Speaker 1: Would you say no to a million dollars? I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine if your business was minutes away from securing a
Speaker 1: huge investment boost, only for the founder to turn it down.
Speaker 1: What could possibly make someone say no to such a
Speaker 1: big payday? A nose ring? Doctor Katrina Wallace founded Flamingo AI,
Speaker 1: which became only the second women led company to list
Speaker 1: on the ASX. And yep, she turned down one million
Speaker 1: dollars because of a nose ring. But we'll get to
Speaker 1: that soon. Kat also happens to be one of my
Speaker 1: favorite people in the world and has been my friend
Speaker 1: and business mentor for over a decade. In this very
Speaker 1: honest chat, Kat tells me about how she dealt with
Speaker 1: some incredibly blatant sexism during her time as the founder
Speaker 1: and CEO of both a private and then publicly listed company,
Speaker 1: the most important lessons that she has learned about leadership,
Speaker 1: and we even get into talking about experimentation into psychedelics.
Speaker 1: My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 1: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this
Speaker 1: is how I work a show about how to help
Speaker 1: you do your best work. If you've met Kat, well
Speaker 1: maybe you've seen a photo of her, you'll probably have
Speaker 1: noticed her nose ring. But what you probably didn't know
Speaker 1: when you saw that nose ring is that it cost
Speaker 1: Kat one million dollars.
Speaker 2: So I was with my female chair and board directors
Speaker 2: of Flamingo Ai AI company. We've just listed on the
Speaker 2: ASX as the second ever only woman chairwoman CEO to
Speaker 2: list on the ASX, so being a woman with a
Speaker 2: bit of a novelty. We were in Melbourne and we
Speaker 2: were presenting to a whole room of all male investors
Speaker 2: and we did a pitch. We did a good pitch,
Speaker 2: and then we're in the airport lounge on the way
Speaker 2: flying back to Sydney when one of the investors rang
Speaker 2: one of our board directors and said we would love
Speaker 2: to invest a million dollars into the business. And we
Speaker 2: overheard that we were very excited about it. And then
Speaker 2: I could see the blood draining out of my director's
Speaker 2: face as he was listening to the rest of the call.
Speaker 2: And the rest of the call was the investor who
Speaker 2: represented the team of investors giving the conditions by which
Speaker 2: they would provide the million dollars. So I heard that
Speaker 2: there were some good conditions, so I said to the
Speaker 2: director standing behind him, Oh, look, if it's revenue targets
Speaker 2: or reducing the cost of customer acquisition or reducing the burn,
Speaker 2: just let us know what those targets are associated with
Speaker 2: the million dollar investment. Anyway, you see more blood draining
Speaker 2: out of the director's face. And he got off the
Speaker 2: phone and he said to me, right, well, they do
Speaker 2: have a condition. And I said, okay, well, you know,
Speaker 2: revenue profit, what is it? And they said no, the
Speaker 2: condition is we will invest the one million dollars into
Speaker 2: the business if the female CEO takes her nose ring out.
Speaker 2: And we went, what, like what it's a joke, right,
Speaker 2: and he said, no joke, They're deadly serious. There's a
Speaker 2: million dollars on the table if you take your nose
Speaker 2: ring out.
Speaker 1: Wow, what did you do? Haha?
Speaker 2: I sort of half laughed and cried and then just
Speaker 2: looked at my chair and said, there's no way we'll
Speaker 2: take that money and there's no way there's nose rings
Speaker 2: coming out. And so we I told my director, who
Speaker 2: was really not too happy, to decline the offer. And
Speaker 2: then the very next day I went to Gleab Markets
Speaker 2: and bought a much bigger nose ring and put it in.
Speaker 1: Wow. Was there a point where you considered taking your
Speaker 1: nose ring out?
Speaker 2: No, but there was plenty of people it did say
Speaker 2: to me, look, it's a million dollars. You do more
Speaker 2: than you do less for a million dollars and take
Speaker 2: a nose ring out. But for me, what I had
Speaker 2: already learned having been around the investment fueled for a
Speaker 2: little while, was it's about the type of investor you
Speaker 2: get into the business. It's not so much the money
Speaker 2: that you get is the type of investor. And if
Speaker 2: we were starting off with investors who were most concerned
Speaker 2: about my physical appearance, then that was all going to
Speaker 2: go downhill after that. So I was wise enough to
Speaker 2: know this would not be good money into the business.
