Startup Coach: Tensions Can Happen Between Co-Founders

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Beth Nevins is a renowned startup advisor and people and talent consultant. She is best known for helping founders refine their values and mission so they can lead. 

00:00 Introduction
00:39 Beth's Background and Expertise
01:13 Hiring the Right Talent
04:14 Managing Tensions Between Co-founders
05:21 Building Accountability in Founders
07:29 Creating Alignment and Collaboration Among Teams
10:18 Ensuring Open Dialogue and Truthfulness
13:25 Challenges in Scaling from 50 to 100 Employees
20:35 The Role of a People Leader
27:11 Importance of Operational Skills in Startups
30:44 Rapid Fire Questions
33:46 Closing Remarks

See Beth's company Developa - https://developa.io/

Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://youtu.be/meuyWparoGs

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Previous guests include: Arvid Kahl of FeedbackPanda, Andrei Zinkevich of FullFunnel, Scott Van den Berg of Influencer Capital, Buster Franken of Fruitpunch AI, Valentin Radu of Omniconvert, Evelina Necula of Kinderpedia, Ionut Vlad of Tokinomo, Diana Florescu of MediaforGrowth, Irina Obushtarova of Recursive, Monika Paule of Caszyme, Yannick Veys of Hypefury, Laura Erdem of Dreamdata, and Pija Indriunaite of CityBee.

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Transcript

Eric (00:09.48)
Absolutely wonderful. How are you doing today?

Beth (00:12.246)
I'm good, morning, how are you?

Eric (00:14.232)
I'm fantastic. All right, for those listening and watching, or watching, this is Eric Melcher. And if you wanna know how some of the most innovative founders or marketers in Europe are scaling their companies, then this is the show for you. Today, I have Beth Nevins on the show. And Beth, for those who don't know you, can you tell us who you are and why should people listen to you?

Beth (00:39.978)
No worries. Well, first, thanks for having me. Um, so my name is Beth. I have a consultancy in the people and talent space called developer.io. Uh, my background is years and years deeply in people and talent. I've worked in several startups, uh, myself reporting to founder CEOs on the leadership team, uh, representing the people and talent strategy. Um, and now I work at a portfolio level for myself across seed to series C tech startups.

mostly directly with the founding team and the co-founder or founders directly.

Eric (01:13.508)
Alright, now Beth, let's suppose I'm a founder, I just got some new funding and I need to hire some people, maybe 5 to 10 new people, to ensure that I'm hiring the right talent. What do you suggest I do?

Beth (01:27.326)
Yeah, so you're probably in the pre-seed or the seed stage at this point then with, you know, a million plus sort of funding, which is the earliest sort of stage I come into. And there's loads of workshops we do to get to this point and dimensions that we look at. So I'll run through some of the obvious ones. But first of all, it's important to know, have we got a solo founder or multiple founders? Because that already...

affects how we start thinking about the skill set between the team roles and responsibilities, background and strengths and so forth. The second thing we want to look at is the actual business model, like what are we actually building? Marketplace and how we go to market with that is very different to, I don't know, a deep tech AI model type company. It's much harder, more niche to get certain talent, more competitive in that space, for example, arguably.

And that's different again, perhaps to a pure play, SaaS business or product that we're building. So we discuss all that together and what type of skillset we probably need within that. But then in a founding team, generally, of course at this point, what are we actually trying to achieve in our milestones? It's finding product market fit, right? So at this point, really we're looking at people to build that product. The founders are responsible really to sell and get that sort of first million.

in revenue plus we may have you know an SDR or some sort of business development lead gen sort of higher or it could be growth marketing hacks and so forth if it's more B2C. And then more of the difficult piece is the hiring attitude and what I call the stage fit piece then and really the values fit piece which is the hardest bit to test and train founders for.

But really then working with the founders to work out like what matters to them personally, what are their principles? What do they stand for? What's their vision for what this company starts looking like and how people will feel in this and work together. And then we start building sets of questions and an assessment on, um, finding the right attitudes that will work with them. You know, we're spending a lot of time together. It's not just the founders in this type of, you know, marriage together for the next 10 years, the founding team could well be there for many years.

