mountain after mountain, definitely with wins in
Speaker 1: there that kind of keep you going.
Speaker 4: You're so right about the sort of transparency because I
Speaker 4: think you see people running these successful businesses online and
Speaker 4: you think it's a certain way, and then you do
Speaker 4: it yourself. You make heap some mistakes, and then you
Speaker 4: realize that some of those traps are actually avoidable. And
Speaker 4: I think what people love about your style and listening
Speaker 4: to you, because you share a lot on social as well,
Speaker 4: you just like cut the crap and give people the
Speaker 4: good stuff. You're also very young for a founder, and
Speaker 4: you're a female in a pretty male dominated space, like
Speaker 4: you have a tech startup, still male dominated space, and
Speaker 4: I'd just like, look at what you've done.
Speaker 1: When I first started out being a founder, or maybe
Speaker 1: my approach as an individual had always been the mistakes
Speaker 1: are bad, like must do good work, must succeed, must win,
Speaker 1: can't lose. And I think what I've realized is I'm
Speaker 1: actually quite proud of every mistake that I've made, and
Speaker 1: like riding these like mantras, they're all derived from real
Speaker 1: life mistakes, and I think one of the biggest lessons
Speaker 1: you have to learn as a business owner, but it
Speaker 1: can serve anyone throughout their career, is just like redefining
Speaker 1: what failure actually looks like, because with every mistake, it's
Speaker 1: kind of not a dead end, it's not the end
Speaker 1: of the road. It's actually an opportunity to strike again,
Speaker 1: but with a little bit more accuracy and taking a
Speaker 1: little bit more of an informed shot. So I'm actually
Speaker 1: quite proud of all these mistakes because they've made me
Speaker 1: and my business much stronger, and they've also made my
Speaker 1: story much stronger.
Speaker 4: I had to peek at some of your notes, and
Speaker 4: regardless of whether you're own a business or not, or
Speaker 4: have ambitions of only a business, like, most of your
Speaker 4: points are so relevant to anyone, like people working in
Speaker 4: an office job, like people who run a startup small
Speaker 4: business whatever. So yeah, I'm really excited about it. I'm
Speaker 4: excited to learn from you.
Speaker 1: Okay, So number one, Reid Hoffman, who is the founder
Speaker 1: of LinkedIn, said, if you're not a little embarrassed by
Speaker 1: your product, you've launched too late. This was my co
Speaker 1: founder and my first mistake. We felt like we had
Speaker 1: to launch a squeaky clean product that had all the
Speaker 1: bells and whistles, something that we felt really proud to
Speaker 1: put out into the world, and it ended up taking
Speaker 1: us a year to build our app, which is too
Speaker 1: slow in the world of tech, and it's because we
Speaker 1: just couldn't let our standards down and our perfectionist tendencies down.
Speaker 1: And if we just got it out the door, we
Speaker 1: would have saved a lot of time and money, and
Speaker 1: we also would have been able to get real feedback
Speaker 1: back and get a bit of a sense on like
Speaker 1: if we're on the money in a faster kind of
Speaker 1: feedback loop, then going out with a product that at
Speaker 1: the end of the day was actually over engineered and
Speaker 1: ended up having features that people just didn't need.
Speaker 4: There's this line from a movie We Bought a Zoo.
Speaker 4: I just really like the quote, all you need is
Speaker 4: twenty seconds of insane courage, and then it talks about
Speaker 4: this idea of embarrassing bravery, and I like think about
Speaker 4: that all the time as I'm trying to do things.
Speaker 4: I think just that thing that you said, Michelle around
Speaker 4: waiting too late, and this idea we have of trying
Speaker 4: to make something that's perfect, and it's that feeling of
Speaker 4: you'll have sort of a spark of an idea, you'll
Speaker 4: kind of be trying to make it perfect, and you
Speaker 4: kind of never do anything with it. And then you
Speaker 4: see someone else comes out with something the same kind
Speaker 4: of idea and it's way less good than how you
Speaker 4: would have done it. They did it and they've been successful,
Speaker 4: and you see this all the time. I was just
Speaker 4: talking to a friend about it. So yeah, just trying
Speaker 4: to get out the smallest, simplest version of your thing,
Speaker 4: just to get that feedback loop.