Speaker 1: I know that you experienced a lot of sexist behavior
Speaker 1: as a female leader of a tech company. What were
Speaker 1: some of the low points or the low things that happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there was a big challenge I believe by
Speaker 2: the main of the investment community, and this is mainly
Speaker 2: the capital markets to the public markets, much less so
Speaker 2: in the venture capital markets. Really challenged to have a
Speaker 2: woman who is also a mother. So I have five children,
Speaker 2: so two step sons and three of my own who've
Speaker 2: all grown up together. And so I did have investors
Speaker 2: say to me, can you please tell us how you
Speaker 2: can possibly run an ASX listed company that's based in
Speaker 2: Sydney and New York and raised children and I was
Speaker 2: a single mother at the time. To them, that was
Speaker 2: all in impossible package. And in fact we had I
Speaker 2: saw messages on chat groups where people say, oh, we'd
Speaker 2: really love to invest in this business. However, the founder
Speaker 2: of the CEO is a woman and a mother, so't
Speaker 2: we're not going to invest. So there was definitely that
Speaker 2: perception that if you not us to a female, but
Speaker 2: in particular if you're also a mother, let alone a
Speaker 2: single mother, then there's no way that you could actually
Speaker 2: be a reasonable CEO.
Speaker 1: Wow, what did you do to overcome those perceptions?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, what I had to start to deal with
Speaker 2: is not be defensive. So there's a lot of personal work.
Speaker 2: I had to do a huge amount of personal work
Speaker 2: because in being in the public eye, everything you do,
Speaker 2: you say, you look, everything is scrutinized, and then on
Speaker 2: a thousand chat rooms and in the media and everything.
Speaker 2: So the first thing was me to just build up
Speaker 2: internal resilience to just not have these constant criticisms affect
Speaker 2: me or for me to feel that I had to
Speaker 2: be defensive all the time. And my way of doing
Speaker 2: that was that was my step into deeply working in mindfulness.
Speaker 2: So having a practice every day of mindfulness, yoga, exercise,
Speaker 2: I read a lot around mindfulness. So that was a
Speaker 2: real savior for me as getting resilience to handling the criticism.
Speaker 2: And then it was really just not to take it personally.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm there to do a job. It's not personal.
Speaker 2: Even though it was highly personal, I wouldn't take it personally.
Speaker 2: And I also knew I was representing other women and
Speaker 2: women who were to come after me. If I could
Speaker 2: help just kind of push through some of those boundaries
Speaker 2: and those perceptions, then that would be useful. So I
Speaker 2: was inspired to do it for women other women as well.
Speaker 1: So what does your daily practice look like around mindfulness
Speaker 1: and exercise and yoga.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's definitely something I try to do every
Speaker 2: day but do not always manage to do it. So
Speaker 2: I used I was originally used Sam Harris's mindfulness training
Speaker 2: here called Waking Up, and I just do that every day.
Speaker 2: And then I got into a bit of stoicism, so
Speaker 2: following stoic practices then Cohen's koa n and just started
Speaker 2: to bring these practices into my daily life. And so
Speaker 2: I would spend possibly an hour a day between meditation,
Speaker 2: some gratitude and reflections, journaling huge thing for me, journaling,
Speaker 2: and then movement so yoga or running or stretching or
Speaker 2: something like that. So if I can do that an
Speaker 2: hour a day, not necessarily an hour together, it really
Speaker 2: is the foundation for my mental, physical, spiritual, emotional health,
Speaker 2: and I'm a much better leader as a result of it.
Speaker 1: What do you do though, when you just don't feel
Speaker 1: like it? And I say this from personal experience, Like
Speaker 1: I've tried to have a mindfulness practice. I'm pretty good
Speaker 1: with my exercise practice and that's very habitual, but when
Speaker 1: I've tried doing bouts of mindfulness, it's like there are
Speaker 1: so many days it's like I can't be bothered. Like,
Speaker 1: what do you do when you're feeling like that? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's obviously having great long term benefits, but in the moment,
Speaker 1: it's not like you feel the benefits instantly.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming Yeah, So I would say, don't be bothered
Speaker 2: if you're not bothered, Like on a day, don't be
Speaker 2: bothered and don't tach yourself about it. So if it's
Speaker 2: just not going for you for that day, then just
Speaker 2: acknowledge and be mindful about Hey, I'd like to meditate today,
Speaker 2: but I don't feel like it, Like my mind is
Speaker 2: crazy all over the place. I've got I'm tired, or
Speaker 2: I'm emotional, or there's too much work. But I'm mindful
Speaker 2: that right now, I'm not going to sit in my practice.