Beth (03:37.558)
So we have to really take that part seriously. So yeah, to summarize, there's the domain fit, there's the stage fit, it's the values fit. And then of course, looking at the unique roles that we probably need that are relevant for the product market fit milestone.

Eric (03:52.028)
Have you ever worked with a company that had multiple founders and they had different values, Beth?

Beth (03:58.914)
Oh, well, I advise and coach multiple one-to-one founder CEOs, but some of that advisory session actually do what the two co-founders together in that. And that's interesting dynamic immediately then, because you have an open window to strains between them, tensions that can happen between them. You are a mediator.

Eric (04:14.056)
I'm gonna go get a drink.

Beth (04:25.314)
I'm recently going through this right now with two co-founders. Um, I think like the values fit can happen. That's obviously why relationships break down and you see co-founders do part. Like that definitely does happen. And I work with founders who have come to me because a co-founder has left and we're looking at that scenario and moving forward. So of course it happens. I also advise, um, uh, founders who are looking for a co-founder.

And the significant part of that, just like you're dating, and I say, remember dating, it's very similar. The values bit is more important than the glossy exterior. So that is fundamental to the longevity of any relationship and the co-founder is literally as if you're picking a life partner. So it's exactly the same thing we have to align on. So to answer your question, it does happen. You know, it's not the first time I've seen it, it won't be the last, it definitely does happen.

but also part of that mediation working with, I saw conflict or tension between co-founders is bringing them back to the thing that does keep them together, which is, as you said, the valleys and the mission, and that's important to also remind them of that, that this is just one roadblock that we still have to work on those relationships, just like we do in our personal lives.

Eric (05:43.608)
Have you ever had to tell a founder, hey, you've got some work to do on yourself before we go out and find this other co-founder?

Beth (05:51.238)
Well, yeah, and it's not, it's not just that situation, you know, that's what coaching is actually about, right? You know, well, why, in my opinion, why do founders fail or struggle? To be very honest, there's a few things. First is finding, identifying the self-limited beliefs that they may have. And that might come out in a few sessions. That's quite easy to tackle, to be honest. But the second one that's the most difficult is the accountability piece. If you see recurring patterns that they just are resistant to being accountable.

Eric (06:20.293)
Oh.

Beth (06:20.394)
because in any relationship breakdown or any scenario where things aren't working, it's not just the other person, right? You are the common denominator. That's a hard holding at the mirror piece with a founder to get them to that place of self reflection, to take that, you know, absolute urgent and extreme accountability. And there's lots of loops and frameworks I talk about with them on falling on the victim side of that loop or are you an accountable owner?

in the other side and a founder came to me recently, literally last week, was referred to me and he said to me, I've had a head-off position, failed twice, I must be doing something wrong. That is a founder, I will work till midnight, days on end to fix that problem with them because they've already shown me that they are highly accountable. It may well be that the other person is problematic or there's other reasons, for sure that's definitely not the only reason that it's all them.

But it's a good start in place that the founder recognizes that they must have a role in that breakdown of a problem or things aren't working out. So yeah, that's also an important part of really holding at that mirror and discussing that theme of accountability often.

Eric (07:29.184)
Yeah, no, I've got some work to do with my son. Grant, he's only six, but he never wants to take accountability for the things that he's done.

Beth (07:39.08)
Yeah, well, that's life. I've been there as well myself, so I have to remind myself of this very much also.

Eric (07:47.236)
Yeah, no, he's got some time. I got to work with them. Um, okay. All right. Now let's have another question for you, bet to keep good alignment and collaboration among teams. Let's just say teams that have maybe 10 to 50 employees. What do you suggest? What are some things that they can do?

Beth (07:50.638)
Start young!

Beth (08:07.254)
What can they do? Well, there is this, I mean, again, I think more like sea level. So I think in systems and overall infrastructure, I think like the system for alignment starts top down. But you obviously want to bring people on the journey of that setting of the direction. I think that's important for high performance. If the directions not there, we don't know that travel.

What we're working on, what we're not working on is super important because there's loads of distractions early on. I think the second thing of like alignment is role modeling that collaboration, that role model in the questions that leaders should be showing to teams, like asking the other day during the meeting, are we on the same page? You know, don't leave the, the when to end together without confirming, are we on the same page? You know, make sure you're checking that constantly.