Speaker 1: Number two definitely ties into the first one, and it's
Speaker 1: don't assume because a competitor has a feature that it
Speaker 1: actually works or people use it. So when we were
Speaker 1: founding Sunroom and coming up with our feature set, we
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time doing product teardowns of our competitors,
Speaker 1: and we started working on features that we assumed people
Speaker 1: would want or people would use because our competitors had them.
Speaker 1: And there was one feature in particular spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time building and it was so poorly adopted, and
Speaker 1: that was a huge.
Speaker 3: Learning curve for us.
Speaker 1: Interesting, sometimes you will interview your consumers and everyone will
Speaker 1: tell you that they'll use something, but when push comes
Speaker 1: to shove, they actually won't. And sometimes it can be
Speaker 1: really hard to get honest answers, especially if you've built
Speaker 1: relationships with your users. Sometimes they don't want to offend you.
Speaker 4: And then in a work context, I think there's almost
Speaker 4: the same principle. So we would often talk at Google
Speaker 4: about landings, not launchers, and you'd see other teams, like
Speaker 4: from other countries, and they have this amazing launch and
Speaker 4: they'd send this amazing launch email, and like you're just
Speaker 4: kind of sitting there with so much time. We were thinking,
Speaker 4: oh my god, we should be doing this, so it's
Speaker 4: a very loud launch and then there would be this
Speaker 4: very quiet you know. Actually that didn't really work that well.
Speaker 4: It was actually kind of average. You never really hear
Speaker 4: about it. Yeah, we would always kind of say to
Speaker 4: ourselves landings, not launchers, and don't just pay attention to
Speaker 4: this big, glossy loud launch email.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that, love that saying.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: The third one, still on the competitor train of thought,
Speaker 1: is it's always nice to know who you're up against
Speaker 1: and be aware of their strengths and weaknesses, but stay
Speaker 1: focused on your differences. This one kind of hurt me
Speaker 1: to learn because it was something that I already knew.
Speaker 1: I already knew like keep your head in your boat,
Speaker 1: you know, like, don't look around. It slows you down.
Speaker 1: But I think sometimes when you're doing something for the
Speaker 1: first time, sometimes you'll trust in yourself and your instincts
Speaker 1: can become a little bit rattled, and so you do
Speaker 1: start to look around a little bit, and I think
Speaker 1: that's when you can lose focus. And we definitely went
Speaker 1: through a period of that at sun Room, where we
Speaker 1: just started paying too much attention to how our competitors
Speaker 1: were growing, and we started trying to copy some of
Speaker 1: their acquisition strategies and it just ended up being a
Speaker 1: complete waste of time, and we would have been better
Speaker 1: off focusing on what was working for us and just
Speaker 1: continuing to double down on that or think about new
Speaker 1: innovative ways to keep targeting that same niche of creator
Speaker 1: for us.
Speaker 4: How did you get out of that phase then if
Speaker 4: you were kind of just looking at what your competitors
Speaker 4: were doing and that was shaping the decisions you were making,
Speaker 4: and then what did you start doing differently instead?
Speaker 1: Well, we ended up losing quite a bit of money.
Speaker 1: So that was a pretty big wake up call when
Speaker 1: there was kind of something that we knew was working
Speaker 1: really well for our competitor is but we never wanted
Speaker 1: to do it, but we reached this point of desperation
Speaker 1: at one time and so we felt like, all right,
Speaker 1: this is our only option. Let's give this a crack.
Speaker 1: And it was hands down the worst thing I think
Speaker 1: we did in the history of a sun Room and
Speaker 1: lost us considerable amounts of time and money. And so
Speaker 1: that was just a slap across the face, like wake
Speaker 1: up call in terms of, you know what, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the drawing board, we actually ended up going
Speaker 1: back to what our go to market strategy had been
Speaker 1: and how we initially built a lot of hype and
Speaker 1: had a lot of success. And I think sometimes you
Speaker 1: might set really aggressive growth targets, so you think that
Speaker 1: what you were doing a year or two ago wasn't
Speaker 1: that successful. But then as you've learned and as you've
Speaker 1: tried a lot of other things, you have a bit
Speaker 1: more of an understanding of the market, the industry, maybe
Speaker 1: what a reasonable pace is, and you're able with the
Speaker 1: benefit of hindsight to look back and realize, oh, actually,
Speaker 1: that was quite successful. We just didn't really have like
Speaker 1: the wisdom to understand that at the time.