Speaker 2: But what I would like to do is i'd like
Speaker 2: to do that tomorrow. And so I think you just
Speaker 2: bring that mindfulness about not being mindful. Don't touch you,
Speaker 2: just don't touch yourself because the more you pressure yourself,
Speaker 2: the less likely you are to do it. So there
Speaker 2: are plenty of days where I wake up and I
Speaker 2: just go, nope, not feeling it, not feeling it. But
Speaker 2: I'm conscious I'm not feeling it. Why am I not
Speaker 2: feeling it? Oh, I've got pressure. Where's that pressure? That
Speaker 2: pressure is here? Okay, that might be something I need
Speaker 2: to look at later today.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to the sexism, and I
Speaker 1: mean in terms of not getting defensive when you are
Speaker 1: met with these ridiculous comments and perceptions. I get that
Speaker 1: you've got this almost foundational routine that helps, but what
Speaker 1: do you do in the moment, because I can imagine
Speaker 1: it would be so easy to just get defensive and
Speaker 1: respond kind of impetuously.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, so often what I would do. So I'll
Speaker 2: give you an example. So there was a time when
Speaker 2: I was doing a presentation to a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: investors and one of the investors came up to me afterwards,
Speaker 2: and an older man who said to me, look, I've
Speaker 2: got some criticism about your presentation. And I said, oh, okay, sure,
Speaker 2: happy to hear it again. You know, it's the numbers
Speaker 2: not quite right, or I'm missing anything. And he said,
Speaker 2: the dress that you're wearing, it's too sparkly, and I'm
Speaker 2: my attention was on the dress and I couldn't focus
Speaker 2: on your presentation, and it was like gold smacked obviously,
Speaker 2: but it was like, ah, I see okay, And so
Speaker 2: then it's just like, oh, so I hear that perhaps
Speaker 2: you were distracted because of the dress that I'm wearing
Speaker 2: and you weren't able to focus on the presentation. And
Speaker 2: the incredible amount of financial details that I provided in
Speaker 2: that presentation is that what you're missing and he said, yes,
Speaker 2: that's right. And so instead of like then ridiculing him,
Speaker 2: because obviously it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard,
Speaker 2: I just sit and there were people standing around me watching,
Speaker 2: like how is she going to handle this? And I
Speaker 2: was just very kind and said, I hear that you
Speaker 2: weren't able to concentrate and that that's a shame because
Speaker 2: there was really rich stuff in the presentation. So what
Speaker 2: I'll do I will email you through that presentation and
Speaker 2: there you won't have me in the spar luckly dress
Speaker 2: to distract you, so you could just focus on the
Speaker 2: numbers in the presentation. How would that sound? And he said, oh,
Speaker 2: that would be very good, and I said that's great.
Speaker 2: We'll make sure that happens. And so for me, instead
Speaker 2: of going oh, you idiot, like, well would you say
Speaker 2: something like that, it's very much like obviously this is
Speaker 2: a person that has absolutely no awareness that what he
Speaker 2: said was entirely sexist and inappropriate. But for me, I
Speaker 2: believe I needed to assist him in understanding how to
Speaker 2: kind of handle things rather than dismiss him or be
Speaker 2: rude or anything else. And I do have other younger
Speaker 2: women who are always with me, because wherever I go
Speaker 2: take women with me. And I was also just watching
Speaker 2: them kind of watch me handle these situations should I
Speaker 2: have time and time again. So I've learned to actually
Speaker 2: just be very empathetic. I believe my role as a
Speaker 2: woman leader is also to assist those who struggle with
Speaker 2: women leaders understand how to interact with us, rather than
Speaker 2: dismissing them and being angry with them and marginalizing them.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, what a story.
Speaker 2: I wasn't always like that much.
Speaker 1: Were there any sort of like key moments that you
Speaker 1: look back on and think that that changed me in
Speaker 1: terms of how I think about responding to these ridiculous comments.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I had another really intense situation with one
Speaker 2: of the investors who had put a lot of money
Speaker 2: in the business, and it was at a time in
Speaker 2: the business the share price had dropped and so he'd
Speaker 2: on paper he'd lost a lot of money. He was
Speaker 2: very angry. He came and he wanted up meeting with
Speaker 2: the board directors. So he came in and we sat down,
Speaker 2: and he was fuming. He was furious, and he was
Speaker 2: aiming all his quite vile anger and fury towards me
Speaker 2: and was saying things like you should be sacked. I'm paying,
Speaker 2: and I pay for your children, and I pay for
Speaker 2: your standard of living. In all of this. It was
Speaker 2: just horrendous. And all the board members were just like,
Speaker 2: which are all male other than me, We're just like,
Speaker 2: what did we do? And then they were trying to
Speaker 2: be aggressive to him, and it wasn't what he was
Speaker 2: just making him more aggressive, and I realized, like I realized, man,
Speaker 2: he is just in pain because he has lost money.