You'll reinforce that alignment then with your systems. It could be OKRs, it could be other sort of KPI trees, depending on your maturity. It could just be targets if you want to be more of a target efficiency, more manufacturing oriented model. So you will have frameworks and things that align the company together in different departments. And then of course you're rewarding and reviewing against that. And if you're saying collaboration is a value or something that's important to your business and you have to incentivize and reward.

for those right sort of behaviors to embed that and reinforce that whole system's design. So that's the sort of flywheel you're working on for high performance, let alone alignment, but alignment is a, is a big part of that. And, and making sure it's something that people value as an individual level as well, you know, that's part of the interview process as part of asking them, you know, how, you know, what's your view on.

does good alignment look like to you? You know, and I always ask those open-ended questions because if they can describe what that means to them or looks like to them in practice, rather than asking well do you value alignment yes or no, which is you know not really doesn't tell you much, then you know that's half the battle. It always comes down to good recruiting against making sure the right people align and you know are a good match for the environment they're about to go into.

Eric (10:18.98)
Yeah, I love that little phrase, are we on the same page? Because just because you speak the same language as the other person doesn't mean that the message came across and is understood and agreed upon. So I'm going to start using that.

Beth (10:33.314)
I literally had this with the manufacturing leader who said, he said, one of the coaching questions, conversations I had with him was, I've got this team, I tell them what to do in the morning and then four hours later, it doesn't get done or they haven't done things in the right order. So I said to him, okay, so once you've explained, what we're doing for the day or the priorities, have you asked the team to relay back to you what you've just said? No. So how do you know?

Uh, you know, uh, what the words we say, I have a fascination with language and we're not great listeners, including myself. So the only way we can qualify is to ask someone to paraphrase or recite back. What's just been heard, particularly with juniors as you're coaching them so far. So they appreciate the skill of listening early on that patronize him, but just say, you know, just so I'm just, we're on the same page. What can you just summarize what I've just said so you can tell the team and so forth, particularly when.

Um, you know, uh, change management and all this, once you start getting leadership teams in the big founder transition is the founder has to now communicate to other people. So you can't have this message dilution or message skewing or all the rest of it as, as things happen, if that part becomes very, very important. What said at the top actually is the same on the front line at the bottom.

So this becomes a big part. Are we on the same page? Can you recite back or play back to what I've just said? Also checking that whether they agree with that. You know, we can disagree and commit, but actually sometimes message gets skewed because people don't actually agree kind of what's been said. So they put their own spin on how they think it should be executed and done. So there's lots of reasons why things fail. Ha ha.

Um, and as I said, um, you know, uh, check that they feel confident with what, what they've heard. So it's, it's always that qualify and I'll be on the same page and give that window of opportunity that people can then disagree with it because that's gets back to your alignment piece. Why does communication break down? It's not just, they have an activity lesson that sometimes they don't really align with it and that's why sometimes the message can get changed somewhat.

Eric (12:39.96)
Yeah, I guess there's a reason why the military always has people repeat back whatever the order was or whatever it's been asked for.

Beth (12:47.918)
Well, you know, I've spoken to and coached many a founder that loves books like Turn the Ship Around and have a fascination with like military operations and Navy SEALs and so forth. There's lots you can take from them as you know, high performing teams. But, you know, also there's other ways that startups are very different, I would say, in terms of day to day drills.

Eric (13:09.796)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, another question for you. Well, we talked about 10 to 50, and I know you have some experience with this. Do things change from 50 to 100 employees? Like, is there another set of procedures that you would focus on or standards?

Beth (13:25.086)
Yeah. So I've done this several times. Um, I mean, this is the phase that both, well, many founders have agreed with me on is strangely the hardest part. This sounds odd, but I find post a hundred as much easier. 50 to a hundred is the more difficult. And the reason for that is you usually get in, um, sort of even like 25 to a hundred is post a series A rate arrays. And that's the first time that, um, things start going wrong. And I'll tell you for why.

on a cultural perspective. Because if you haven't systemized or really understood your hiring science at this point, what happens is you hire a bunch of leaders and a bunch of leaders then start organically hiring a load of people. And culture then starts becoming a microculture and a wider culture. Microcultures within each unique team and their experience then. And then you've got the wider culture of like, the whole company.