Speaker 4: I think that's really interesting that you sort of did something,
Speaker 4: maybe it wasn't as successful, and then at a different
Speaker 4: time it was, Yeah, how much time would you spend
Speaker 4: in your day actually talking.
Speaker 3: To your customers and your users if I'm working.
Speaker 1: For eight hours seven hours.
Speaker 3: Out of the area.
Speaker 4: From what I've heard, I've never run a startup, but
Speaker 4: sometimes founders get into this trap where they don't want
Speaker 4: to talk to their customers or they feel like it's
Speaker 4: so time consuming. But especially in the early phases, most
Speaker 4: of your time should just be spent hanging out with
Speaker 4: them and learning from them.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. It's that saying, like, do things that
Speaker 1: don't scale. I think that's really really important at the
Speaker 1: start because it builds a lot of brand loyalty and
Speaker 1: that's something that has always paid off for us and
Speaker 1: worked really well. That's always meant that our retention is
Speaker 1: good and we've kind of got these people that are
Speaker 1: willing to advocate for us.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I always love that.
Speaker 4: Whenever I'm signing up for new products and it's like
Speaker 4: a very techy you know, you just think it's kind
Speaker 4: of like this faceless software and then the email you'll
Speaker 4: get once you, you know, sign up for it. Sometimes I'll
Speaker 4: get emails like three days later from the founder and
Speaker 4: they're like, hey, just checking in how you're finding the product,
Speaker 4: And you're like, well, I thought this was this massive
Speaker 4: software company and now it just feels very human and
Speaker 4: very personal.
Speaker 1: That's such an easy way to stand out if you
Speaker 1: have a tech company, because we're also used to existing
Speaker 1: on these giant platforms where there's no way we're ever
Speaker 1: going to directly hear from anyone from like Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: TikTok you lose your account and like it's really impossible
Speaker 1: to get in touch with someone. So I think if
Speaker 1: you're building a tech product, like people really appreciate that
Speaker 1: personal touch and being able to speak to a real
Speaker 1: human on the end of a line. Number four is
Speaker 1: when you're building features, people don't care about the feature,
Speaker 1: they care about the benefit. So if you're going to
Speaker 1: speak about it to your consumers, you need to focus
Speaker 1: on that. I think when you work at a tech company,
Speaker 1: there are so many smart people that are able to
Speaker 1: solve these really tough problems through you know, like engineering,
Speaker 1: critical thinking, coming up with like innovative ways to get
Speaker 1: people to connect on a product, whatever it is, and
Speaker 1: then there can be a tendency to get really excited
Speaker 1: about certain features that actually the consumer doesn't really care about.
Speaker 1: I think that's that friction, that tension point that can
Speaker 1: often exist between engineering teams and marketing teams, which is
Speaker 1: something that I also experienced when I work at Bumble.
Speaker 1: You know, you get given a feature, you have to
Speaker 1: market it, and you're thinking, no one is going to
Speaker 1: care about this, But I think it's really in how
Speaker 1: you communicate it. So not talking about what the feature
Speaker 1: is or kind of how it exists, but what the
Speaker 1: benefit is for the user.
Speaker 3: So true.
Speaker 4: We lived by this at Google. The way we did
Speaker 4: marketing at Google is no, the user know the magic
Speaker 4: and connect to the two. And the magic is nothing
Speaker 4: to do with the product or the feature. It's about
Speaker 4: the transformation that it creates in someone or like the
Speaker 4: joy that it sparks, or the time it saved them, whatever,
Speaker 4: But it's nothing to do with the product of the feature.
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously it's to do with the product of
Speaker 4: the feature, but it's like not about the product or
Speaker 4: the feature. Yeah, so yeah, I think about that all
Speaker 4: the time. There's that really famous quote which whenever someone
Speaker 4: says it to me, I never understand. I have to
Speaker 4: like process it slowly. My brain is slow. But it's
Speaker 4: people don't want the drill, they want the whole. The
Speaker 4: thing is, they want the change, right, they want the
Speaker 4: thing it's making. They don't actually want the benefit of
Speaker 4: the product, so they want the change.