Speaker 2: And I'm the CEO. It's my responsibility. So I'm just
Speaker 2: going to own this shit right here, and I'm actually
Speaker 2: going to say how sorry I am. And so I
Speaker 2: got a bit emotional and I said that to the guy.
Speaker 2: I said, look, I'm really sorry. I hear that you're
Speaker 2: in a huge amount of pain because you've lost money
Speaker 2: in this investment and that's really really bad and it
Speaker 2: must be causing you all sorts of grief at home.
Speaker 2: And I'm the CEO. I'm responsible for that, and so
Speaker 2: I just want to say to you that I'm incredibly,
Speaker 2: incredibly sorry for the pain that my leadership has caused you. Anyway,
Speaker 2: all the other directors going don't say that, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: And I just hailed him, and I was like a
Speaker 2: few tears in my eyes, and he immediately softened, and
Speaker 2: he immediately softened, and he was then emotional, and he
Speaker 2: walked around the table, came over and just gave me
Speaker 2: a big hug and said that's all I wanted to hear.
Speaker 2: I went, oh, my god, Okay, great, great, and then
Speaker 2: I walked him, you know, downstairs and out the door.
Speaker 2: And when I came back, my chairman, who was a
Speaker 2: very experienced chairman, he said, I've never seen anything like
Speaker 2: that in my life, never seen anything like that. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, that was my genuine truth. I'm genuinely
Speaker 2: sorry that he was in so much pain, and his
Speaker 2: anger is coming from a place of loss, and I'm
Speaker 2: responsible for that, so I'll own that. And so that
Speaker 2: was a really profound moment for me to realize to
Speaker 2: not just do all the corporate the way we're trained,
Speaker 2: which is much more a masculine way, which is don't
Speaker 2: admit anything, never be sorry, never show weakness, never be emotional.
Speaker 2: And I dropped all that because that would never work,
Speaker 2: and just was my genuine self and I was genuinely
Speaker 2: sorry that he was in pain. Genuinely sorry for all
Speaker 2: investors that lost money in any adventure that I've been in.
Speaker 2: Also very happy for the ones who've made money pretty
Speaker 2: much I've been in. But for the ones who've lost money,
Speaker 2: you know that I really feel that. I take that
Speaker 2: as a personal a personal thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as a female leader, I know you have got
Speaker 1: a lot of female mentors, and you have been one
Speaker 1: of my female mentors, one of my most wonderful ones
Speaker 1: for the last ten years or however long we've known
Speaker 1: each other. What have been some of the most valuable
Speaker 1: lessons you've learned from the people that you look up to.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that I haven't actually really had a
Speaker 2: mentor as such. I don't know why I do now
Speaker 2: that I'm working in these other fields that hopefully we'll
Speaker 2: talk about a little bit of time where I am
Speaker 2: being trained and mentored in a particular practice. But interesting enough,
Speaker 2: I didn't really have mentors in business, and that is
Speaker 2: probably because I was one of the early female entrepreneurs
Speaker 2: in Australia and we didn't really have that many mentors available.
Speaker 2: I did have good mentors for a little bit of
Speaker 2: time through Springboard Enterprises, which is a great women led business.
Speaker 2: But I think for me, what I have learned just
Speaker 2: from around the field as a woman entrepreneur is knowing
Speaker 2: your numbers and finances are very important and it's something
Speaker 2: that women traditionally may not have had a lot of
Speaker 2: time in training and learning. It's very different now. I
Speaker 2: think there's a lot more women who were deeply trained
Speaker 2: in finance. But that is extremely important. I think it's
Speaker 2: also to be women leaders is just to truly own
Speaker 2: our own power. So many years ago, as you would
Speaker 2: know because you're involved in it too, was the Australian
Speaker 2: Financial Review winner of the Entrepreneur and Business Women of
Speaker 2: Influence and so that was like, wow, great, Wow, I'm
Speaker 2: acknowledged as a woman of influence. And then I went,
Speaker 2: why am I only influential? And I looked at what
Speaker 2: the men's awards were, and the men's were the men's
Speaker 2: Westpac Men of Power. So you had the AFA Women
Speaker 2: of Influence and the men of Hell the fuck what? No, Like,
Speaker 2: why am I not powerful? And so I looked at
Speaker 2: that and I looked at the definition. So influence is
Speaker 2: the ability to indirectly affect change, and power is the
Speaker 2: ability to directly affect change and so from that moment there,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, no, we can't always just be
Speaker 2: about influence. We women have to be about power. So
Speaker 2: for me, it was very much how do we move
Speaker 2: into positions of power, and that is in being directly
Speaker 2: able to affect change in our own businesses and other
Speaker 2: people's businesses. And so I have made sure then I've
Speaker 2: gone into roles such as I chair a venture capital
Speaker 2: fund now so I can have significant say in what
Speaker 2: we do and how we do it, and that's going
Speaker 2: really well. And so I really learned that not just
Speaker 2: to be of influence, but really to own power and
Speaker 2: to do that in the way we women do it,
Speaker 2: which is again very different to a traditional masculine or
Speaker 2: patriarchal way. And I think women's power comes much more
Speaker 2: with caring, nurturing, support, community engagement, for doing things for purpose,
Speaker 2: doing things for meaning. And I think that's really what
Speaker 2: I've learned, what I try and share.