And what happens is if you haven't got hiring right before this point, you've got leaders starting to either not be the same in terms of the sort of values or in terms of like their interpretation. And one bad leader, trust me in zero to a hundred is very, very painful. So, and founders don't necessarily want to tell boards early on that this is the first mistake or first thing that happened, particularly if you use exec search and I've been there. It's hard. So you kind of stuck.

Eric (14:37.746)
Yes.

Beth (14:50.09)
with these hires, you shouldn't be, but tends to what's happened. So you've got this massive risk in terms of scaling hiring, because you have this big growth spurt that you haven't been prepared for. That brings a lot of pain if you can't get hiring science right before that. The second thing that starts happening then is it's the first time the founder is leading a leadership or a senior leadership team. Um, so that becomes like very important in, you know, how successful that is on the, you know, 50 to a hundred journey when you've got this.

And now 50 to a hundred communication and codification becomes an actual real thing that becomes really important to hang all of this alignment together. As you quite rightly said, because this is the first time I find my founders. They are actually having to intentionally think about what I say is their philosophies and they're almost that manifesto because the one thing that doesn't work in 50 to a hundred, where you remember everybody names sub 50 people. You can probably have enough time to have.

just about enough one-to-ones in a month with 50 people and so forth. You don't have that anymore. So you've got to have more structures and systems to make this scale for sort of 50 to a hundred. But to go back to my point, as I digress slightly, is this codification, this philosophy piece. If you don't do that, the unwritten rules that you've tried and relied on, this oral tradition before, you know, a text or codification of philosophies, it can't scale.

So as I said, you start having word of mouth, different dilution, different understanding of language, different interpretation, and you start needing guiding lights through values, through philosophies, through written down in your notion, your central hub to self-serve people. You start needing all of this stuff to scale on that 50 to 100, because it breaks down very quickly if you don't actually have some light touch principles and process.

And that's where it gets difficult where you need that sort of big gap. And in my experience, I would say this is the biggest step change on whether the seed stage talent are actually scalable. So if they can get through that big step change, they can probably scale a little bit further beyond that as well. But if they can't make the, we love each other all in the room and we can, you know, there's no process, we can kind of do what we want. Now we need that first bit of process or systems in. If they don't.

Beth (17:15.906)
take to that, then they're probably not going to be very scalable for the rest of the journey that the company is about to go on.

Eric (17:21.64)
Now that so many people are working remote, how does a leader know whether or not there's an issue with the culture? Because let's say there's a bad leader that they hired and they're delivering. They're delivering on the numbers that they're supposed to. They're meeting expectations, but the people that they're hiring, they've got this own little clique that they formed and they're not really collaborating with other teams and other departments. How does a founder really detect this and find this out on his or her own?

Beth (17:45.994)
Hmm. Yeah, very good. Great question. Um, so there's a few things, you know, I, I don't, I won't keep talking at this whole like top line strategy level because there are tactical and more practical things to do, but I, you know, in a general role, I'd say remote and trust. I personally don't agree remote is more difficult than office. I don't agree with that. It's just different difficulty and complex. I'm not the same thing. Um,

And we, I think that's often misconstrued and conflated in the same conversation. Hybrid in fact, is the more difficult for inclusion and for various other things, particularly if you haven't got set days in the office where everyone is going in at the same page, that has more complexity because it's a blend of different models and different ways of behavior that's required. So remote is actually just as easy in my view, but different to office work. Although I see value of office in the beginning for sure.

Eric (18:29.821)
Mm-hmm.

Beth (18:42.562)
separate conversation with the remote, just like at any scale. I'm a big fan of spot one to ones. So I encourage founders, um, you know, it was, you don't have this scale issue beyond sort of 150, 200 people where you can't do this, but I'm a big, big fan of spot one to ones. And even when we were a hundred people plus, um, and our founder would come to our, one of our factories and so forth, they'd have spot one to ones on the shop floor is a very quick way to get a temperature check.

There was a LinkedIn post I read and I liked the other day. You know, I think it's important that founders are not just speaking to the same people or the same people that naturally have the confidence to gravitate towards a founder. A founder should have a spot one to one at all levels. A graduate, an intern, an SLT that they haven't had one to one with for some time maybe. A new starter. That's a founding team member. That great dev that perhaps now you're managing a leadership team they haven't spoken to.