Speaker 1: Number five. This is a great one, and this came
Speaker 1: from one of Sunroom's investors. Actually who fun fact, he
Speaker 1: is the creator of Little Mikayla, which was that first
Speaker 1: like avatar Ai influencer. Yeah, that's his company. And he
Speaker 1: said something to Lucy, my co founder and I which
Speaker 1: just really stuck one day. He said, if you want advice,
Speaker 1: ask for money, And if you want money, ask for advice.
Speaker 1: And when you're raising capital, it's just the best way
Speaker 1: to go about it. Like hit people up and bring
Speaker 1: them in on your journey. Talk to them about what
Speaker 1: you're building, talk to them about the problem, talk about
Speaker 1: the product, talk about the wins, talk about your challenges,
Speaker 1: and if they end up loving your product and believing
Speaker 1: in you, they'll just offer to invest or. They'll offer
Speaker 1: to intro you to someone else who might be that
Speaker 1: first check. And it's just a really smart way to
Speaker 1: go about raising money as opposed to just outright asking
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 3: Why do you think that works?
Speaker 1: Oh, Like people have also done this to me before,
Speaker 1: where like they come with a product and they want advice,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, this is good. I believe in it,
Speaker 1: Like I actually want to give them a bit of
Speaker 1: cash for it. I think it probably helps the individual
Speaker 1: in how they tell the story, to be honest, like
Speaker 1: it removes that pressure of I'm about to kind of
Speaker 1: stand up and pitch to someone with the goal of
Speaker 1: like getting cash at the end. Of the conversation, so
Speaker 1: I think you end up sharing the story in a
Speaker 1: different way, And people also liked talking about themselves and
Speaker 1: kind of having their egos stroke a little bit. So
Speaker 1: reaching out to investors or angels or other founders in
Speaker 1: your space and sharing your struggles and then asking for
Speaker 1: their advice in return, it's just a very good way
Speaker 1: to build relationships.
Speaker 4: Do you have any advice for someone who like, we're
Speaker 4: in Australia right and a lot of.
Speaker 3: The money is in not Australia, in the US. I guess,
Speaker 3: so for.
Speaker 4: Someone sitting here being like I kind of want to
Speaker 4: start talking to people and networking and maybe following this
Speaker 4: kind of thing around asking for advice and hopefully getting money,
Speaker 4: how did you get started getting connected to people? And
Speaker 4: do you have any advice for other people?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So it did definitely help that my co founder and
Speaker 1: I had backgrounds in tech. So I first went out
Speaker 1: to my own network, which was people i'd worked with
Speaker 1: when I was at Bumble, and was able to get
Speaker 1: the founder and CEO of Bumble to invest in some room.
Speaker 1: That then made it much easier to kind of start
Speaker 1: reaching out to people that we didn't have relationships with.
Speaker 1: Because you've already got these checks committed, and it shows
Speaker 1: this level of belief in you as a founder.
Speaker 3: I suppose.
Speaker 4: I've also had a lot of people working in corporate
Speaker 4: jobs who leave and want to start their own company,
Speaker 4: and they do go and hit up all the execs
Speaker 4: because they know that a lot of the execs probably
Speaker 4: have a spare ten k, yeah, and they already know
Speaker 4: that this person is good, and so they kind of like,
Speaker 4: I believe in you. I think I know that what
Speaker 4: you're building has potential. And sometimes they'll get their first
Speaker 4: little small checks through that.
Speaker 1: I think it's smart, yeah, exactly, and then they will
Speaker 1: introduce you to their networks and it kind of just
Speaker 1: goes from there. And once someone that's worked with you
Speaker 1: is out there then speaking to their network saying hey,
Speaker 1: you know this person's building X and I've invested, it
Speaker 1: just creates this snowball effect where you kind of trust
Speaker 1: your network and then you might end up investing as well.
Speaker 1: But I also think it is a really good strategy
Speaker 1: to get on socials and talk about what you're doing.
Speaker 1: There's that saying, you know, build in public, and that
Speaker 1: ended up achieving a lot for Lucy and I and
Speaker 1: I was really surprised with just who was watching, and
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't be afraid, And I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: need to have followers to pull that off.
Speaker 3: Can you give this an example?
Speaker 4: Because I heard this, I love it, I want to
Speaker 4: do it, and I found it it's actually harder to
Speaker 4: do than I thought, just because it feels so unnatural
Speaker 4: to be like, what do you think my business model
Speaker 4: should be?
Speaker 3: Whatever?