Speaker 1: We will be back with Kat speaking very candidly about
Speaker 1: the huge difference between being a CEO of a private
Speaker 1: company versus the CEO of a public company where every
Speaker 1: word you say is under scrutiny. If you're looking for
Speaker 1: more tips to improve the way that you work. I
Speaker 1: write a short, fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things
Speaker 1: that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from
Speaker 1: software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot code.
Speaker 1: That's how I Work dot co. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about the difference between being the CEO of a private
Speaker 1: company versus a public company. And let's start with just
Speaker 1: what's the difference between a private versus a public company.
Speaker 2: It's massive, it's a massive difference. It's just so different,
Speaker 2: it's pulls apart. So let's just go through the basics.
Speaker 2: So in a private company, you can have your financials,
Speaker 2: you can have your clients, you can have your stuff,
Speaker 2: and nobody really needs to know about it other than
Speaker 2: your own internal investors. So it's very private. When you're
Speaker 2: running a public company, everything is public. So everything you do,
Speaker 2: so every client that you have, every trial that you do,
Speaker 2: every success you have, every failure you have, every dollar
Speaker 2: you spend, everything you do on social media, everything you
Speaker 2: do in the general media, it's all in the public
Speaker 2: domain and on public record, and so that makes it
Speaker 2: enormously difficult and the real challenge I found. So we
Speaker 2: were one of the very first tech startups on the AX,
Speaker 2: so we were very young, we were pre revenue. We're
Speaker 2: based out of New York and so the Australian capital
Speaker 2: market didn't understand artificial intelligence, American business nor startup so
Speaker 2: that was a big challenge. And the statistics are now
Speaker 2: that eighty seven percent of all AI pilots never go
Speaker 2: into production, so that will turn that around and you
Speaker 2: have one in ten pilots will ever go into into production.
Speaker 2: So we would use to announce things on the Mark
Speaker 2: stock market from our big clients in the US, so
Speaker 2: Liberty Mutual, we've just won a pilot with them. Now,
Speaker 2: normally a private company would never have to announce that
Speaker 2: they've done won a pilot pilot. You don't announce pilots
Speaker 2: with a one in ten chance, only that it's going
Speaker 2: to succeed. So we would announce that. We'd have to
Speaker 2: announce that we had the pilot, even though our clients
Speaker 2: really didn't want to announce it, and then if it
Speaker 2: didn't go ahead, we'd also have to announce that it
Speaker 2: didn't go ahead. And the moment we announced that we'd
Speaker 2: lose thirty percent of our share price, which could be
Speaker 2: tens of millions of dollars off the share price, And
Speaker 2: so it was this terrible roller coaster of we've won something,
Speaker 2: we've lost one, which is very very normal in a
Speaker 2: private setting where no one would have to know about it,
Speaker 2: but in a public setting then it would be all
Speaker 2: through the media. Everyone would be trolling us on social media,
Speaker 2: and it was enormously difficult. So it really just is
Speaker 2: the public nature of everything you do, and it also
Speaker 2: is me as a CEO, I would have spent thirty
Speaker 2: percent of my time least on managing investors, the media,
Speaker 2: all of the reporting that you have to do for disclosures,
Speaker 2: and I should have really ideally had that thirty percent
Speaker 2: running the business more effectively. So it's a very challenging
Speaker 2: environment for a young company, and I don't think it's
Speaker 2: a suitable place at all for startups.