Is it worth having a chat to them now, you know, a few weeks later, just to check in with that, you know, amazing DNA of the company and so forth. So that to me is important where EAs and chief of staffs can be really helpful to schedule that. Those spot one to once throughout the year to keep, you know, before that breaks at a certain number for sure. But how do you start doing that? And then the, the obvious question then is you do lean on then your people team to find a way that surfaces that employee voice and sentiment.

for the leadership team, you know, that is the point. And a great people team is also doing this one-to-oneses, also spending that time. A good people leader is across the business constantly, you know, not in their ivory tower or in isolation. So I've done remote, I did remote distributed with multiple teams across the Middle East and North Africa and in the UK.

And I spent most of my time talking to people to be quite frank on zoom and on hangouts. And while that could be some fatigue for me, that's what's necessary. Right. So you have to make that time. You have to make that commitment to speak to people and read those cues. And part of the reason people think engaged at surveys or trying to find some data and so forth and raising that up is, is challenging. It's nine times out of 10 products fail.

Beth (21:03.138)
because we haven't actually identified what problem we're trying to solve. It's not ever the thing in itself or the actual process or whatever it's means. We haven't worked out what problem we're trying to solve for, as you said, with remote, and then we haven't built or asked the right questions that measures the very thing we're trying to actually achieve. Um, and you have to ask very different sets of questions, I think, to raise risk and raise feeling and sentiment in a remote setting, as you might do perhaps with, um, in-person collaboration. So.

as I said, different, but not more complex.

Eric (21:35.152)
For founders or CEOs that are running organizations greater than 50 people, do you ever give them any advice on how to create an atmosphere where the one-to-one person that they're talking to, maybe this person is more junior level, can just be relaxed and comfortable and be open to be truthful in their conversations and share that information? Because it can be pretty, maybe even say a little bit scary talking to the CEO and if you're.

a junior level person and this organization is 60, 70 people, you've never spoken to the CEO before, right? You've never been asked to. You may think that you're in trouble, but how do you create that atmosphere just for open dialogue? Any suggestions, Beth?

Beth (22:17.29)
Well, it's the same perception with the role of what we call HR as well. You know, no, we don't want to get in that situation where someone's got a meeting with the people team and think they're going to get fired. Right. So it's, it's what is your just true. It's true. Right. So it's what is your brand perception as a CEO? What do you want to be known for and how do you want to be perceived across all levels in your business? That's the top line question we discussed on their own personal brand. And how does that play out in practice? So again,

Eric (22:26.795)
All the time.

Beth (22:43.706)
You know, my role is to help the CEO with this. You know, it should never be that junior joins and it's a year until they've met the CEO. No. In the onboarding, we have a system that there is a meet and greet with the CEO for all new starters together and have that introduction as soon as possible, you know, in that scale. So the CEO is already introduced to any level of the company in a little mini all hands or a new starter session.

Eric (23:03.054)
Okay.

Beth (23:10.13)
And it's the culture you want to have. So we would call it, ask me anything. So the CEO did not speak about their whole life. It was an open floor for everybody to answer questions to that CEO. So they knew as expected of them. They do the talking and the CEO is in the spotlight then doing all the answering rather than, you know, in that telling. And once you build that dynamic of, you know, that servant leadership sort of culture, the CEO is just listening, then, you know, it's, it's amazing because one thing is quite.

You know, the role model and again is key with coaching is I had a CEO once bless him that was saying, you know, we go to an all hands, whatever. And he was just saying, you know, speak up, speak up. People don't speak up because they've just been told people speak up because they feel, and they see around them how people are reacting to other people's voicing of challenges. It is how you behave to reaction that people start noticing. Okay. There is psychological safety here. So the role model in day to day is the big.

Eric (24:03.322)
Yeah.

Beth (24:06.474)
personal branding piece that people will know. And that is, I suppose, the unwritten rule that is allowed, is just your day-to-day behavior, that people will have a sense of who you are. So that's also really important as well. And another example of this is in my last perm job, we had what's called Culture Club. And we would crowdsource and every month in a lunch break, people can dive in and we would miro board on suggestions and three employee suggestions would get rated as a group.

and the people team would have to execute them before the next sort of culture club. Only three because we'd rather make sure it was done than too many that weren't done. The founder would be there as well. The founder did not speak, they just listened. That was their role. And that's my point, you know, it's, you know, if you let employees talk to you in that space and that dynamic and they get used to that, then you're going to have people very much more vocal, much more safer.