Speaker 4: I'm finding it actually really hard even though I want
Speaker 4: to do it. So can you give some examples of
Speaker 4: what building in public actually looks like?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's probably going to feel uncomfortable and it's
Speaker 1: probably going to feel a bit icky, but it's not
Speaker 1: self promotion. It's idea promotion. Like that's how I like
Speaker 1: to think about it. And it kind of breaks down
Speaker 1: that like where you feel a bit gross because you're
Speaker 1: taking talking about your own work or you're talking about yourself,
Speaker 1: You're actually not You're talking about your ideas. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I've been working on this problem. Does anyone else have
Speaker 1: this problem? I'm working on solutions for this that i'd
Speaker 1: really like to share with others, and just start talking
Speaker 1: about it in whatever way comes naturally to you as well,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't really have to be on TikTok, But
Speaker 1: I do think TikTok is good if you don't have
Speaker 1: an existing audience, because anything can go viral, anything can
Speaker 1: get eyeballs. I found that investors started reaching out to
Speaker 1: me once I started just speaking about what we were
Speaker 1: working on on socials. Don't be afraid to do that.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes there's a little bit of fear around
Speaker 1: will someone steal my idea? And I don't think you
Speaker 1: need to give away your secret source or if you're
Speaker 1: working on a really innovative solution to something, you don't
Speaker 1: need to give that away in this information. But there's
Speaker 1: definitely no risk talking about the problem, what you're working on,
Speaker 1: how you're thinking about doing it. I am of the
Speaker 1: view if someone could take it and copy it, then
Speaker 1: it was probably not going to be that great or
Speaker 1: defensible anyway.
Speaker 3: So true, I love.
Speaker 1: It, Okay number six and I definitely learned this one
Speaker 1: the hard way. Culture is what you punish and what
Speaker 1: you celebrate, So one rotten apple will spoil the bunch.
Speaker 1: And I really feel like that truth is exaggerated when
Speaker 1: you're in a small team and you really can't settle
Speaker 1: for bad attitudes. So you've probably heard the saying higher, slow,
Speaker 1: fire fast, But when you have a startup, I think
Speaker 1: unfortunately your brain is more geared to higher, fast, as
Speaker 1: fast as possible, Like you're just trying to grow, you're
Speaker 1: trying to scale. It's that move fast and break things mentality,
Speaker 1: and it can really end up hurting you. I also
Speaker 1: think there's that level of excitement, like yay, I'm finding
Speaker 1: people that actually also believe in this thing I'm doing,
Speaker 1: and I just want to get them in the room.
Speaker 4: I speak to so many leaders, owners of companies things
Speaker 4: like that, and I am so surprised. I'll always say
Speaker 4: to them, what are the qualities you're looking for in
Speaker 4: young people that you hire? And I'm so surprised by
Speaker 4: how many people say number one attitude. So many other
Speaker 4: things can be learned, but if you have a bad attitude,
Speaker 4: it just undermines everything. Back to the point Michelle around,
Speaker 4: I really liked that thing you said around what was
Speaker 4: it punish?
Speaker 1: Culture is what you punish and what you celebrate.
Speaker 4: Do you have any examples of like what that looks
Speaker 4: like or how you actually do that as a leader
Speaker 4: a business owner.
Speaker 1: I think with the culture as what you punish. It's
Speaker 1: like at the start, Lucy and I were quite scared
Speaker 1: to be a bit ruthless, Like you kind of hear
Speaker 1: that in business you need to like flex that muscle
Speaker 1: a little bit. You're going to have to have difficult
Speaker 1: conversations and conversations, and we we had so much fucked
Speaker 1: up stuff happened to us, like what employees stealing from us?
Speaker 1: It's like stealing our money, not how are they even
Speaker 1: doing that? Yeah, like on company cards or we had
Speaker 1: test versions of the product where you actually could make
Speaker 1: money through the app, and we realized that some members
Speaker 1: of our team were sending each other like thousands of
Speaker 1: our coins on Sunroom to kind of get each other's
Speaker 1: earnings up when they were linked to sunroom accounts.
Speaker 3: And is that just an immediate fire?
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, yes. But I kept a journal at the
Speaker 1: start of like the major thing that would occur every week,
Speaker 1: and it was just blow after blow, like engineers taking
Speaker 1: your ip and trying to sell it on the side,
Speaker 1: like just wild stories.