Speaker 1: I could imagine from everything I know of you like
Speaker 1: you're just you're so who you are and you don't
Speaker 1: censor what you say. But then I could imagine being
Speaker 1: the CEO of a publicly listed company and having everything
Speaker 1: under scrutiny would be so challenging. How did you balance
Speaker 1: your like just your authenticity. I hate that word. It's
Speaker 1: so overused, but I feel like you embody it with
Speaker 1: what is expected and what will be documented and what
Speaker 1: will be you know, influence share price and what comes
Speaker 1: out of your mouth.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, So that was a big which I had
Speaker 2: to make, and I really had to tone myself right down,
Speaker 2: and anything I said publicly sometimes the board would have
Speaker 2: to oversee it. And if I did say something where I,
Speaker 2: you know, was a little bit on the edge, then
Speaker 2: sometimes the board would reprimand me. And so that was
Speaker 2: all like, wow, this is like really challenging. And then
Speaker 2: when I so we sold the company two years ago,
Speaker 2: and then when I went back into just being in
Speaker 2: private business, oh it's so great. So example, when the
Speaker 2: federal government election was recently on, and just beforehand, the
Speaker 2: liberal government came out and said, oh, we're going to
Speaker 2: do a tech round table and I went, well, a
Speaker 2: tech roundtable?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Is that it is? That your tech policy? And I'm
Speaker 2: on social media? And then the next day Labor released
Speaker 2: their one billion dollar tech fund. I go, oh, and
Speaker 2: Labor's going to do a one billion dollar tech fund. Okay,
Speaker 2: who you know, how's this going to go? Everybody a
Speaker 2: tech round table or a billion dollar fund for technology
Speaker 2: who thinks they know what the hell's going on? And
Speaker 2: so now I'm just in social media all the time.
Speaker 2: It's just like and you know, because I'm big on
Speaker 2: the metaverse, now it's like calling out the metaverse providers,
Speaker 2: calling out government, pulling up the politicians if they're saying
Speaker 2: something I don't think it's authentic. Really working with it
Speaker 2: was a great minister Dominello, Victor Dominello when you south
Speaker 2: was who's just I reckon? He's a champion, So you know,
Speaker 2: I can say really good positive things about him, the
Speaker 2: stuff he's doing. It's so much better and easier being
Speaker 2: not being in the public I'm still a public eye,
Speaker 2: but not representing a public company where the share price,
Speaker 2: the share price would go up and down based on
Speaker 2: what I said.
Speaker 1: God, how like I've heard from some CEOs of public
Speaker 1: listened companies that part of the challenge is trying to
Speaker 1: detach yourself and your decisions from a fluctuating share price.
Speaker 1: I imagine that was probably key in your role. How
Speaker 1: did you do that?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: That was really difficult.
Speaker 2: So we would have to look at the share price
Speaker 2: every day and monitor it every day. And initially I
Speaker 2: would get very very stressed to be up to be down,
Speaker 2: and that it wouldn't make sense. We'd do a really good
Speaker 2: announcement and the share price would drop, and I had
Speaker 2: to learn the dynamics of the share market because that
Speaker 2: would mean simply that some people knew the share price
Speaker 2: is going to go up, so they would sell out
Speaker 2: to get a lift on what they'd brought in on.
Speaker 2: It wasn't actually that everyone thought that was a bad thing,
Speaker 2: that we'd want a piece of business. So I had
Speaker 2: to learn the patterns and the cycles of the share
Speaker 2: market and the share price, and that was that's quite
Speaker 2: a skill, and there's a real science in there. And
Speaker 2: then sometimes it's completely unpredictable, and then other times it
Speaker 2: depends what's going on in the US market, depends on
Speaker 2: some other tech stocks just crashed, and so we get
Speaker 2: the wave of that. So that was, yeah, it was difficult.
Speaker 2: It was hard not to take it very personally to
Speaker 2: start with, and to be just following it all the time.
Speaker 2: And also in the chat room, so there's this terrible
Speaker 2: place called hot Copper, which is the day trader's chat
Speaker 2: rooms where they just dissect everything, and often I would
Speaker 2: look in there, and they'd just be horrendous things being
Speaker 2: said about the company or about me or my team,
Speaker 2: and eventually I would just just not look at that anymore.
Speaker 2: Just don't look at it, don't pay attention to it,
Speaker 2: don't take any of it on. Just focus on the business,
Speaker 2: ignore the share price to a degree, and just focus
Speaker 2: on improving the business is the only way through it.
Speaker 1: Now. Something that you have started experimenting with is psychedelics,
Speaker 1: and I think we need some disclaimers upfront before we
Speaker 1: talk about that, if you will, Kat.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course. So I mean in the country of Australia,
Speaker 2: most psychedelics or psychoactive plant medicines are illegal and they
Speaker 2: are also not suitable for everyone. But there are other
Speaker 2: countries in the world, some of which I travel to,
Speaker 2: where psychedelics are indeed legal and have come from traditional
Speaker 2: communities and environments as part of their either spiritual path
Speaker 2: or their medicine or their healing path. So often they're
Speaker 2: not called psychedelics, They're called plant medicine or medicine.