Eric (24:48.572)
Okay.

Beth (25:02.39)
And that was really interesting because the culture in Mina is very different. And, you know, there is a lot more structures and hierarchies in all charts and so forth. It's very different culture to the West. And we had amazing response from people in the Middle East saying that we were quite different consequently in how we were operating, but it was very different to how we originally were operating as a company there.

Eric (25:24.012)
Yeah, no, I like that idea being introduced to the CEO or just making go out of the way to introduce themselves as soon as the person starts. Probably the entire executive team should do that, not just the founder and CEO, in my opinion. Yeah.

Beth (25:35.454)
Yeah, I agree. And, you know, even with all hands, one of the things as we started maturing in the business, um, in both startups, I worked with 50 plus hundred plus, um, is, um, the all hands, uh, in my opinion, um, should not just be, um, senior leadership team every time presented. I think it's important if you want ownership and true accountability in the company, you push it down.

So in the old hands, if people were then publicly talking about the things they built and what they'd done and what hadn't worked in the OKRs, they are publicly then owning their work and they were delivering their results. It's not just the leader. Now, don't get me wrong, if things go wrong, the leader does take the accountability. That is your job and responsibility you take on as a leader. But the ownership and building that culture that of ownership of the team is pushing that down and pushing teams then to talk about that openly across the business about what they're doing as a team.

rather than seeing the leader represent them all the time publicly across the business. So for me, I think it sets the wrong tone, particularly when you're trying to keep as flat as possible for as long as possible in startups.

Eric (26:47.096)
Yeah. Um, I saw, I saw that you referenced the term people leader in some of your LinkedIn posts and for the audience, including myself, Beth, like what position is that, what title is that? Is that like hit of HR? Can you just kind of clarify that? And then also, also how much does a people leader play in the success of an organization in your opinion?

Beth (27:00.875)
Mm. Yeah.

Beth (27:11.474)
That's a million dollar question, but try and see your first question. Yes, I mean, depending on the stage, of course, a people leader will be the highest representation for people, I'd say the word people over HR, but in the company. So it could be a head of people, which is often in a sort of sub 100 person. It could be a director or a VP. However, your leveling structure works post 100 people. And certainly, you know, post 200, that could well be a chief people officer.

and so forth. So yeah, the highest representation for people in the business is what I call a people leader. And your second question, you know, how important? So I think it's becoming more and more important. And the reason for that, I say, is we're seeing a huge shift, rightly so, where VC-backed businesses in particular have to have more sustainable growth now earlier on in their startup journey and have

you know, looking at margin improvement and profitability as well as just revenue, I suppose. And what comes with that, I think, and I steal what somebody else has said, but I concur with that, is

you know, is a question now is, is vision just enough now in terms of a leadership capability, you know, I think the operational skill set is becoming more and more important, actually earlier on in startups now, to make sure that we can be, I know no one likes the word, but leaner and high performing, right, and having a better design is actually becoming more and more important, I think, in early stage startups to extend that runway and spend better and optimize.

So the people leader role, I think is becoming more important now because intentional design with this and someone representing and has that toolkit that could come in and help you design for better fiscal responsibility and optimization and getting the most out of the people that we've got is hugely valuable. Again, all comes down to the strength of the founder. And I appreciate arguments that, you know, they may not want to have that in there. If they've got a really strong team.

Beth (29:23.318)
But I do think this role, you know, if I think of what I do day to day, it's such an amazing mediator or, or a joiner up at the two sides. Because one of the things I find, which is really helpful of this position in startups is the employees. You have one-to-ones with them and you take them on a journey of empathy for a founder and you spend lots of time with them on.

them thinking about the founder's situation and what they might be feeling right now and why they need to be doing the things that they're doing, they're saying the things that they're saying. And you have one-to-ones and this is where actually you know the role is not a hero position but it's a very influential role on the ground that all this unseen work that people don't see that actually is just as important as good strategy. And then with the founder you're doing exactly the same thing, you're working with the founder to build those empathy skills on the people, on the employees.