Speaker 4: I'm sitting there thinking, like people complaining too much, but
Speaker 4: like that's serious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it honestly was laughable times, Like yeah, you kind
Speaker 1: of just got to roll with the punches. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: also think what you celebrate, So this kind of happened
Speaker 1: at Bumble. Actually, there was this culture of loads of emojis,
Speaker 1: lots of exclamation marks, getting really excited, almost by the
Speaker 1: bare minimum, getting really excited by someone just kind of
Speaker 1: meeting expectations. It kind of had to be overhauled because
Speaker 1: it meant that once someone actually wasn't performing, they were
Speaker 1: really shocked because they'd been met with so much joy
Speaker 1: and excitement at all these other points along the way.
Speaker 1: So I think in terms of what you celebrate as well,
Speaker 1: just being aware of things as simple as that, like
Speaker 1: how exclamation marks and emojis can actually lead someone to
Speaker 1: feel like they're doing an incredible job when maybe they're
Speaker 1: just kind of average, and then if you have to
Speaker 1: start performance managing that person, there's a bit of a disconnect.
Speaker 4: A lot of people love complaining about gen z and
Speaker 4: about how entitled they are, and sometimes I see that
Speaker 4: exact problem where companies sort of started celebrating the wrong
Speaker 4: behaviors or they're just like over celebrating things, and then
Speaker 4: people get used to that and it's sort of not
Speaker 4: their fault, and then the leaders want something to change
Speaker 4: because the company's growing, and then they expect people to
Speaker 4: just understand number seven.
Speaker 1: So this also kind of comes back to performance. Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs said, a's higher a's and b's higher c's, So
Speaker 1: a's will help you maintain a high performing culture, and
Speaker 1: you need to refine your recruitment process to.
Speaker 3: Find the a's.
Speaker 1: This is kind of what we started to learn or
Speaker 1: witness whilst we were working on Sunroom. We ended up
Speaker 1: hiring this absolute gun of an engineer who was nineteen
Speaker 1: at the time and he's still to this day our
Speaker 1: head of engineering and he has two patents. I think
Speaker 1: he's twenty two now. Yeah, and he is so smart,
Speaker 1: and as we began to grow the engineering team around him,
Speaker 1: we realized that he just helped maintain this very high
Speaker 1: performing culture and that these genius types won't really settle
Speaker 1: with working for people who are underperforming or not really
Speaker 1: willing to put the work in to level up. You know,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean there's not opportunity to expand upon your
Speaker 1: skill set and to learn and to be coached by
Speaker 1: great people. There's definitely that, but there also needs to
Speaker 1: be that element of wanting to do better. We definitely
Speaker 1: lean more towards you don't really need to have the experience,
Speaker 1: but do you have the right attitude? Are you displaying
Speaker 1: a level of like hunger, commitment, competitiveness, what do you
Speaker 1: work hard for those sorts of things trying to identify that.
Speaker 4: Is there anything around like the amount of time you
Speaker 4: spend with someone before you actually hire them, or like
Speaker 4: having some kind of probation period that has helped. Is
Speaker 4: it like, you know, I went out and went for
Speaker 4: a hike with this person and then after that time
Speaker 4: I knew they were good.
Speaker 3: Is there any advice you have around that.
Speaker 1: We actually did do a trial period with someone once,
Speaker 1: and it was someone that we were going to be
Speaker 1: moving over to the States, So that allowed us to
Speaker 1: set something up where we could actually trial working with
Speaker 1: the person over a two month period, and that was
Speaker 1: a really good strategy. Definitely like getting out of an
Speaker 1: office situation and like going for a drink with them,
Speaker 1: or going to dinner with them, or starting to like
Speaker 1: jam on the side like casually with someone if you can,
Speaker 1: depending on like what sort of a relationship you have,
Speaker 1: Like can you just start texting about like tiktoks that
Speaker 1: you're seeing whatever is relevant to get a little bit
Speaker 1: more insight into their brain.
Speaker 3: I got this advice as well.
Speaker 4: If you are even thinking about maybe if you want
Speaker 4: to start a business with someone, don't sit down and
Speaker 4: be like, should we start a business together? Just start
Speaker 4: talking about ideas, constantly sharing voice notes whatever, sharing stuff
Speaker 4: that you're into, and then just start like doing the
Speaker 4: thing and then you know at some point, yeah, you
Speaker 4: sit down and you have a conversation around and a
Speaker 4: contract around the business, but like, just start.