Speaker 1: I'm curious as to how you've gone about kind of
Speaker 1: learning about essentially what is a whole new world for you,
Speaker 1: And you mentioned you know perhaps there might be some
Speaker 1: mentors in that space, even though perhaps there's been a
Speaker 1: lack of mentors in the entrepreneurial and.
Speaker 2: Tech space right, So yes, let's just dive into it.
Speaker 2: So I am working with a number of plant medicines,
Speaker 2: and these are traditional sacraments that come from the earth,
Speaker 2: so that could be Ayahuascar is one of them, and
Speaker 2: Buffo alvius, which is the Sonora desert toad medicine is
Speaker 2: another one. And psilocybin, which is mushrooms. So these medicines
Speaker 2: I am being trained by guides who have been trained
Speaker 2: for decades in serving these sacraments around the world. And
Speaker 2: my entry point into working with plant medicines actually many
Speaker 2: many years ago. So I spent time in North America
Speaker 2: with some Native American people and an elder in New
Speaker 2: Mexico where I was brought into sort of their family
Speaker 2: and trained for about a year and a half between
Speaker 2: Australia and the US in indigenous spirituality and medicine. And
Speaker 2: so I started my journey around sort of a shamanic
Speaker 2: approach to life many many years ago and then have
Speaker 2: picked it up recently actually after on the day I
Speaker 2: sold the company, the public company that night, I traveled
Speaker 2: a place and it had a deep dive with Ayahuascar
Speaker 2: and it was a dark night of the souls. It
Speaker 2: was the most difficult experience I've ever had in my life. Essentially,
Speaker 2: I described that I journeyed to meet my shadow self
Speaker 2: and it was the most horrendous experience I've ever had
Speaker 2: in my life.
Speaker 1: It was terrible.
Speaker 2: But really, then when I reflected it later, I went, oh, no,
Speaker 2: she kind of got it right. Yep, you know all
Speaker 2: of that that came out for me. It is like
Speaker 2: your ego driven, your identity driven, You're disconnected. You know,
Speaker 2: there are people you love that you're letting down. You know,
Speaker 2: you sometimes tell lies and it's like oh really no,
Speaker 2: oh yes, right, okay, yeah, I got it right. And
Speaker 2: then I had to clean all that up. And they
Speaker 2: say that seven hours of aiahuascar is like seven years
Speaker 2: of psychotherapy, and that was very much what it was
Speaker 2: for me. And so since then, which was some years back,
Speaker 2: I've started to study and be trained and be mentored
Speaker 2: by guides in carrying these medicines so that I can
Speaker 2: understand the benefits for people and particularly leaders, in what
Speaker 2: psychedelics and these medicines can offer.
Speaker 1: What did you do personally after having that night and
Speaker 1: uncovering these like this shadow side of yourself? How do
Speaker 1: you go about dealing with what you found?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, well, so in the plant medicine world we
Speaker 2: talk about that the peak experience that you have is
Speaker 2: just the peak experience. Actually the work is in the integration.
Speaker 2: So it took me maybe six months to integrate everything
Speaker 2: that came out of that journey for me, and that
Speaker 2: was really looking at these shadow parts of my personality
Speaker 2: and then going into them and often behind them there
Speaker 2: was some trauma. So for me, there was sexual abuse
Speaker 2: as a teenager that I then had to go into
Speaker 2: and I saw how that was playing out in how
Speaker 2: I was leading as well. My apprehension and wanting to
Speaker 2: act yes when there was an older male in the
Speaker 2: room or in the boardroom came from part of my
Speaker 2: upbringing and some trauma I had as a young woman,
Speaker 2: and so all of that the plant medicine helped me
Speaker 2: just really just get up. And because it's such a
Speaker 2: visceral experience that you go through, there's sort of no
Speaker 2: going back from it. So you know you've met yourself,
Speaker 2: You've literally met yourself, and it's not good and so,
Speaker 2: and so it was like, Oh, if I do that
Speaker 2: behavior now, if I'm doing something out of ego, or
Speaker 2: if I'm doing something because it's identity driven, I would
Speaker 2: feel sick in the stomach. I go, I can't do
Speaker 2: that anymore. And so then I just did. I did
Speaker 2: a lot of counseling, a lot of journaling, a lot
Speaker 2: of meditation on the things that came out in these journeys.
Speaker 2: And I've done that time and time again, and so
Speaker 2: really uncovered deep traumas that I just put down inside
Speaker 2: my psyche and had ignored. And yeah, so it's not
Speaker 2: an easy path, but it's an incredibly powerful path.