Um, and if you build really strong empathy in a business like that, and you've got a role that is focusing on that a lot and building the empathy in the company is extremely powerful, um, to get good results as far as performance goes. So, you know, that role in itself, dedicate in time to building empathy up in the business is like, for me, it's, it's a, it's a big, uh, advantage.

Eric (30:39.832)
Agree, agree. Okay, I've got some rapid fire questions for you, Beth. Are you ready?

Beth (30:44.687)
Go on, let's go for it. I still haven't had my coffee yet, but I hope I'll fast enough. Ha ha ha.

Eric (30:49.228)
All right, give me the first thing that pops in your head. First question. Your favorite job, was it a nanny, milk woman or a florist?

Beth (31:00.414)
It was none of them. My favourite job was a cleaner. I love cleaning.

Eric (31:03.888)
Yeah

Eric (31:08.337)
Okay, okay, good for you, good for you. Craziest thing you experience while milking a cow.

Beth (31:17.022)
Well, I must admit a milk woman in the UK doesn't necessarily milk the cow. Luckily, I have milked a cow. I have done that, but not in the capacity of the role of a milk woman. The milk luckily was already boxed and bottled, ready for me to go off and deliver.

Eric (31:28.163)
Okay.

Eric (31:34.177)
Oh, okay, so when I read that I was like, oh she's got her hands under the cow and she's smoking at 4 a.m. Ha ha ha.

Beth (31:42.622)
Luckily, luckily for me, even though I've had an eclectic and varied role, that was one skill I hadn't acquired.

Eric (31:50.109)
Hehehe

Eric (31:54.454)
Okay, next question. Favorite song you like to sing?

Beth (31:59.182)
Oh, I like to sing. Oh wow. I love all the Amy Winehouse stuff, RIP. Yeah, I love all the jazz blues influence in modern day. I love singing Gregory Porter, but I don't have his voice. So I can't sing like a guy, but I do try when no one's watching. Ha ha ha.

Eric (32:20.241)
Okay, next question. Have you ever given a bad haircut, Beth?

Beth (32:26.078)
Yes, when I was five, I cut all my sister's hair off, that she was completely bald the day before my auntie's wedding. Ha ha, she had to wear a straw hat. Yes.

Eric (32:38.548)
Oh my god, oh my god, did you get a whooping for that at least or no?

Beth (32:44.762)
I mean, back in those days, parenting was very different than it was now. I indeed did. Yes. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Well, yeah, it was, it was pretty, it's pretty tough. But there we go. Yeah.

Eric (32:50.904)
Yeah. Oh, I'd still give my son a whoopin' if he cut his sister's hair off. Trust me.

Eric (33:04.684)
Okay, did y'all take any pictures of that moment or no?

Beth (33:08.306)
Well, there's certainly pictures of her bald in the straw hat on the wedding day. Yes, there is evidence of that. Luckily, we still speak to each other.

Eric (33:15.501)
Okay.

Okay, last question for you. As a former nanny, I wish all parents would blank. Fill in the blank.

Beth (33:29.53)
Listen to their children.

Eric (33:34.5)
All right, all right. Thank you so much, Beth, for coming on the show.

Beth (33:35.722)
Yeah.

Beth (33:40.03)
Lovely, well thank you so much for having me. I have a question for you. I ask this to all my candidates. What's your motto for life?

Eric (33:46.932)
Oh, it's easy. A live shrink or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Beth (33:52.81)
Mmm, interesting.

Eric (33:53.832)
It's a quote by somebody I can't remember who it was, but I remember reading that one time. And whenever I'm trying to decide something or make a decision or contemplating something, I always think back to that quote. Because I don't want to not do something and regret it later on in life.

Beth (34:10.102)
Hmm. Very, very true. I'm very motivated by our finite time. I think that's a great quote. Thank you.

Eric (34:18.36)
Yeah, for everybody listening, I'm going to include Beth's LinkedIn URL in the show notes, as well as linked to her website. And the show isn't free. So if you enjoyed it, please hit that subscribe button. That's how you can pay for it and tell others about it until next week. This is Eric signing off and I'll be back next week with another exciting European founder or marketer. Cheers, everyone.