Speaker 1: Actually something we can put in the show notes. Which
Speaker 1: is kind of off topic, but similar for anyone who
Speaker 1: actually is looking for a co founder. Lucy and I
Speaker 1: did a seventy five question questionnaire before we founded Sunroom.
Speaker 1: We'd never met in real life. We founded Sunroom through COVID,
Speaker 1: so it was all virtual. So we were really trying
Speaker 1: to get an understanding of like do we like each other?
Speaker 1: Can we work together? And she had done a fellowship
Speaker 1: called on Deck for tech entrepreneurs, well people wanting to
Speaker 1: become tech entrepreneurs, and they gave a seventy five question
Speaker 1: questionnaire and it gets into a lot about your values,
Speaker 1: your struggles, what your mindset is like under pressure, asks
Speaker 1: you questions like you know, would you prefer to own
Speaker 1: one percent of it a billion dollar company or like
Speaker 1: ten percent of one hundred million. How many years do
Speaker 1: you want to work on this? Like what financial sacrifices
Speaker 1: are you willing to make? It kind of gets into
Speaker 1: tougher questions that you might struggle to actually bring up
Speaker 1: with someone.
Speaker 3: I'll get a.
Speaker 1: Version of it and we can put it in the
Speaker 1: show notes for anyone looking for a co founder.
Speaker 4: We're gonna have a really good newsletter for this, and
Speaker 4: we'll definitely put all this helpful stuff in the newsletter,
Speaker 4: and the newsletter you can find through the show notes
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: Epic.
Speaker 1: Okay, last one, This is a good one to end
Speaker 1: on when hiring. If it's not a fuck, yes.
Speaker 3: It's a no.
Speaker 1: And sometimes that means like you do, let some candidates
Speaker 1: go that same really strong, but I think, yeah, you've
Speaker 1: got a trust your gut on that one.
Speaker 4: Every hiring mistake I've ever made, I think back, and
Speaker 4: I convinced myself into it because on paper or the
Speaker 4: brand or the skill that you think they have that
Speaker 4: you need at that time, and it's never worked out.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think it goes back to that your
Speaker 4: gut is actually your second brain, and there's tons of
Speaker 4: signals that you're picking up when you spend time with
Speaker 4: someone that you don't actually consciously know what they are.
Speaker 4: But it's so hard though, because it's also like, do
Speaker 4: you keep holding off to find the fuck? Yes? And
Speaker 4: I guess there's probably no one answer, but I definitely
Speaker 4: know what you just said is very true. I just honestly,
Speaker 4: I don't know about anyone listening, but I am personally
Speaker 4: so excited about some of the stuff that I just learned.
Speaker 4: And I think the interesting thing is, like whether you
Speaker 4: even planned to start a business or not, it's just
Speaker 4: career advice, life advice, work advice in this, So yeah,
Speaker 4: thank you, Michelle. I also just think it's so funny,
Speaker 4: like you're so low key about you just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I run like a startup, but then when you actually
Speaker 4: share the shit you've had to deal with, it just
Speaker 4: completely blows me away.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting there in my like.
Speaker 4: Cushy corporate office job, just like I've never had to
Speaker 4: deal with things like that before.
Speaker 3: So that was a lot, Michelle, and amazing. I just
Speaker 3: learned so much.
Speaker 4: Every single one of these points is going to be
Speaker 4: in the newsletter, and you can get that in the
Speaker 4: show notes. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: My mind is absolutely blown by some of the stories
Speaker 2: Michelle and So share today. For anyone who wants to
Speaker 2: dive deeper into this, our newsletter this week has Michelle's
Speaker 2: full seventy five question co founder questionnaire, plus a breakdown
Speaker 2: of all the mantras you've heard with real examples on
Speaker 2: how to apply them. We will link that in our
Speaker 2: show notes, and while you're there, make sure you're following
Speaker 2: us at biz by Mama Mia on Instagram for daily
Speaker 2: career tips and some behind the scenes content from Mish
Speaker 2: and So and the entire biz team. We will see
Speaker 2: you on Thursday for our Biz Inbox episode, where we'll
Speaker 2: be answering all of your career dilemmas. Bye, Mamma Mia
Speaker 2: acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this
Speaker 2: podcast is recorded on