Speaker 1: What's been your process for journaling your way through that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a big journaling. So I take a journal with
Speaker 2: me everywhere. I've got journals all over the place, in
Speaker 2: my handbagside my bed, in the car, and so I
Speaker 2: would just write down everything that came up for me
Speaker 2: and just really authentically, really honestly, you know, this has
Speaker 2: come up for me, or this is a trauma that
Speaker 2: I've experienced, I need to write about it. And I
Speaker 2: think once you've had these deep visceral experiences in the medicine,
Speaker 2: it's very easy to write. It just all flows out.
Speaker 2: You've kind of got to get it out of yourself
Speaker 2: to get it out. So journaling is an incredibly, incredibly
Speaker 2: powerful tool.
Speaker 1: And are you like almost writing like the narrative of
Speaker 1: what you've remembered or are you more writing about what
Speaker 1: are the emotions it's bringing up? Like what are you
Speaker 1: actually writing?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Good, good question. So I would write initially the narrative,
Speaker 2: then I did this, and then I journeyed here, and
Speaker 2: then I saw this, and then I experienced this, and
Speaker 2: then that person appeared. So I do the narrative or
Speaker 2: my voice recorded, and then I'll pull out and that
Speaker 2: and go, okay, so this one was about this trauma
Speaker 2: that I had, and here are the feelings that I had. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I now need to go and sit and meditate,
Speaker 2: go back into that feeling and try and clear that
Speaker 2: feeling that I have out of it. So I would
Speaker 2: then yet kind of analyze it and go through until
Speaker 2: I've really kind of nailed it, and then if I
Speaker 2: felt that I needed some therapy, I would go and
Speaker 2: do that. And I've got a couple of great counselors
Speaker 2: who are normal psychological counselors. And then deal with people
Speaker 2: who've had peak experiences.
Speaker 1: That sounds like an amazing process for people that are
Speaker 1: interested in learning more where you might have picked their curiosity,
Speaker 1: what like, where's a good place to start?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this now because we're in what was what's
Speaker 2: called the psychedelic Renaissance, so we're seeing their arise of
Speaker 2: any interest in psychedelics all over the world. So all
Speaker 2: of the big podcast is so Sam Harris, Tim Ferriss
Speaker 2: or Remarcus, these guys, Joe wrote and all of these
Speaker 2: guys will be talking about it and they're really good
Speaker 2: reference points. There's also Mind Medicine Australia, which is a
Speaker 2: not for profit which is particularly focused on the use
Speaker 2: of psilocybin and MDMA for therapy, and so they'll have
Speaker 2: also great resources. But because it's these substances or sacraments
Speaker 2: are legal in Australia, it is very difficult to have
Speaker 2: any any real conversational access to things here. But certainly
Speaker 2: in Peru, so in any of the Amazon Peru, Brazil,
Speaker 2: some parts of North America, the Mexico, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of these practices are done there.
Speaker 1: Okay. And finally, Kat for people that want a connect
Speaker 1: with you and the work you are doing. What is
Speaker 1: the best way for people to get in touch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm really good on LinkedIn, in any of
Speaker 2: the social media channels. I'm like up there all the
Speaker 2: time on all of them. So, and it's normally just
Speaker 2: Katrina and Katrina spelled c at rio na, so it's
Speaker 2: the Gaelic spelling of Katrina and Wallace. So I'm across everything.
Speaker 2: So social media is really good for me, and I'm
Speaker 2: super interested. Now my whole attention is being turned to
Speaker 2: the metaverse and responsible metaverse, so particularly anyone who's interested
Speaker 2: in Web three and the metaverse technologies, and for me,
Speaker 2: it's how do we build a responsible and a safe
Speaker 2: metaverse for women and the vulnerable. I'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from you.
Speaker 1: I always feel so energized and inspired whenever I talk
Speaker 1: to Cat, even if I happen to be recording it
Speaker 1: for a podcast. What particularly stood out to me in
Speaker 1: this chat was the empathy that Cat's spoke about in
Speaker 1: relation to the blatant and quite extreme sexism she received
Speaker 1: as a woman leading a tech company. Thankfully, I've not
Speaker 1: been subjected to anywhere near as much sexism as Cat,
Speaker 1: but I am definitely going to bring more empathy to
Speaker 1: those situations when they do inevitably happen. How I Work
Speaker 1: is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios.
Speaker 1: The producer for this episode was Liam Riordan, and thank
Speaker 1: you to Matt Nimba who does the audio mix for
Speaker 1: every episode and makes everything sound so much better than
Speaker 1: it would have otherwise. See you next time.